… it must mean another three days at the allotment and we got tons done again. We had another big job list and managed to get quite a few of them done. Creating a list of jobs to do on the plot is easy, actually getting time to do them when your fitting in weeding, watering and harvesting is another matter.
First up was some time dedicated to planting up our crops for a late autumn harvest and clearing some of the massive soil pile. Whilst Pilla was preparing the beds on 97 for the sweet williams and wallflowers I got to work clearing the massive pile of mud we had been left on 118. The previous occupants had dug up the path one day (it was quite a comical raised grass path that was about 6″ higher than the soil either side) and piled it on one side of the plot. This had then got absolutely covered in horrible weeds and is full of glass and rubble. Which means that not only do we have to dig through it, we have to clear the weeds, glass and assorted hand tools contained within it. I think I’ve got past the half way point and must have cleared around 20 wheelbarrows of mud, putting in around the plot werever the soil looked a bit low (or was of rubbish quality). We thought about using the extra space cleared to plant things but as we had just had some fresh manure delivered from the stables next door we opted to start a manure pile instead. This will eventually rot down a bit and we’ll cover the plot in the winter with it. I can’t see it adding that many nutrients but it should make the soil a better condition and it’s probably been years since anyone put any down on this plot.
Pilla planted some late sowing turnips and some late peas on the new plot. The peas are going at the front where the new potatoes have just come up from. Having not had a crop in for years this side of the plot is on it’s second already this year! We did tons more harvesting too, comedy sized courgettes and cucumbers included. We picked some more new potatoes (probably just plain ‘potatoes’ now) and lots of beans. Having hardly had any beans last year they are one of our big successes this year. The climbing beans in particular have done really well and we are considering scrapping the dwarf variety next year. We haven’t even started on the runner beans of which there are approximately one million. I had a quick weed and managed to put down the last two flags I have on the path, which i’m very proud of as iIt has made a huge difference to how neat the plot looks.
Another exciting job was to plait the garlic we harvested last week. I found this ace link on how to properly tie it together, for begginners like us it was definitely a two person job, but the result is pretty impressive. Our garlic is huge this year, i think every head is as big as the biggest one from last year. We’ve got 27 in total form this solent wight variety, including 6 we have singled out for the show. We’ve also got a batch of smaller garlic, which we harvested this weekend, and it is currently drying in the greenhouse. We used a lot of our own grown things in the Tatton park picnic on Friday night, including lots of fruit in this raspberry jelly. MMMMmm!
Due to the Manchester 10km and Edinburgh marathon over the last two weekends we haven’t been spending a lot of time on the plots and have had even less time to update the blog. We’ve made up for the former by having a four day weekend of allotmenting and I’ve taken a lot of pictures to get a good update done.
Two weeks ago we moved the munty frame from 97 to 118 – there is a lot more room there and it held up very well in the move. We’ve planted out about twice as many runner beans as we did last year, with a new variety that’s a cross between a runner and a french bean and as such is less stringy. We got these out just after the last frost which caught a few people out (including killing the top leaves of our potatoes), and the beans seem to be doing pretty well, hopefully there won’t be another frost. This weekend we quickly hardened off the sweetcorn for a few nights and planted them out in front of the runner beans.
After the AGM on Sunday we bought four Brussel sprout seedlings as out of a whole tray of our own seeds only three germinates and we have only two viable plants. Considering just one of us eats sprouts I think two plants would be more than enough but it just didn’t feel like enough. Still, at 30p a seedling we hardly broke the bank! Next up was planting out some sugar snap peas, dwarf french beans, climbing french beans and peas. To do this we had to create something for them all to climb up – the dwarf french beans and peas need support up to about waist high, the climbing beans and sugar snaps need something considerably higher. I designed a totally unique structure (absolutley nothing like the bean structure on Bob’s plot, it’s not even close*) and put it right next to the nets I made for the sprouts (the netting is also nothing like the net structure just next to it on Bob’s plot. Totally different*) and Pilla planted out the seedlings and sowed a few extra peas in the holes for good measure. We then did a fair bit of weeding over the plot as the warm and wet weather over the last week seemed to have really brought out the weeds, they are growing quicker than everything else! We also planted a line of sunflowers in front of the beans and gave the onions and broad beans a liquid feed – we have some concerns about how fertile the soil is on this bit of the plot and neither the onions or broad beans look particularly healthy.
We spent a lot of time potting on plants in the greenhouse throughout the weekend as we had lots of plants busting to move into bigger pots. We potted on all of our tomatoes into their final pots, along with the padron and black pearl chilli’s, marconi and new ace peppers and the aubergines (moneymaker). I took down some of the staging to make room for the plants in their bigger pots – I took the staging down but left the ‘deck’ and legs in two large pieces which I then attached the side of the greenhouse. This keeps them out of the way and should mean it’s really quick to put up the staging again in the spring.
We did a general weed on plot 97, although there really wasn’t that many to take out. Pilla did some successional sowing of lettuces in a free bed, something that we weren’t very good at last year and vowed to improve upon this time around. On Sunday we thinned enough of the many lettuces we have to make a tasty salad for tea. Pilla also sowed another batch of parsnips and a few beetroot as the germination rate on the new plot has been really disappointing which we think might be a sign that the soil fertility is in need of some help . We had tons of beetroot last year (some of which won a prize at the summer show) so only having a few will be a real shame.
Elsewhere on plot 97 things are looking pretty good – we have lots of blackberry flowers across the whole length of the bush, it’s quite amazing that this was a tiny little plant this time last year. We have loads of little strawberries growing and in the same bed the raspberry canes are covered in fruits that are not quite ripe, flowers which results in frequent visits from many bees. The scabiosa plant has survived the winter and now has it’s first very pretty flower. Happily we only have a few days of work this week before we can get back to the plot!
Well, it only seems like a few weeks ago that we were busy potting on and planting out but now we are well into our autumn jobs. Today’s big task was to remove the sweet peas that have given our plot a good splash of colour for the last few months.
Whilst Pilla was getting busy with the secateurs (and running away from the spiders that seem to love hiding out in the sweet peas. In fairness to Pilla the spiders were huge, I mean they must have been at least the size of a small pea) I set about tidying up the greenhouse. We had let it all get a bit overgrown and there were plenty of old leaves hanging around in there. Annoyingly enough, there were also plenty of big fat caterpillars eating our tomatoes and aubergines.
We are still getting lots of things from our greenhouse, in fact I think we had our biggest harvest in there today. For all our cutting down things, we do still have the odd burst of colour, with the flowers at the front of the plot doing their best to last into the autumn.
The only other thing left to do was add in some more manure onto the recently emptied beds and that was it for today.
We had another busy weekend, mostly spent at birthday parties and watching the cricket, so we had to fit our allotmenting into our day off on Friday.
We harvested our onions, cut down the spent sugar snap peas and most of the broad beans, weeded and tidied up the front of the plot. Whilst Pilla was busy doing that, I gave our chilli plants some attention – a few had become a bit dry and wilted. We also harvested the potatoes we had left in the ground and prepared our second strawberry bin.
So, that’s it – we’ve had the plot a year. We’ve been looking back at the old pictures and it’s quite amazing that we’ve managed to fit in getting so much done – so many times we got something finished just as we needed it. I think both of us are looking forward to taking a bit more time next year and we have all of autumn and winter to plan it. This period last year was just a mass panic of ‘where are we getting our fence/wood/soil/greenhouse/shed/glass/pots/shelving from?!’ We are going to be making a list of jobs to do soon and this should definitely be more manageable than ‘create a brand new plot’.
My last job at the plot today was to take some pictures in the same places as we took last year – the video below is my go at stitching it all together. The pictures above were taken from a rather precarious standing-on-the-top-rung-of-the-fence position. It’s fair to say if Philippa had been there I wouldn’t have been allowed to clamber up there!
Despite the nice weather the allotment was pretty quiet and those two factors brought a constant companion to us today. The table we rescued from the bins is proving to be a bit of a sun trap – and at our allotment where there is sun, a place to lie and a few cat treats you will probably find Tammy. She’s a soppy little thing.
Tammy wasn’t the only creature on the plot today, we saw plenty of bees on our dahlias, a few ladybirds and about a million snails climbing up the bean frame. We are not supposed to like snails at the alloment and the bigger ones regularly get launched over the fench into the rough ground at the side of our plot, but when they look like this little fella, it’s sort of hard not to.
Again we didn’t have that much to do today. We fed the plants in the greenhouse, did some weeding and then harvested some more produce. Today we have taken home runner beans, tomatoes, courgettes (which Pilla is currently cooking up into a courgette casserole) salad leaves, mint, potatoes, cucumbers and sugar snap peas.
The beetroot is almost ready and our chillis are finally growing. I put the pictures of these together because I was talking to Ralph on Saturday, and not only did he give me a big bag full of tomatoes (thanks Ralph!), but he talked about a chilli and beetroot pickle he made last year. Pickles, beetroot and chillis – surely you can’t go wrong with that combination! We are going to have to make that this year.
Back in the greenhouse we got out first full truss of tomatoes – I think the variety is ‘Gardeners Delight’. The aubergines are growing at a fair pace and the sweet peppers have almost exploded. We have four plants and there must be 10-15 peppers on each.
Thought I’d also share the success of the growing frame (it’s known as a munty frame – I got the design from a web forum) as it is now producing tons of very straight runner beans and they are easy to pick too because they all hang down beneath the frame. Brilliant. The garlic we picked last week has dried out nicely in the greenhouse, and I think we can start digging up the rest of the garlic next week.
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