by Neil Wilkinson | Apr 26, 2009 | Allotment
First, a warning – after forgetting the camera last week I think I got a bit carried away today. I could have put about 50 pictures up here today.
We had another two-day allotment weekend. Although we only have a small plot there is always a hundred things to do and not enough time to do half of them. We are seriously considering writing a to-do list and then prioritising our jobs but perhaps this might be taking things a step too far! April is a very very busy allotment month – I very much doubt we can ever go away anywhere in April again!
We only spent an hour or two at the site on Saturday. After doing our now traditional reccy of the site to see what new has grown (this week we have leaf beet, thyme, the horseradish has lots of green on it, some of our green manure has grown and we have our first potato leaves) we set about some serious planting. We planted out quite a bit of coriander and a couple of lines of radishes in our herb bed. Yes, I know radish is not a herb but we have bumped quite a few things around as we figure out how to best use our space. We seem to have a slight issue with our garlic and shallots – after a great start to their lives they are now going a bit yellow on the tips of their leaves. A quick google search suggested this might be a lack of nitrogen, a quick conversation with Bob suggested it could be one of a few things. We’ve tried putting on a few handfuls of some organic fertiliser and plenty of water and we will see what happens.
We got off to a slow start on Sunday, partly down to me watching the marathon, partly because we had to go photocopy some chicken articles from GYO and partly because Pilla is fighting off a cold. We arrived down on the site at about 12 noon, just as the communal chickens were arriving. We are now proud co-parents of 6 hens (we think they are Warrens which are supposed to be great layers and super friendly). One quick meeting later and we have secured contact visits & feedings on weekends. For now they are safely in their coop for a day or two while they get used to their surroundings.
High up on our list of priorities today was planting out the broad beans and sweet peas we have had in the cold frame for the last week. The broad beans were fairly straightforward but the sweet peas need a frame to grow up. After much cutting of cane and tying of string we had built a frame across two beds.
We also planted some dhalia tubers in the front bed and spent a huge amount of time potting and and thinning down our seedlings in the greenhouse. It’s pretty amazing one tiny plant (I’m looking at you parsley and you too sweet marjoram, mizuna you’re not too far behind) can have such a long, deep and intertwined root system. Next year we should learn a lesson from this and plant thinner in seed trays perhaps.
And despite all of that, we still had to leave before we had completed our ‘things to do list’. So it looks like it will be another busy weekend next time.
by Neil Wilkinson | Apr 19, 2009 | Allotment
Sorry for the lack of photo’s in this post, someone* forgot the camera today. Well it feels like it has been quite a weekend – we are tired enough to suggest that we have got a lot done, but our plot it doesn’t particularly look like we have got anything done. Why? Well, we had a community job to do on Saturday – a job which we volunteered for last weekend then promptly forgot about until we were half way round Sainsburys on Saturday morning – helping clear out an unusable plot for some allotment chickens. We have put our names down to look after them with a few other people. Having chickens is something we have pined after for a while but it was never going to happen whilst we don’t have a garden. The allotment rule book says you can have chickens and one plot holder has a couple of geese, but looking after them on your own requires a dedication to visiting the plot that we probably couldn’t commit to. However, sharing this with a few others seems to make perfect sense. Plus, what were we going to do with 6 eggs a day anyway?
So we spent Saturday afternoon in the sun with quite a few other plot holders (and a few beers) and made some great progress clearing the plot. It really is quite amazing how much you can do when everyone gets involved, by the end of the day we’d even laid a lawn and dug out a pond. This was good – especially so given that we weren’t dressed for the allotment (it’s pretty hard digging a pond when you are wearing pumps for example). I must also thank Pilla for having the foresight to put some suncream in the shed – if anyone can get burnt in Manchester in April it’s me. We then realised we had stayed a bit longer than we meant to and had to rush off home before going to a comedy gig in Warrington.
We only managed to get to the plot after 12noon today and we had to leave before 4pm to get home for the football (which I wish I hadn’t bothered about now!). We had quite a lot to do and actually could have stayed and done a lot more. First up, some of our seedlings needed potting on. We don’t really have many appropriately sized pots so we had to visit the store. 50 bigger pots, 5 grow bags and 15 eight foot canes later we were all done (this is not the last of of our grow bag or cane needs either, more to follow). Before we started on the seedlings we had our onions to plant out. Spacings are bothering us right now – the packets are pretty vague (15-30cm between rows? That’s quite a big difference!) and you can plant tighter together in raised beds, so how close should they be? Well, we don’t know so we just guessed a bit and we’ll see what happens. If the onions don’t grow so big we’ll just tell everyone they were shallots! Planting always seems to take a surprising amount of time for us, once you have hoed the soil for lumps , weeded it, discussed spacings, found something to make a hole and finally planted, you don’t get change from a hour.
We then moved our broad beans into the cold frame to harden off (no giggling in the back there) and set about potting on. I guess we both thought that would be a pretty easy job – pop the seedlings out, into a new pot, done. Well it didn’t really work like that for us, we both seemed to think we made a right mess of it and it took ages! We’ll see what happens with the cabbage, sweetpeas and sprouting broccoli we did.
Speaking of sweetpeas, we need to figure out what we are going to grow them up (we actually need several things because we have about a million of them). I’ve become slightly obsessed this week about this and the support for some of the beans. I’m going to have a go at bending some canes over between the two rows of beds to create some arches – they are not long enough to do this without some sort of prop at head height so I had a test with a couple of canes and I think it will work pretty well. I’ll also thread cane between the vertical pieces to form a kind of cane trellis. We’ll just do the one bed for now maybe (I have designs on creating an arch for the front of the plot too) if it works it’ll give us quite a lot of extra growing space as we should be able to hang baskets from the top – although this really depends on my cane bending and knot tying skills.
* It was me.
by Neil Wilkinson | Apr 12, 2009 | Allotment
We didn’t really have any major jobs to do this weekend (and last Monday too) but it started to dawn on us during the week that we had set a lot of our seeds aside to be planted in April and now we are almost halfway through the month. This prompted a burst of planting activity today. On Friday we delicately transported the batch of seeds we’d started in the flat over the last few weeks and already today they seemed to be much happier in the greenhouse, they definitely get more light there than on our windowsill.
We are still really just guessing when to plant things and we like to get caught up in the slight panic that seems to sweep over the plots at this time of year (“oh, they have potatoes in, should we put ours in?”). So today we have sown, in no particular order:
- Parsnips
- Leaf beet
- Sugarsnap peas
- French dwarf beans
- Runner beans
- Dill
- Sage
- Basil
- Thyme
- Sunflowers
- Fuschia
- Tomatoes
We’ve had limited success starting off peppers & chillies indoors at home so we are trying some more in the greenhouse. Over the last week we have also put our potatoes in. We are experimenting with them, we have some in the beds and some in tubs.
We probably would have got more done but we had to buy some supplies from Bob at the store which entailed a walk across the site. This is not a fast process at the best of times as you tend to have a bit of a chat (and I’ll be honest here, a bit of a nosey at what everyone else is doing with their plots) but when Philippa is with you AND she is giving out shortbread then the 5 minute walk turns into an hour long meander. This is not an exaggeration.
We took the opportunity to plant some bee attracting plants that Mum gave me (thanks Mum) although one of them is looking a little bit lonely at the moment:
The rest of the plot is getting slightly more colourful everytime we go, although I have cheated slightly by taking super close up’s of these:
Garlic and shallots:
by Neil Wilkinson | Mar 30, 2009 | Allotment
I have to be careful writing this post. Sunday was a lovely day down on the plot – bright sunshine, warm, good banter, cold beer – really the sort of afternoons specifically designed for being on the allotment. Unfortunately, Pilla didn’t get to enjoy any of it as she spent about 12 hours stuck inside working. So I’m going to try and downplay how nice it was…
I got there before lunch and had a couple of good jobs to get on with. The big one to tick off the list was to create some new little flower beds around the far corner of the plot and up near the apple tree. The far corner of the plot is an odd little spot, we had thought about putting a pond there (and still might put a small one in at some point in the future) but because it’s open to the space outside the site we get a bit of litter blown in and it had become a bit messy. We want to attract some wildlife too and it really wasn’t going to in the state it was in. We have a few old floorboards behind the shed, they have been on the plot since we took it over – the longer pieces got transformed into the fence but we still have some left. It took me a while – lots of cups of tea and thinking time was required. There was also a lot to see today – something must have been in the water in Abbey Hey recently because there has been a fence building spree on Site 3 – so I had to go have a nosey. As much as I like my pallet fence gate, I am definitely a bit jealous of Debbie’s new home made gate. It is faaancy! So here are our new beds, hopefully I’m going to add a few logs to the log pile to make it a bit more wild.
The beds also took a while because Chris brought me out a cold beer when I’d almost finished. This is exactly what you need when you’ve been building things in the allotment all day. He’s also given me a latch for the cold frame so we can prop it open properly. Legend :).
After they were done I had a few smaller jobs to do. We’d been to the plot on Saturday afternoon to plant some horseradish roots (in bins – they are virulent growers) which needed to be distributed around the plot. I then cleaned out the Pearson bins and filled up the manure bay. It’s taken a good amount of manure to get it two thirds full – this will hopefully provide us with enough rotted manure in the autumn for the whole plot.
I also planted some more seedlings. Some of the seedlings have finally appeared – maybe they heard me moaning about them last week. I forgot to take any pictures so you’ll just have to take my word for it. So far there seems to be little difference between peat and no-peat but it’s early days (thanks for the GW info mum!).
Our shallots have really come on leaps and bounds and the rhubarb is growing at a quite frankly frightening pace. It has become a monster. It’s looking pretty tasty already!
Tammy was spotted throughout the day enjoying the warmth of our greenhouse and the nice bed that Pilla created in the dark depths of winter. She alternated between sleeping in her bed and stretching out across the pallet we still have in there. She was incredibly warm!
We have a busy weekend next weekend with Paris and all – however we have both booked Monday off work which should be for me to recover, but I’m sure I can do that at the allotment, right?
by Neil Wilkinson | Mar 25, 2009 | Allotment
We are having some frustrating Internet issues at home thanks to our wonderful ISP which means it’s really difficult to get on the Internet in the evenings – which is why this post is a bit late – I’m having to do it in my lunch at work.
The exciting thing about going to the plot now is that we’re expecting something new each time – as you get closer to the plot you start wondering about what will have grown – at the moment because we don’t have much in the ground every little bit of new leaf is greeted with a big sense of excitement and achievement. Also, because we are extremely new to this allotment business, we don’t exactly know how our plants will appear. This week, this started growing:
Any thoughts? Yep, those are the shallots we planted a few weeks back, doing a quite remarkable small pineapple impression. The garlic is still shooting up, we have a 100% germination rate, which I think is quite impressive.
We were a little disappointed with the seeds – it’s still very early and we only planted them as a test but the weather was so good last week I really thought they might be growing. They are not. We checked with Sharon next door who was also planting seeds last week, and she had got a bit of success using lids on the pots, so we borrowed a few before running off to Wilkinsons to buy our very own. This also leads me on to a slight issue we have – we’d like to be as organic as possible. Why is that an issue? Well you cannot have organic peat. Ok, fine. So what is the best medium to start seedlings in? Yes, that’s right, peat. So we are testing now – we have some seedlings in peat and some in non-peat compost and we’ll see what happens. It’s a catch 22 though – you needs your seedlings to have a strong start in life so they are healthy and disease resistant which should mean you don’t need non-organic controls, but the best way to do that is to use a non-organic product.
In other news we finally planted the redcurrants Bob gave us and I fixed up a cold frame using some old windows Russ was throwing away.
I’m making a website for the Society and I’ve been given some old pictures from around the place. When I get time I’ll dig out a few and put them up, the place is almost completely unrecognisable from how it was even at the start of last year.
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