by Neil Wilkinson | Jul 5, 2009 | Allotment
The chickens we jointly look after have got their laying groove on – we found three eggs on Saturday and another two today. We had a further six waiting for us in the allotment fridge, as you can see they are a massive assortment of sizes and shapes but all the better for that I think. If we wanted perfect looking food I suppose we could just go to the supermarket – but that would mean missing the excitement of rooting around nest boxes!
Our harvest from the allotment is now notching up a gear – this week we’ve taken home a lot of new potatoes, cucumbers, mint, raspberries, broad beans, sugar snap peas and a few different lettuces. Most of this produce has been eaten straightaway – only some of the broad beans have had to go in the freezer. The lettuce has been really successful and was delicious with tonight’s dinner.
We only spent a few hours at the plot late this afternoon – after the morning run for Pilla’s half-marathon training we had a nap – it’s taken us a week, and we still haven’t recovered from Glastonbury! Luckily the plot is taking care of itself a lot these days so we just had a bit of allotment ‘admin’ to do – weeding, watering, a tiny bit of planting out and adding support to some of the plants. I tied up the sweet peas at the front of the plot whilst Pilla took the weeds out of all the beds. The advantage that we got when we took on this plot was the lack of weeds – it took around an hour but Pilla managed to weed the whole plot.
I also added a bit of support to the tomatoes – some of which are now up to the roof of the greenhouse. After some watering and feeding that was pretty much us done. I think we might have spent longer harvesting our crops and taking pictures than we did doing ‘proper’ jobs – that’s how allotment life should be I think!
by Neil Wilkinson | Jul 1, 2009 | Allotment
Popped down to the plot tonight just to give the greenhouse plants a quick water, and immediately noticed this little fellow poking out from one of our raspberry canes. A quick run around the plot and I had 5 little raspberries to take home and share. I know it’s not much, but the first crop of anything is always exciting!
In case you are interested, my webserver keeps logs of unique visitors and page counts for the blog. I keep trying to figure a way of adding them here but haven’t managed yet. Anyway, in June there were 330 unique visitors, 1195 visits and 5742 page loads.
by Neil Wilkinson | Mar 8, 2009 | Allotment
Last week we ticked a few major jobs off our list, so this week we were faced with just a few admin tasks – things we’ve had to do for ages but have had much more interesting things to get on with.
I started the day off by making a waterproof lid for the compost bin – I’m not 100% sure this is necessary for a compost bin but we had a spare pallet and some plastic sheeting so I put one together.
It took me a while as I had to keep running in the greenhouse for some protection from the rain. Whilst I was doing this Pilla was cleaning out the greenhouse. The glass is still very sparkly from the cleaning job Pilla had done on it over Christmas but the frame had all sorts of mud, grass and bugs in it. With the aid of an Ikea kitchen scrubber and a spoon(!) it has cleaned up nicely. It must be a sign of far too much mud in the frame when you find it housing a worm!
It’s days like this you realise the importance of a greenhouse – it’s great for hiding from the weather in. We had lots of rain in between bouts of sunshine and at one point a thunderstorm came our way… complete with a LOT of hail stones.
Still, all the rain had one advantage – it filled one of our water butts enough to give it a good clean. This was a former bin from Oaklands Drive – it still has a way to go to be a ‘proper’ water butt – I want to raise it up a foot and add a tap on the bottom so we can fill a watering can underneath. I did add a lid and put a hole in it for the down pipe to go through. In between bouts of rain I cleaned up the far corner of the plot – it was full of some old floor boards, which I have de-nailed and hidden behind the shed along with the carpet. We are not sure what we are going to do with this bit of the plot, it was going to be a pond, but we might utilise it for growing. It currently has a woodpile and the fruit trees.
After that we were pretty much done, so we went on the hunt for some signs of spring. The rhubarb we planted last week seems to be shooting up – you shouldn’t really take any the first year after planting, but at this rate we’ll be overrun with it! The cherry tree & raspberry canes that we are training along the fence seem to have come to life this week too.
Hopefully next week we should get the seeds we have ordered – let the planting begin!
by Neil Wilkinson | Feb 15, 2009 | Allotment
Some days at the allotment you can toil for hours and leave with the site looking much the same as when you started (see the greenhouse days) and others you can leave feeling like you have made some real progress. Today was definitely the latter. After a week off for a trip to London we returned with a spring in our step (and a fancy new watering can in our hand) to try and finish some jobs off.
First up we had to dig the front of the plot over- this was the bit we liberated from beneath the gravel last week. Pilla was digging away pulling all sorts of rubbish out of the ground and now it’s looking ready to plant some flowers in. Whilst doing this I carried on digging the top trek out of the last three beds. It’s a long & slow process, but it’s finally done. We just need some soil to fill them in and they will be ready. I also dug through the membrane in the corner spot where the apple tree will be and dug over the soil underneath. This was also filled with a bucket full of things you wouldn’t expect to find in the soil.
We took a break from digging to stroke Tammy and then go and see Bob at the allotment store. This is in a spot at the other side of the site so we don’t get over there very much, pretty much just for allotment meetings and when we need something from the society. This was the first time we’d been in the store, and it’s a little haven of all things allotmenty. From compost & grow bags, to seed trays (which is what we were after), bee & ladybird houses, cleaning fluid, fleece, organic seaweed solution, if you need it on the site it seems that Bob will sell it, all at very reasonable prices. We are going back next week with cash in hand to get some goodies.
I then put up some very simple shelves in the greenhouse and finished the compost box. I’ve made it so all the front panels can be lifted out, hopefully this will make it easier to get to the good stuff at the bottom once it’s getting filled up which Pilla started with some horse manure at the bottom. We also got given some more raspberry canes and a solitary rhubarb crown from Debbie – we had some raspberry canes already, so the new ones are going to fashion a kind of raspberry hedge against the fence at one side. The rhubarb was one which she freely admitted may not take but it’s worth a go. It doesn’t really matter if it doesn’t survive as Bob has already promised us some of his rhubarb plants.
Once we’d planted that lot we had a bit of a tidy up – we have a big pile of wood at one end of the plot some of which had paint on it which is gradually flaking off, it was all getting very messy. I tidied about a third of it up and put it out of site behind the shed. I don’t know if we’ll ever need this wood, but once you have something on the site you are loathe to get rid of it.
We’ll maybe get some soil sorted this week, next week we have plans for building staging in the greenhouse and buying some goodies from the store to start growing in the greenhouse – it’s all getting quite exciting – in an allotment sort of way!
On a further note, my running is taking me past lots of houses being renovated which have skips. The slow speed I go at means I can have a good nosey so I’m always on the lookout for allotment things. I think I have finally found something useful – an old curved shower door. With a bit of a wooden frame and some hinges, it’ll make a really good cold frame. I tried to go and get it today but the owners weren’t in and I felt a bit weird taking it without asking so it’ll have to wait for now, but it will be mine. Oh yes, it will be mine 🙂
by Neil Wilkinson | Feb 1, 2009 | Allotment
We had a few jobs to finish off or get started with this weekend. The main task was to neaten the front of the plot on the outside of the fence. The top trek layer came right up to the edge of the path but didn’t have a straight edge and in some places was wearing thin. Given the time we have spent making the plot itself look lovely we thought this part needed some TLC. We hope to put some flowers and pots there once the time is right for planting. Neil bought some thin batons of wood to make a defined edge but first we had to scrape up the top trek and then cut away the membrane. This was quite a good job for us after the seemingly never ending greenhouse saga as it didn’t take long at all and it makes a big difference.
The next pressing task was planting. Exciting! We have had a good week for deliveries and some of our parcels contained bushes that we had to leave in tubs of water until today. We went via the garden centre as the blueberry bush needs an ericaceous compost (an acidic soil) and we also picked up some multipurpose compost for some of our other tubs and a couple of healthy looking rosemary plants. We have ordered rosemary seeds but some of our research seemed to indicate that growing from seed can be quite difficult and therefore using cuttings or an established plant is more successful. So we planted the rosemary, blueberry and blackberry bushes and the raspberry canes (which incidentally look far too dead and withered to ever bear fruit, but I’m told that’s what they are supposed to look like!)
A really good allotment find came in the form of the black tubs you can see above. In their previous life they were wastepaper baskets at Neil’s work. In a bid to become more green they were all replaced by large recycling bins. And they have sat in a darkened storeroom ever since. That is until Neil liberated them after a bit of tough negotiating! He brought about 20 home and there are plenty more should we need them, which at this rate we most certainly will.
In case you are thinking that this is all we did today, we also attended the monthly allotment society meeting ( nothing much to report there) and started digging the last two beds. Unfortunately, our progress was halted at about 3pm with a flurry of snow! It had been snowing on and off a couple of times this afternoon but it didn’t really come to much and after a brief respite in the greenhouse we were back out again. However, this downpour looked set to last and so we decided to call it a day. Lets hope the plants we put in today are hardy enough to survive the cold snap.
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