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 Philippa | Mar 16, 2009 | Allotment
At one stage this afternoon the plot looked like a murder scene out of Cluedo (“Who did it?”, “Miss Philippa, at the allotment, with the water butt.”) but fear not Neil is alive and well and as a result of his hilarious endeavours we have tried and tested taps on both water butts. We realised these were pretty necessary as our watering can does not fit into either water butt, something we only noticed once they were all hooked up and two thirds full! So Neil had to do some siphoning of water back and forth before he could fit the taps!
I was getting on with some greenhouse planting as it suddenly seems like time is getting away from us. We received our seed order mid week which was ridiculously exciting. We had to go through the packets to see what needs to be started in the next couple of weeks. This is pretty difficult to decide as whilst the packets give instructions of when to sow you have to account for the regional weather variations which can affect this timetable. So there are some seeds which say they can be planted in March which we are delaying until April to ensure that they are not adversely affected by any cold spells that may be on the way before then. We have a mixture of collected pots, seed trays bought from the allotment store and paper pots made from my paper potter birthday present! The latter are an excellent way of planting out for minimal cost and environmental impact. We are starting a production line at home to churn out enough of these for our seeds. We will end up looking like we have spent the afternoon down at the local police station with the amount of newspaper print that ends up on our fingers! Today I managed to plant broad beans, parsley, red cabbage, purple sprouting broccoli and all of our sweetpeas.
Neil carried on the DIY theme and built (and then partially filled) a manure bay next to our compost bin. This is so we can keep a store of manure on site to rot down as the manure deliveries are always of fresh manure that doesn’t hang around for long before being used by somebody.
Some further generous gestures to report. Firstly some chives, mint and lemon mint from one of Neil’s colleagues Mike. He has been an avid listener of Neil’s allotment tales and brought us some cuttings on a recent business trip. We cut the bottom off a few of the black bins and sunk them into the soil as we are told that both the mint and lemon mint are voracious growers and are likely to spread if left to grow freely. We then received two garden chairs from a man a few plots down who incidentally has the neatest plot I have ever seen and of which I am extremely envious. Unfortunately, when we came to eat our lunch the sun was briefly behind some clouds so we didn’t get to use them today, but I bet it won’t be long before we do.
Finally, some exciting updates on what is growing. We really noticed a difference since last week, particularly with the rhubarb which is so much taller, but also the strawberries which are putting out some new leaves and the garlic I planted only three weeks ago has now sprouted. We are taking bets on what will be the first produce to be harvested. I think the rhubarb is a clear winner at this stage while Neil is putting his money on lettuce, which has yet to be planted but grows quickly.
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