by Philippa | Jul 13, 2009 | Allotment
Colour all round at the allotment and mainly sunshine yellow hues! We have blooming sunflowers, opening courgette flowers and a pre-allotment breakfast of little eggs from the chickens. After the monthly allotment meeting yesterday we got straight to work. I was potting on the chillies into the florist buckets as they had started to flower and the hope is that with a bit more room we might get some fruit on them at the end of the season. We ran out of compost before I could do the same for all of the habaneros so this remains on the list of things to do. Meanwhile, Neil put his DIY skills to the test and set about drilling large holes out of a tall bin which he then partially filled with compost. He then carefully planted the strawberry plants Bob gave us so that theyare hanging out of the holes. The bin will be further filled once the runners in our strawberry beds are established. These won’t fruit until next year but they really couldn’t wait in their small pots any longer.
Exciting things happening in the greenhouse. We have a few little sweet peppers emerging, see above for our largest specimen thus far. If they continue at this rate we will get a good return from our four plants which will be a bonus as I think we were sceptical we would get anything at all. Neil had some aubergine tickling to do, with the help of a second hand paint brush. This followed a week of research in which opinion seemed to be divided. Some aubergines are apparently self pollinating whilst others require a bit of a helping hand. Not knowing whether ours were the former or the latter we thought it was better to play it safe and give them a tickle inside their flowers to distribute their pollen. Fingers crossed for the results! It was also time to plant out the dill and sage that had been started in the greenhouse. They are both looking a bit leggy so hopefully some fresh air will strengthen them up. A special mention goes to a new addition to our allotment equipment in the form of an old desk we recycled from beside the bins in our flat! Very useful for potting and DIY tasks but it may need a coat of varnish so it doesn’t perish.
It has been a good week for harvesting produce with a lots of lettuce and beans to bring home and I must say it is making us feel very healthy and virtuous! There is nothing quite like the taste of a fresh homegrown raspberry.
by Neil Wilkinson | Jun 29, 2009 | Allotment
Before I talk about our plot, something happened to someone else’s plot whilst we were away. I’m not going to talk about the details, but I’m shocked and saddened that anyone would cause that amount of pointless damage. We’ll probably never know what happened, but why anyone would do that to someone who spends so much of his time helping others, welcoming newcomers, generally making everyone feel at home there and being an absolute star on the site is beyond me. Idiots.
Right then, after getting thoroughly de-gunked from the Glastonbury trip (and oh how smug we were walking through the ‘grow your own’ section in the Greenpeace field. Been there, doing that) we headed down to our plot. We’d not been there for six days. Nothing could change that much in six days, right?
Err, wrong. Meet our second cucumber (and the third, fourth, fifth, sixth etc etc are almost ready). It is a monster. It almost doesn’t fit in the fridge. I measured it at 34 cm’s long. I feel we are about to be overwhelmed with cucumbers.
The aubergines in the greenhouse have grown a lot. They look about twice as big as they were last week and quite a few have flowers. We have green tomatoes all over the tomato plants now- the variety in the picture is the stripey Tigerella. Bob looked after our greenhouse plants last week, which is perhaps why they are looking so healthy!
Outside, things seem to have moved up a gear too. We have our first courgette flowers – these grow even faster than cucumbers by all accounts. Pilla has been stocking up on recipes in preparation – I think one is a vegatable muffin which sounds interesting! We have quite a few broadbeans ready to pick, a few sugarsnap peas, the french beans too and the runner beans are slowly developing bean pods.
We also have signs of proper little blueberries. The internet dating we arranged with Debbie’s blueberry bushes has obviously gone well. The carrot tubs are looking very bushy and so we dug up a carrot just to see how they were getting on – Pilla is beautifully modelling a variety. I say ‘variety’ because I think I have mixed up the labels – we have three types, this one should have been ‘Purple Haze’ but it is looking distinctly unpurple right now. We had our first plants bolting in the heat however. We dug up a few mizuna plants because they have grown massive flowers (how a tiny lettuce can grow a three foot flower in six days is beyond me) and the rocket has done the same. They both grow quickly so we intend to sow some more seeds at the weekend.
Apart from running around the plot checking what else has grown, we only did a bit of watering, planted out the Jack o’Lantern squash plant and grabbed a few strawberries before rushing off. Thanks to Bob (again) we got enough strawberries for our pudding this evening.
by Philippa | Jun 14, 2009 | Allotment
It was a long time coming but we have had our first allotment tea! In fact, the lamb was the only component that we had not grown ourselves – not worked out how to grow a lamb in a raised bed just yet! We had grilled lamb steaks with new potatoes, rocket and mizuna salad and mint and basil pesto. Dessert was ten sweet and juicy strawberries shared between us. The new potatoes were an unexpected bonus as we didn’t really know that they would be ready to harvest. However, our impatience was getting the better of us and we decided to empty one of the tubs we had planted a spare Charlotte potato in. We knew that this could have meant sacrificing this plant needlessly if the tubers were not ready but we felt that it was worth it and boy was it worth it! I counted 18 potatoes out as Neil rooted around in the soil to check we hadn’t missed any. If our other plants have such good yeilds we will have more potatoes than we know what to do with!
Quite a busy day at the plot today with lots of jobs completed, all in the scorching sunshine. We planted out the sweetcorn and the curly kale that had been hardened off in the coldframe. Both were sturdy enough not to need any support at this stage, but we will keep an eye on them for the next few weeks to make sure they continue to prosper. The sunflowers took their place in the frame for the coming week. Not quite sure where they will be planted out when the time comes as space is rapidly running out!
It was renovation time in the greenhouse due to the flourishing tomato and cucumber plants. They were all getting wider as well as taller so Neil took apart the two sides of staging and spread them out a bit more. He then used cable ties to fasten the vertical support canes to two horizontal canes rested in our greenhouse fixings. This has really strengthened them up which is important for when the plants start to fruit as they cannot hold up the weighty fruit bearing trusses without help. We potted on the aubergines and peppers and all the resulting black tubs in the greenhouse have been connected to the water butt irrigation system. There is very little left in the greenhouse now that is not staying there and what remains we potted on this afternoon – chillies, squash, basil and alpine strawberries.
There are signs of things to come all over the plot now, with more tomato nubbins, fledgling cucumbers, tiny broad bean pods and flowers blossoming. All very exciting and after seeing the tasty meal we made tonight it is enough to make your stomach rumble in anticipation!
by Neil Wilkinson | Jun 12, 2009 | Allotment
… we’ve had our first strawberries! We shared a bountiful harvest of 2 (two) strawberries and they tasted absolutely delicious. They were the first thing we ever planted (you can read about that
here). I wish we’d planted more, but the ones we have should be producing runners soon and we’ll get a good set of new plants from them for next year. Mmmm tasty.
by Neil Wilkinson | Jun 2, 2009 | Allotment
.. which means this post is going to be an epic one. We’ve had a very busy few days, helping people move house, cycling to Liverpool, shopping for my week in the Middle East, so we have not spent too much time at the plot. Which is a shame because the weather has been perfect for it, however the advantage is that when we went tonight the plot seems to have kicked off it’s shoes, soaked up the sun and generally been having a fine time of it.
So, may we present for you a full on photo tour of our tiny piece of former car park in Manchester… (I’m not going to talk about all of them, it would take me all night!)
The broad bean flowers are a big hit with the local bee population.
The dwarf french beans are not looking great, but I only planted them out yesterday so I’m hopeful they will harden up over the next few days.
Before having an allotment I don’t think I’d ever seen a potato plant and now I’ve seen a potato flower. Aww, isn’t it cute?
The mixed lettuces look great. Which reminds me, I need to google how plants photosynthesize with red leaves.
Lots of our fruit is starting to ripen. We definitely didn’t plant enough strawberries this year, next year I think we will do them in some big bins we have with holes cut in the side. I think we’ll get more plants, more varieties and a more efficient use of our space.
Things in the greenhouse are going well. The tomato plants are big (and have lots of flowers) and the cucumber plants are so big they are starting to frighten me.
Our flowers make a big difference to the plot, I think we will grow more next year.
And this is what it is all about. We got our first proper vegetables in the form some radishes (and also learnt a vital lession in remembering to wash our produce before eating. Mmm soiley). And if you want you can play a fun game with the last picture – try and count the number of different varieties of plants. I count 30.
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