by Neil Wilkinson | Mar 16, 2011 | Allotment
Well, that was a pretty healthy break from blog writing wasn’t it? In our defence we’ve been pretty busy with wedding things as well December was a write off due to the weather. Well almost a write off… we got our new shed in December and decided to put it up there and then with some help from Bob. Doesn’t sound much I suppose, putting up a shed, well the temperature didn’t get above -6 C and there was a good 4-5″ of snow. Still, at least the sun was out!
We haven’t done that much else over the winter really. The greenhouse we bought is still sat at the back of the plot, but we did put in a new apple tree at he back of the new plot. That makes three fruit trees in this part which I’m pretty sure equals an fruit orchard.
Things have started up again lately (well as much as they can when you have a wedding to plan). We’ve dug over quite a lot of the new plot, it’s quite nice how easy it is to dig after having things grown in it this year. The jury is still out on the effectiveness of the green manure but the roots do seem to have broken up the soil a bit..
Elsewhere we have started planting the new crops for the year – the garlic and shallots are in and Pilla started sowing some flowers in the greenhouse this weekend whilst I was away.
Roll on the summer!
by Neil Wilkinson | Sep 20, 2009 | Allotment
One of the amazing things about having the allotment is seeing how much it changed and burst into life over the summer. Well if summer was a 100m sprint autumn is more like a gentle stroll through the park. The allotment is slowly putting on it’s winter coat in the form of lots of rotted manure on the beds, followed by the sowing of some green manure.
The idea with green manure is that you plant it whenever you have bare soil. It quickly grows and you either dig it in straight away to provide some extra humus to the soil or you can leave it to help smother weeds and prevent rain from leaching away the good stuff in your soil over winter. We are leaving ours in over winter, which has the added bonus of giving our plot some much needed colour over winter.
We didn’t really have much to do today. We harvested some beetroot for tea (three types!) and a few peppers, tomatoes and chillies, tied up the apple tree (thanks to Pilla’s old tights!), fed the greenhouse plants and that was about it. Home in time to watch the derby.
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 Philippa | Mar 1, 2009 | Allotment
Today being the 1st of March it was appropriate that there was a definite feeling of spring in the air at the allotment. Quite a few people were there working their plots ready for planting and it was warm enough to sit outside in the sunshine.
We had yet more generosity this afternoon, particularly from Bob who gave us some wallflowers for our front and a couple of rhubarb crowns. The flowers grow quite tall so we have put them at each end of the front soil so that we can plant other flowers in between. As part of our seed order we included some flowers, so we will be putting sweet peas, dahlias and sunflowers all about the plot to bring some colour to the place other than the predominant brown!
Thanks to Bob we now have bed that is flourishing with rhubarb. One of the crowns he gave us was one of the biggest he (and us) had ever seen and this was even after he had left some of the roots in his plot! We put it in our soil just as it came and so we will probably get fruit off it this year. This is good news as all of my recent cookery magazines have been full of rhubarb recipes and so the thought of waiting another year to harvest our own was too much to bear! As an interesting aside, when Bob dug up the giant crown I noticed a cluster of wet looking spheres on one of the roots. Now, I guessed that they were eggs of some sort, but I wasn’t sure what they would grow into. I saved one for a photo as a bit of a quiz for you readers:
Drumroll please…….it is a slug egg! Now maybe it is just my ignorance, or perhaps I have never sufficiently pondered the origins of a slug before, but I genuinely did not realise that slugs produced eggs. I am not sure where I thought they came from. But now I know. It just shows that every day at the allotment is a lesson in something or other.
Whilst I was having the nature lesson from Bob, Neil was busy with the staging. He had managed a visit to the allotment yesterday so he was able to complete the staging this afternoon (even with a slightly earlier finish to allow for football watching). And very beautiful it is too. Note the slight gap on the bottom right hand side to allow Tammy continued access to what has become her sunspot.
I got on with planting the shallots which we pictured about a month ago. Advice dictates that they should be planted between mid to late February and late March so we had held off putting them in for a few weeks. But now that March has arrived, along with the sun, the time was right. Plus, a couple had started to sprout or go a bit soft so we didn’t want them to spoil. I had a bit of a dilemma, as our book recommended that they should be planted with their tips at the top of the soil but their label said that half of the bulb should be proud of the soil surface. Our expert Bob had gone home for the day so the decision was left to me. I decided to follow the book’s advice as it didn’t look quite right having so much of the bulb on top of the soil and I was worried that this might leave them vulnerable. Time will tell whether I made the right choice! I labelled the shallots, and everything else we have planted thus far, with a little wooden lolly stick which includes the variety for future reference.
The rest of my afternoon comprised of planting our apple and fig trees which arrived mid week. The apple tree is a Braeburn variety and as well as putting in a sturdy stake, we also followed a handy tip and sunk a piece of spare drainpipe just next to the tree. This has a few holes drilled in the bottom so that we can water down the pipe to get directly to the roots. The fig tree is a Violetta and didn’t really have an allocated spot. We knew it was going into a container of sorts but we didn’t have any to hand other than our wastepaper bins which are too small and the large black bins which looked too rubbishy! So Neil removed the top part of the bin until it looked a bit more like a container. This was not without incident however. In his excitement, Neil managed to cut himself with his fancy (and sharp) new saw. No photos of the resulting injury but there was plenty of blood which dripped all over the place. Not sure if that is a good fertiliser?
This signalled a good time to stop for the day. The next big job will be the cleaning of the inside of the greenhouse, a daunting task that we can put off no longer. Especially as our seed order may arrive in the next week or two. Time is ticking on!
by Neil Wilkinson | Feb 20, 2009 | Allotment
Some days at the allotment your jobs are well defined. Like today. Today was all about:
Soil. 4 Tonnes of it. We had to move it from here:
The entrance (this is 4 tonnes. It’s a fun game to imagine how big a pile the first 15 tonnes was). To here:
The plot. It was hard work, but we had Bob (allotment hero – no picture!) helping. After a couple hours we had it done, and felt like this:
Delighted. We still had to make it even and neaten up the plot, which now looks like:
Pretty. I’m sure you’ll agree. So we now have 13 raised beds and one little square bit for an apple tree. It was a much better way to spend an afternoon than being sat at my desk! We had a bit of a bonus on the way home too, in the form of:
Aldi. They had fruit trees on special offer – we picked up one cherry tree and one plum tree for the princely sum of £4 each. Bargain!
In other news Philippa wonders if we are allotmenters or allotmenteers. I think I’m leaning towards the latter.
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