by Philippa | Aug 11, 2013 | Allotment
I popped down for a few hours on Saturday while Neil was off playing cricket having been inspired by the Ashes. Apart from watering the greenhouses almost all of my time was spent harvesting goodies, which I can hardly complain about!
We got another massive punnet of blackcurrants. I just wish there was a quicker way of picking and getting rid of stems from them, it’s such slow going (and back breaking too!) but worth the bounty at the end of it.
I also took away a bulging carrier bag of broad beans, both trugs already full. I had thought it might be the last lot of broad beans but in fact there are still a lot on the second sowing of plants so we’ll have a few more bags to fill I bet! I came face to face with a large hairy caterpillar whilst picking the beans. Not sure what he will turn into but I bet it will be impressive given how fancy he looks now.
The plum tree has been stuffed with fruit for weeks now and this is the first time they have looked almost ripe. I gave a few a squeeze and found some almost fully ripe so I brought a handful home to ripen up in the fruit bowl. I will need lots of bags or buckets when the rest are ripe. And some tasty plum recipes!
As well as the first plums, I also brought home our first climbing French beans. Without doubt they are the best climbing beans we have ever grown. They are unblemished, a good size, straight. This is quite a surprise as we haven’t done anything different this year and when we planted them out they looked absolutely terrible for weeks and at one point looked like they had died! It was worth the wait and I’m looking forward to eating them and the rest we harvest.
I’m hoping that the same can be said for some of our brassicas as since last week something has given them a good going over. They are securely netted so it’s nothing larger than the small holes in that. Having spoken to Bob his look a bit worse for wear too and he thinks it might be caterpillars. Hopefully in a few weeks the caterpillars will have moved on and the plants will still have plenty of growing time, otherwise I don’t think a few of them will recover!
I took another trug full of courgettes home as they’ve really taken off. So while Neil had his cricket tea I made use of a couple of them cooking my own tea of courgette rarebit. A simple but tasty dish of gently fried courgettes, spring onions and garlic topped with a mixture of beaten egg, mustard and grated cheese with a sprinkling of breadcrumbs. A quick ten minutes in the oven and a lovely homegrown meal to enjoy!
by Philippa | Aug 6, 2013 | Allotment
We managed a couple of visits this week and while the change in the weather might be making others grumble, the rain has helped a lot. Most of the squash and brassicas have grown a fair bit and look much greener.
The plots were judged for the annual competition this week so it’s a good job we’d done a lot of weeding last time. While I doubt we’re in line for any prizes we can at least be proud of how both plots look, especially given everything else that we’ve had to do this year! The results will be announced at the summer show so watch this space. One area he thought some members needed to improve on was composting. It’s odd as we’ve composted right from the start and it seems so obviously helpful that its hard to see why people wouldn’t compost! Maybe they just need a bit more information about how to get started. On that theme, Neil gave the compost bays on plot 118 a good working over. There was quite a bit of couch grass in one of the bays that we’d stored manure in which he cleared and he managed to get a couple of barrows of compost out of the bays for spreading around.
Neil was very much getting jobs ticked off the list! He did some tidying of the back of plot 118 and so I put some chippings down to keep it looking neat. He repaired the back gate which had somehow come away from its concrete post. But the best job was building a new front gate! It had been made out of pallet pieces but over time the screws holding the fastenings in were coming loose in the wood as it was slowly disintegrating. In fact the whole latch had fallen off on Saturday meaning it couldn’t be locked. Cue a trip to buy some wood and hey presto we have a lovely new gate! He even managed to get a coat of green woodstain on it before the rain started on Sunday afternoon.
Meanwhile, I wasn’t exactly slacking! The garlic and the shallots have been looking ready for harvesting for a couple of weeks so I dug them up. The two varieties of garlic are noticeably different in size, with the Lautrec Wight bulbs being almost twice the size. While the Solent Wight has performed well for us previously I might be tempted to just go for one variety next season. I hung the bulbs upside down on the greenhouse staging to dry. Then we’ll be able to see if there are any likely prize winners this year! The shallots looked good. The average size of this banana style variety is much better than the round varieties and I think we’ll get a lot of use out of them as a result. I strung them up in the greenhouse again to dry them out before storing.
The strawberries that have been growing straight in the ground rather than in the beds on plot 118 have for the last year been looking a bit like they were on the way out. The crops from these are generally smaller and fewer in quantity. We’ve never really been sure of the variety as we inherited them but they are quite seedy too, definitely our poorest performers given how good the others are! So we decided to get rid of them and I dug them all out. We also started collecting some runners off the other strawberries so they can be transplanted later.
We had a successful batch of small but tasty carrots. Think the key is picking them quite early on, previously we’ve left them a bit longer and they have been holey as if they’ve been eaten by something! So we’ll pull some more up next week. Meanwhile we’ll have to be looking up some good plum recipes as it looks like there will be a bumper crop!
by Philippa | May 31, 2013 | Allotment
Phew what a scorcher! Or comparatively speaking given recent weeks. As we are at Neil’s half ironman triathlon this weekend I popped to the allotment today mainly to do some watering so things would be ok in our absence. However, the weather was glorious and I could find plenty of things to do so I ended up being there for a few hours. In fact there were so many things I wanted I get done I was jumping between jobs in what was probably a bit of a disorganised manner! Still I accomplished a fair few things.
I potted on the rest of the tomatoes that are going in the greenhouse on plot 97. This was really hot work as I had to lug the grow bags around emptying them into pots while temperatures reached 44c inside the greenhouse! In previous years we have fed our tomatoes, chillies and aubergines with Miracle Gro Organic liquid feed, adding it to the watering can once a week. When we did our B&Q run last weekend to stock up on grow bags and things we went to buy a couple of bottles of food only to find it is no longer available there. I’m sure it’s still stocked elsewhere but we don’t really have time to spare tracking it down! So we bought the only organic vegetable food option they had, the Miracle Gro dry feed. You add it to the compost, dig it through and water in. It reckons one application lasts 8 weeks. So we added that to the large pots we transplanted our tomatoes into and we’ll have to wait and see how it performs.
While in the greenhouses I realised there were a few other things that probably needed potting on or there was a risk they wouldn’t last until we had time to get to them. So I potted on the Brussels sprouts (hastings) and cauliflowers (snowball) and pit them straight out into the coldframe.
I pulled up some old sprouting broccoli and curly kale that was going to seed and dismantled the tunnel they were in. I also did some wedding of the larger weeds, so things looked much neater which is always my preferred way to leave things when we are away.
Some chippings had been delivered to the car park from the council. I put a couple of wheelbarrows over some patchy areas of plot 118 where you could see membrane peeping through. But I stopped after two as the chippings were largely green matter so it seemed a bit pointless to exert too much energy on it.
Having admired how far on some of Bob’s beetroot was and having only planted ours out a couple of weeks ago he revealed he had started his in the greenhouse as plugs. So instead of sowing more beetroot and chard straight outside on plot 118 I started some off in trays. Another plus is the neat lines we’ll have without inconsistent germination!
Lots of things are coming on in the sunshine. The grapevine has little grape buds on it and the plum tree looks like it will have a bumper crop after last years rest. The asparagus has produced seven spears of varying heights in the last week alone. I’m desperate to eat some this year but once again Neil says we have to wait! It doesn’t seem like it’s growing any thicker this year than last so I’m not sure what we are waiting for or what we could be doing to help it along, but oh well. I vote that if it doesn’t make big improvements next year we eat it and use the space for something else!
by Philippa | Aug 1, 2011 | Allotment
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…at least not until the woodstain has dried! After a flurry of visitors last weekend, we realised that having our guests sitting on upturned buckets and bits of slate balanced on things was not very hospitable! Neil made a cheeky request to his dad that we could do with a picnic table. Little did we expect that less than a week later he would be telephoning to say he had made one and would drop it off this weekend! It is an absolute triumph and so we wanted to give it a couple of coats of preservative while the weather was dry to make sure that it lasts for years and years. Thanks Geoff!
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The weekend was a strange mix of larger projects and little bits and pieces that needed doing. Neil’s main project, again taking advantage of the warm weather, was to start recycling all of the bricks that have been collected on the plot during various clean up jobs into a barbeque. Armed with a plan and a spirit level he set to work. Rustic was the term I think he applied after a few courses of bricks were down! He worked long and hard on Sunday and it is almost finished. We will hopefully be able to christen it before the summer is out!
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I did a fair few barrow runs of wood chippings. It seems like feast or famine with our deliveries of chippings, so it is always tempting to get as many barrows as you can while they are around as you never know when the next lot is coming! I put an extra layer over the border between plot 97 and Sharon’s plot as whilst it wasn’t too long ago that we did the first layer those chippings contained quite a bit of green matter which has since rotted down. I also added some to the back of plot 118 as it is useful for keeping on top of the weeds that are determined to poke their way through the membrane there.
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The Solent Wight garlic and both varieties of shallot were ready for harvesting. Both are good indicators of when they are ready to pull up as the stems start to yellow and collapse down onto the beds. After harvesting, I gave the soil a good dig over and incorporated some chicken manure to start adding back some nutrients. The shallots have done particularly well, although as we have previously noticed the red Pikant variety is much smaller and less reliable than the white Topper. We strung them in bunches using garden string to hang them in the greenhouse for them to fully dry out and develop their brown papery skins. We are hoping that there are some prize winners amongst them so we can go for the hat trick at the summer show!
I also pulled up most of our lettuces as they had mostly gone to seed in the hot weather over the last couple of weeks. I need to get planting some more salad leaves next week as we have ended up with a gap in the planting plan, partly explained by a batch of Lollo Rosso just not germinating when I sowed a couple of rows a few weeks back. Think the bed might have been too shaded by the raspberry canes and the trees, so will try them elsewhere, hopefully it’s not the seeds that have passed their best.
We took a varied basket of goodies home with us this weekend – peas, broad beans, a green cabbage, calabrese broccoli, the first of the courgettes, tomatoes and chillies and a really good first harvest from the plum tree. Also, two lovely bunches of flowers, sweetpeas and dahlias, which are so fragrant and colourful. Am sure the basket will be even more full next weekend!
by Philippa | Feb 22, 2009 | Allotment
Well this weekend (plus the bonus afternoon on Friday) has been jam packed and full of generous gestures. After moving the soil on Friday we wanted to make a start on a few little jobs that have been on the list of things to do for quite a while.
First on the list was planting the trees that were such a bargain from Aldi. Yesterday we realised that we were still in need of a few containers for our trees and also some to use as water butts. For some time we have been asking around friends and family and it just kept getting pushed further down the list. But having bought a plum and a cherry tree which needed planting asap this suddenly became a lot more pressing. We took a walk around the site to ask people where they got their containers from and we ended up with some very useful gifts! We got a big grey barrel for a water butt from Chris which had apparently enjoyed a previous life at the Robertson’s jam factory! He also donated a metal bin to match one that Bob kindly offered us which are perfect for the trees:
It took a surprising amount of time to fill two of them deep enough for planting! In fact, so much time that Neil was very productive in building some greenhouse staging. Neil’s dad provided lots of metal shelving which we adapted for the base and we bought 2m wooden batons to lay across the top.
Neil completed two sides and now only has one more to finish. We think that this will be sufficient for this year’s seedlings and one advantage of DIY staging is that we can take some or all of it down if we find we need more floor space for pots and growbags. We also added an old set of Ikea shelves that had been hanging around at Neil’s dad’s house since they were used in various university flats. I was a bit worried that all this activity in the greenhouse might have frightened Tammy off but she was around for most of the day and getting very friendly at times!
In order to catch up with Neil’s productivity I set about planting our garlic that arrived a couple of weeks ago. It comes in large bulbs which you have to break apart into cloves to plant just under the surface of the soil. Unfortunately for me whilst this again took some time to complete, all my efforts are now under 3-5cm of soil so not very visible-you will just have to trust me that there are now 30 cloves lined up between the canes waiting to grow into big juicy bulbs! Neil did some planting of his own on Friday as during our soil shovelling he found a lonely little unidentified bulb that is just sprouting a green tip. He rescued it and put it in our front border. We have a bet on as to what it might grow into. My money is on it being a crocus while Neil thinks it is a daffodil (as if!). We also put in a tangled cluster of strawberries that Debbie gave us-thanks Debs!
Finally, we popped to the store to buy some seed trays and some Jeyes fluid which we plan to disinfect the greenhouse with before sowing and Neil connected some spare drainpipe to the gifted water butt so after a few rainy Manchester days we will be able to water our fledgling plants without using the tap. All in all a good three days which has made it very hard to summon up sufficient enthusiasm for work on Monday morning!
Neil would like a special mention for the newly hung plot number which now adorns the gate. This was made out of a broken piece of pallet which Neil chiselled and scorched the number into. Very homely 🙂
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