Today was a momentous day, and in honour of that I'm writing in purple, we harvested our very first crop from our very own allotment. Yes, we picked purple sprouting broccoli from Doug today. And bloody Delicious it was as well, especially when served with a blue cheese sauce.

We spent most of the morning watering our crops, due to the incredibly warm weather we've been experiencing recently. We also covered over the brasiccas, beans and alliums to hopefully prevent the butterflies and pigeons devastating all of our hard work.

I was looking back over some old photographs earlier today and it was amazing to see the tiny plug plants we had put in five and half months ago now either ready for harvesting as in the case of the broccoli or coming along really well like the cauliflowers and savoy cabbages.

One of the most amazing things we noticed this week was that the peas we were growing in the greenhouse had already started to set pods. We were advised to nip these out so as to encourage further growth on the plant.

It really is a fruitful time just now with the soft fruit bushes coming along very nicely and potatoes starting to shoot and showing signs of doing very well indeed. We've also got five chilli plants on Seedney the windowsill now from Seaspring seeds that were bought at River Cottage last weekend; they are two jalapenos, two habaneros and a Dorset naga. The naga tops the scales at a million scoville heat units and I'm not really sure what I'm going to do with it!

Anyway we will be back on Doug on Good Friday to do what we can before we head off on a well earned break down to West Bay.

Spring has sprung (for now)

Well it's been a while since I took responsibility for writing the blog so after a productive morning on the allotment I thought I would put fingers to keyboard and drone on for a while.

It was our first visit to Doug for a while where we could actually do any sort of sustained work. The past few weeks the ground has either been too frozen or in the case of last week too wet. I think if we had tried last week we would have ended up with an allotment that looked like a film set for one of the more gory scenes of War Horse.

However, this morning was a real shorts and t-shirts job and we got stuck into it. Between Mary and I we managed to plant out three more rows of potatoes (more Purple Majesty and some Pink Fir Apple), a new purple gooseberry that we picked up the other week that's sprouting well, some oregano for the herb patch along with some purple basil (though to be honest neither of us is holding out much hope for the basil) and a few more broad bean plants to replace those that got battered by the frosts earlier in the year. We've also been advised to get our pea plants into the ground so that's on the list for next week.

After the planting it was a case of some long overdue weeding and tidying up - that seems to be one of those jobs that never goes away. Why do weeds grow quicker and better than the plants you want to grow? Over to you boffins!

The established crops are all looking really good at the moment. All of our fruit canes and bushes are coming well into bud or are already in leaf. if everything was to fruit heavily there will be an awful lot of jam doing the rounds; you have been warned. All of the brassicas are starting to get nice and leafy; I've been really surprised how few we lost to insects and cold. Here's hoping our luck holds. The best surprise though was the shoots starting to come through on the purple sprouting broccoli. Suddenly I find myself looking forward to eating veg as we will have grown it!

All of the onions and garlic seem to be coming along nicely although Mary and I did stump ourselves this morning. We asked ourselves the question of "when do you harvest garlic?" and neither of us really had any idea, so some research required there or answers on the back of a postcard please!

Seedney continues to grow!

Again, not much to do on Doug.  We did notice quite an abundance of fox prints across various parts of the plot but no damage done.  The exciting bit was the notice to collect our seed potatoes. Before we decided to plant the Purple Majesty, we ordered some Maris Piper and Pink Fir Apple potatoes.   We just didn't realise how many came with our order so when we picked them up today it was a bit of a shock!  If we planted them all, along with the ones we already have, they'd probably take up half of the plot, which clearly isn't viable if we wish to grow anything else :)  We also now have a few of each variety chitting next to Seedney.  There is always a huge discussion amongst gardeners about whether or not to chit before planting.  We've decided to chit some and leave some just to see what happens.

Purple Majesty at the back with some good sprouts already, Pink Fir Apple in the front and Maris Piper to the right.

With such a glut of seed potatoes, Phil therefore thought we'd plant some in Nigel.  We still have the potato planters from previous years, so he has planted one set each of the Purple Majesty, Maris Piper and Pink Fir Apples.  We have nothing to lose and an extra crop of each to gain!  The cold frame in Nigel is still empty but will start to come into its' own very soon.  I had thought of calling it Chris (Martin) but decided that was a little too obtuse, even for me..... 

Nigel still looking a little neglected although he will start to get some tlc very soon.  The cold frame is next to the fence on the right and the potatoes are the three containers in the middle towards the back.

I spent most of my time today repotting and planting seeds.  Seedney's plants last week grew more than I had expected, some of them pretty much bolting.  As a result, I had to re-pot the broccoli, radish and turnip, which are now much more deeply seated in bigger pots.  The peas had also grown very nicely so they each have their own pot in which to develop.  In the place of those seedlings, I have now planted aubergine (Pinstripe - a lovely purple and white striped variety), cauliflower (Graffiti - a purple/pink variety), cabbage (Red Drumhead - a dark red small cabbage) and tomato (Marmande - a large variety which will be good for cooking and passatas).  In another set of modules, we now have a chocolate mint plant - sadly not as delicious as it sounds and merely decorative, marigolds - apparently good for deterring various vegetable pests, sweet peas - a rather fetching purple variety, poppies and echinacea.  All bar the marigolds will be going into Nigel to make him into more of a wildlife garden.

Seedney's new plants - the top left is all the flowers, bottom left the replanted radish, broccoli and turnip, bottom right the peas, middle right the two sets of tomatoes, aubergine, cauliflower and cabbage and behind them the chives and basil.

It's Potato Time!!!!

We made a very brief visit to Doug last weekend but there really wasn't much we could do.

Seedney!

Instead, I used the time to plant some seedlings on Doug's annexe (Seedney the Kitchen Windowsill).  Seedney had been used over winter for chive and basil seedlings, which are doing very nicely already.  They have now been joined by tomato (Black Cherry), pea (Meteor), turnip (Purple Top Milan), broccoli (Summer Purple) and radish (mixed salad).  More will be planted very soon.  Once they've grown a bit, we then have the cold frame sitting in Nigel in which they can harden off before being transported to Doug.

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This week was very different however.  This week was.....

Potato Planting Week!!!!

Last week, we bought what we thought would be two bags of a straw/manure mix.  When we got there this morning, five bags had been delivered (bonus!) Unfortunately, my back was a little sore so Phil gallantly did all the digging.  I managed to hoe inbetween all the brassicas and re-position the netting.  Phil set to and started to dig over the first part of the potato patch and then dug two deep trenches.  Alothough it's early for planting potatoes the guys at the allotment assure us that because of where we are, we can get away with planting early.  

Phil and his potatoes!

We have also lined those deep trenches with some of the manure mix and put the seed potatoes on top of that - helps to increase the warmth and extend the growing season.  We planted a row of Pentland Javelin first earlies and a row of our Purple Majesty main crop.  Lyta also helped by picking out some of the weeds and bits of rubbish.

Phil and Lyta discussing the veg!

The shop was open so we managed to get most of the seeds we need for the rest of the planting and I've ordered the three more unusual ones online. It's starting to get really exciting :) The next few weeks will probably be quiet again until we get to late February / early March when planting out can begin in earnest!  We don't want to plant all the potatoes now, and we have more seed potatoes being delivered later anyway.

New Year - it's going to start getting busy!

We've managed weekly visits to Doug over the Christmas period - there was a little wind damage but generally speaking we were lucky.   We did have to re-lay most of the ground cover fabric (no idea how that gets ripped up so often.)

It's still unseasonably mild so the plants are still thriving.  We decided to take up the cloches for a while - the plants do not need much protection while the weather stays above zero.  We can always put them out again if we think there will be some sustained frosts.

We had our compost bin delivered last week and it was great to finally get this built and put into place.  Lyta did a sterling job turning over the open soil and pulling up lots of weeds.  I re-buried some of the edges of the ground cover fabric to help prevent it being lifted up by weeds.  We've come to the conclusion that of the two types we have, the basic one is much better.  The other has a very loose weave to the fabric and frays too easily.  We then end up throwing away great lengths of  "string" - it gets everywhere!  Phil set to with the hoe and managed to clear two buckets full of weeds.  Everything is now looking very neat again - at least for a week or two!

We have been given some lovely seeds and plants for Christmas and have some spending money saved for our visit to River Cottage at the end of March (more plants will be purchased there....)  We just have a few more to buy and our planting schedule for the next three months should be all set to go.  

This is when it starts to get exciting....  

I also built the cold frame for Nigel today, which means that we can start planting seeds on the kitchen windowsill.  Once fully germinated the seedlings can now go out into Nigel before they are properly hardened off  and then transferred to Doug for growing.  By April, everything should then be in place.  Not long now :)

Forgot to mention...

.... the onions are not looking too bad but haven't grown as much as the garlic and shallots.  

We're going to leave it for the winter and plant some more in the spring.  If nothing else, it's best not to have everything growing all at once.  There are some other holes where some of the beans etc. haven't grown yet but again, we'll plant these in the spring with new seeds.  Hopefully this way we'll extend our crops further.

Well it sounds good in theory!!! :)

Not what we were expecting...

We had a brief visit to Doug last week and just pottered around.  As expected, the fleece had pretty much been trampled by a fox - they never have been good at disguising their footprints!!! So we lowered the fleece to ground level and pinned it back down.  Also did a bit of general weeding but otherwise not much needed doing.

This week was different....

We went down yesterday to check it out quickly as Phil was working today so it wouldn't be as easy to go.  What we found was not good.



Some not-so-nice people (probably kids but no proof either way except for the trainers being worn) had managed to destroy the cloche at the front of Doug and trample across much of the rest of him.  Most of the ground sheeting we had put down had also been ripped up.  Not sure where many of the pegs had gone, we found a few but certainly not all of them.  Our storage box had also been damaged, although not seriously.  We therefore made a quick trip to Homebase to buy more pegs and another cloche.

I went down on my bike this morning to sort it all out.  
In the end, I managed to repair much of the damaged cloche - one end is completely ruined but I was able to re-feed some of the wire supports back through the plastic and as a result was then able to re-position it over the purple sprouting broccoli.  The new cloche we bought has instead gone over the broad beans.  I re-laid the ground sheeting and put in a large selection of new pegs.  One of the neighbouring plot holders also loaned me some iron bars to help weight it down until he needs them back in the spring.  I did some extra weeding in and around all the rows so it's starting to look good again. All is not lost, it was just very annoying!

We're not sure if we'll have much time next weekend, so hopefully this week will be less eventful :)