Rain, rain, go away, Come again another day!

Seriously, I’m thinking of investing in some gills and fins. I don’t think we have enough time left to wait for evolution to catch up with the weather. Then again, this time last year we were ice locked and wondering if we were going back into a polar ice age! I must admit I would rather have the cold than the wet but the allotment seems to be coping with the rain ok.

        I decided to go and have a bimble around the allotment this morning to see what was happening and to do some tidying up. The first job when I got down there was to weed and turn over the soil at the end of the fruit bush bed. This is so that at the weekend we can transplant the gooseberry bushes so that they’re not blocked out by the jostaberry bush. As great as the josta is, it does tend to block out everything below it when it gets into leaf. It will also make it easier to harvest both the gooseberry and the jostaberry later in the year. Last year’s crop of goosegogs was good but I’m hoping this year’s will be even better now that the bushes are established, especially from the hinnomaki (red).

        After that it was down to some long overdue weeding. After a quick tidy up around the currant bushes, which weren’t too bad to be honest, it was time to move on to the main event – kale, leeks and parsnips.

        This was a job that we had been putting off for a while. I figured today was a good day to do the weeding as the ground was soft. Two buckets of weeds, a pair of very wet knees and a couple of mud caked hands later and the job was done. It was with immense satisfaction that I stood back, in the pouring rain (again), and surveyed the result of my labours.

        This means that at the weekend the only real weeding that will be left to do will be the onions and garlic (as promised, they will be receiving lots of extra love and attention). The additional bonus to doing the weeding now is that we don’t have to spend all Saturday morning listening to the incessant drone of the Moody Teen complaining about having to spend time on the allotment! A win, win situation all round!

The final thing I did before coming home was to have a quick check on the broad beans. They’re approximately 2 – 4” tall now and seem quite strong. Another few weeks and we may have to dispense with the cloches as they will be too tall to be covered!

Happy Gardening!

Happy New Year!

Well that’s Christmas and New Year done and dusted. This morning it was time to pop down the allotment and get a bit of maintenance done whilst there was a break (however brief) in the weather. I had driven past the other day and noticed that one of our cloches had been lifted up by the wind and when we got down there a second one had joined it.

        The only other damage if damage at all, was that our tool box had been blown over (again) and the lids off of our composters had been whisked away on to our neighbour’s plot; all easily rectified.

        We had received some pennies for Christmas and decided to use some of it to get some new tools. Our last set was from Wilko’s and whilst they got us going (and turned a fair amount of soil in the process) they weren’t exactly top quality. So this time we found some Draper tools online that had been reduced (got to love a bargain). They were all shiny and new and I didn’t want to get them muddy.

        Anyway, Mary and Lyta set to work reseating the cloches and making sure they were well bedded down to protect the broad bean shoots that seem

to be doing quite well so far. Not all of them have come up but then we didn’t expect them too. It will just be a result this year to actually get some to harvest without the blackfly killing them off. Hopefully by having planted them so early they will be ready before the blackfly arrive. We’ve also been advised to pinch the tops out as this seems to deter the little buggers as well.

        Whilst the ladies were busy at one end of the plot I set to work at the other end spreading the manure and straw to fertilise the potato patch. It

may be a dirty, smelly job but there is such a sense of satisfaction once it’s done that I really don’t mind doing it. Plus you have the added bonus of knowing that the soil will be perfect for growing awesome potatoes! This year we will once again be growing some new (new to us) varieties and some tried and tested. We will of course be doing Purple Majesty and hope we get a better crop than last year.

        The final note for the first blog of 2014 is to announce our new arrival! We are proud to say that the Elephant Garlic has finally started shooting! I must admit it was a bit touch and go there for a while and I didn’t think it was going to happen but they have finally peeked above the soil and will now be pampered and spoilt until harvesting time.

Happy New Year

Merry Christmas

Well the last of the leeks from our first batch were taken up at the weekend to go into a hamper for some friends along with some other bits and pieces from the allotment and some homemade treats. That means that once the flood is over and Noah has parked his Ark we can get back down to the serious work of covering the beds over ready for the winter slumber and replenishment of nutrients.

            We do still have leeks growing from the second batch we planted and a few of them are just about coming to the right size for eating. Hopefully between them, the remaining parsnips, the purple caulis, the oncoming sprouts, the kale and the few remaining carrots we will still be eating fresh veg for a while longer before we have to start raiding the stores in the freezer. We never set out to be, nor do we intend to be, self-sufficient but it is a wonderful feeling for six to nine months of the year to thumb your nose at the supermarket veg aisles each week.

            We have been offered a huge 10’ x 8’ greenhouse by a rather wonderful lady I went to school with and it was our intention to dismantle it, ship it in to Nigel, and hopefully start rebuilding it over the Christmas holidays. I think the weather has pretty much scuppered that idea; although we are still aiming to get it built before the spring. We’ve bought quite an assortment of tomatoes (heritage and heirloom varieties with black and purple flesh), tomatillos and peppers (both sweet and hot) for 2014 and having a greenhouse to grow them in would be the icing on the cake. It’s something that we’ve both really wanted for quite a long time.

            We’ve got our seeds already for 2014. As you would expect from us there are a few curios from golden beetroot to blue sweetcorn to multi coloured carrots. We’re also trying salsify, new for us but an old vegetable that has fallen out of vogue in modern times. I’ll let you know how we get on with it later next year.

            We had to reseat a cloche at the weekend which gave us a chance to check out the broad beans. I’m pleased to report that they’re coming on well. Hopefully because of the early planting we’ll beat the blackfly next year. The onions and garlic are coming on nicely as well, although the elephant garlic doesn’t appear to have germinated so I think we may have to buy a couple of extra cloves soon and try with them rather than planting from what we had grown.

            Well that’s all the news for now. I’m sure if the weather abates we’ll be spending a few hours on the allotment over the holidays so maybe more soon.

In the meantime Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

Winter's here!

OK, so the whole Bahrain thing was a complete disaster! The job wasn't exactly as advertised and neither Mary or I were prepared for just how much we would hate being apart. The final straw that broke the camels' back (pun intended) was that there was nowhere for me to grow any seeds! What kind of backward bloody country is that?

Anyway, I'm home now and back on the allotment! Mary had been down and done some tidying up in the couple of weeks I was away. I went down today to just do a little bit of the heavy lifting work that needed doing. We needed to cover over the old potato patch with manure for the Winter to replenish the soil ready for Spring planting. Six bags of horse manure later and the job was done.

We'll just leave that as it is now over the Winter and then give it a good digging over in the Spring ready to get such novelties as blue sweetcorn!

We'll need to order some more manure soon. Once the last few leeks of this year are up we'll be digging that extended bed over and giving that a Winter covering of poo as well ready to turn it in to next years potato bed.

So the only jobs that really remain for this winter now are some pruning of the fruit bushes just to give them a little bit of a tidy up (we were given some excellent advise on this - don't worry about pruning. Just tidy them up a bit and they'll be fine. My kind of gardening), staying on top of the weeding (how come they keep bloody growing over the Winter) and trying to sort out a greenhouse so that we have a bit more luck with tomatoes and chillies next year.

Just when you have everything organised!

So just when you think you've got everything organised something comes along and turns all of your plans upside down.

After Mary and I had spent a very happy couple of hours trolling through different sorts of seeds and making our selections and getting our allotment almost ready for Spring planting I went and got a new job............in Bahrain!

Now Mary will be the sole guardian of the veg patch for the next year. Don't get me wrong, I am thrilled to be back in work if for no other reasons than my health and for the sense of self respect it brings. The major downside is that I will be leaving Mary and Lyta behind and will be missing out on a year on the allotment with all of the highs and lows that that brings. 

My plan is to now extend our growing area from Nigel the Garden and Dugless the Allotment to whatever I can do in Bahrain (name to follow). I'm planning on growing some tomatoes, tomatillos and peppers; might as well make the most of the heat and sunshine!

Mary and I spent some time last weekend planting broad beans, 84 in total, to spend the winter under cloches in well dug and manured soil. Hopefully we will have a better harvest than we did this year after we lost our entire crop to blackfly.

My (possibly) final act on the allotment was this morning. I spent an hour extending one area of our plot to make next years potato patch.

Leeks had been planted in it previously and a few remain to be taken up. I cleared the weeds out, turned it over and then dug in some straw.

All that Mary has to do before Winter sets in (with Lyta's help) is spread some manure on the empty beds and then sheet them over for a long slumber ready for the spring and the soil warming up.

I'll let you all know what the growing in Bahrain is like.

Happy Planting

 

Getting Ready For Winter!

Well it's been a while, but since I have some time on my hands at the minute I thought I would update the blog with what's been happening on the allotment recently.

We managed to harvest most of everything we planted and were rewarded with some pretty good crops. We still have parsnips, beetroot and kale that we are picking as we need them. Everything else has been taken up and stored, ready to see us through the winter. The only major disaster we had this year was our broad beans. They got absolutely smothered in blackfly and we lost the lot.

We've already started planting for the New Year. We have brassicas coming along and the brussels are already showing little sprouts.

Hopefully they'll be at a decent size come Christmas. I have to admit they're not my favourite vegetable but it wouldn't be Christmas without them. Plus we'll have the satisfaction of knowing that all the veg we'll be eating has been grown by us; move over Tom and Barbara - Phil and Mary are here! We've also got our alliums in the ground (red & white onions, shallots and garlic) and they are coming along brilliantly. The only other things to plant before winter sets in are the broad beans (hopefully we'll do better than this year). I've dug the bed over and left it to settle. It's covered it in well rotted-straw so I can dig it in on Friday and then get the beans in and covered with cloches and leave them for the winter.

I had a good couple of hours sorting out our last compost heap this morning. The guy we inherited our plot from took excellent care of the soil, keeping it well fertilised and manured so that it's lovely and rich. However, he wasn't one for tidying! In and around his "compost heap" and plot there were iron bars, asphalt sheeting, bits of old wood, rocks, plastic bags, glass bottles and assorted detritus!

After a couple of hours of picking, digging, pulling and stomping I managed to fill six rubble sacks with garbage ready for taking to the dump. We do have a great clear platform to start another compost heap if we need it!

One of the other exciting things Mary and I did this week was order our seeds ready for next year. We found a new site that has great heritage and heirloom seeds at fantastic prices.

We've ordered a pretty good cross section of seeds, but of course being us there are a few curios that we decided to get - black tomatoes, golden beetroot, purple tomatillos and my absolute favourite...........BLUE sweetcorn!

Well, that's it for now. I'll let you know how things turn out.

Happy gardening!

Loving the sun!

After such a long winter, to have  stretch of sunny days like this is quite a treat.  However, the weeds obviously like it even more than us because they are growing much faster than the crops we actually want to grow!!!!

We took advantage of a weekend of sun to spend as much time in Doug and Nigel as we could, with some fantastic results....

New leeks next to the beans

The main task in Doug was weeding.  Although we've managed to cover a lot of the plot with straw, there's still a few areas which are open and the weed coverage in these was phenomenal.  Plus, even the straw areas had comfrey appearing in abundance - don't get us wrong, comfrey is an amazing herb with all sorts of uses but when it tries to overtake the plot it's a little frustrating!  While I set to starting to weed in amongst the beans / peas / beetroot, parsnip and carrots, Phil managed to get much of the grassy path areas under control and watered the whole plot using dozens of trips to the water butt.  The beans and peas are growing well, as is the beetroot.  The parsnip is patchy but there are some shoots showing through and out of  a whole row of carrot - approximately 300 seeds - we have a grand sum of 5 shoots!  We are fast thinking that carrot is just not something we will ever grow!  Between us we also manged to get some chicken wire up to support the peas.  We did decide to try out tomatoes again (last year was such a wash out) so bought some plug plants from the allotment shop - three plum tomato and three standard ones - to see how they grow in Doug (more in Nigel later.)  Our greatest achievement was the planting of 60 leek plug plants - very exciting - a mixture of two types of leek which should (hopefully) provide us with some delicious additions to our winter stews. Nom Nom Nom!!!

Background fruit bushes and foreground potatoes

The soft fruit is starting to look very impressive.  If everything currently in flower or with baby fruit on actually comes to fruition we are going to have a very jammy year (pun intended)!!!  All three strawberry patches are in full bloom and have a few small fruit appearing in places.  The currant bushes are covered in small berries, as are the jostaberry (a huge bush we inherited) and the gooseberry.  The raspberries should come soon as well.  We've now had our third harvest from the huge patch of rhubarb and there's definitely more to come.  We can now recommend vanilla ice cream topped with warm, stewed home-grown rhubarb on top :P

Onions, garlic and broad beans

We are getting very excited about the onions and garlic, especially the elephant garlic which is now too big to grasp with just one hand.  Although everything is a few weeks behind this year, due to the late spring etc. we think some of the garlic will be ready to harvest almost on time.  We might leave the onions a bit longer but it's getting very hard to resist pulling any of it up to have a look :) 

Nigel is now very much a part of our crop-growing efforts - it's so wonderful to finally have a proper garden in which we can grow various crops and flowers without the fear of them being demolished by people sharing the garden.  Freya and Sophie also seem to like languishing in the shade of a chair and for us, just being able to walk out in the garden at any time of day is wonderful.  All we need now is a table and we could be eating out there too.   There was a lot of weeding to be done here too this weekend but the beds now look a lot clearer.  We nearly lost our sweet pea plants over the previous weekend but I've planted them out now to see if they can recover, including three which will hopefully climb the renovated shelf end from work which I painted to act as a trellis.  The bedding plants are beginning to flower with varying success - at least the pansies are looking good!  

Tomatoes and carrots in the growbags

We've found that now the sycamore tree next door is in leaf, the areas of Nigel we thought would get good sun aren't quite that good.  We've therefore re-assessed the area for growbags and put them up against the fence instead.  Our own-grown tomato plants weren't growing, or haven't grown much in the past few weeks so we decided to put them straight into the growbags as small plants instead of waiting for them to get to full strength first.  We now therefore have 15 assorted tomato plants (they came as a mixed set so until they mature and start to fruit, we're not sure what they will be.)  We've also experimented with another growbag and turned it on its' side to see if we can grow carrots in it.  Since we don't have any luck with carrots elsewhere, anything has got to be worth a try!  We've also got another growbag for spring onion, lettuce and radish so we have a small supply for summer salads.  Since three out of the four gherkin plants died, I've also put more seeds into the raised bed in the hope that they'll germinate quickly.  The courgette plants have each produced flowers now so we're hoping they'll flourish.  The pumpkin is growing but is yet to flower.

The coldframe

The cold frame now has a brand new set of seeds alongside the brassica plugs we've been nurturing for a few weeks.  We have two more coloured varieties of cauliflower almost ready to plant out, along with the red sprouts.  They have been joined by further seeds for sweet peas, sweetcorn and broccoli (two types of the latter with one due for harvest later this year and the other for after Christmas.)

Herbs and our new Acer tree

Our potatoes are growing well.  We're hoping the new potatoes in the border will be ready in about a month, with the two lots in tubs being ready a month or so after that.  Most of them took a while to come through but now they have, we've been having to re-cover them after only a few days.  The herbs are all looking great in their respective tubs but the catmint continues to take a bashing from ours and the other local cats - we're still not sure how long it will be before we get complaints from the neighbours about their cats coming home stoned from too much catmint!


Long may the sun continue :)