Cage Fighting

I've finally started putting some time in down the allotment but I really need to do more.  I've had a spate of illness lately (bad cold, followed by a dodgy back) which has made the grime and toil of endless weeding somewhat less than enticing, so I'm really behind.

However, this has actually played to my advantage (for once!).  Because I've been late getting my potatoes into the ground and haven't yet planted out my climbing French Bean seedlings, it means they've not been hit by the late frosts that have occurred lately.  So score one for Team Jones!!

There is, sadly, no getting away from the fact that the weeds won't stop growing merely because I'm not there to rip them from the ground (and who can blame them?) so last week The Lovely Husband came along to do the strimming of the knee-high grass for me.  I can't get him to come along and do ordinary hoeing, or hand weeding, or watering, but the moment there's a whiff of petrol and a bit of manly machinery, you can't see him for dust!!  I am, though, very grateful.

So, the strimming has been done, in time for the annual inspection by the committee sometime in June.  This is where your plot is judged and if it's found wanting, you'll be escorted off the premises (sort of).  The arrival of the email reminding plotholders of the inspection usually triggers off a mass, slightly panicky, tidy up by everyone, and I'm just grateful I covered about a third of my plot with black material last winter so minimum weeding will be required.

I managed a few hours this week (but will have to put in more next week) during which time I, rather sadly, had to remove all the gorgeous blossom from the fruit trees that I planted last autumn.  This is, apparently, necessary so that that the trees can concentrate on putting all their energy into growing a decent root structure rather than into fruit in their first year.  Doing this means you get better, stronger trees and an improved crop in subsequent years.

Last autumn I planted a Victoria Plum, a Concorde Pear, an Egremont Russet eating apple and a Cooking apple (the variety of which I've forgotten).  The plum and pear didn't have any blossoms, but the two apples were covered in them and it seemed such a pity to remove them.

Blossoms in the bottom of the bucket

In autumn 2008 I planted an Apricot (which was a birthday gift from friends), which didn't produce any fruit last year and has no blossoms at present, so it remains to be seen if I get anything off it this year.  I also planted a Maynard Cherry which has been encrusted with flowers.  I left them all on and it looks like there'll be at least a few cherries this year - hooray!

Cherries forming, hopefully!

The rest of the fruit patch looks like it might be quite good this year:

Gooseberries forming - I think this is a Red variety

Raspberries - hard to make out, but all the pale grey blobs amongst the leaves are flower buds that, hopefully, will turn into fruit.

Blackcurrants just starting to form.

The strawberries are flowering like billy-o but I've not taken a picture of them because, frankly, I'm quite embarrassed about the VAST quantity of weeds growing there.  Ditto the blueberries.  The Loganberries, which were a monumental success last year, have been putting out runners like they want to take over the world, so I'm hoping for a bumper crop this year.

As for the veg side of things, I've taken the risk of planting out a handful of lettuce plants, covering them with a cloche as the nights are still cold.  They do look a bit sad but I have other seedlings coming along in the plastic-houses at home so if these don't make it, there will be others:

Some sad lettuce - Little Gem, Salad Bowl and Lollo Rossa

I've also put up my brassica cage. At the end of last year, the very lovely Grace (who lives in my street, grows magnificent cottage garden plants for sale in her back garden and has 5 cats) was given a Build-A-Ball cage system by a friend.  She tried it out, decided it wasn't for her and very kindly offered it to me.

Last year I was using bamboo canes with plastic bottles on top, with very fine mesh netting draped over the top to keep the blasted Cabbage White butterflies out.  This worked reasonably well but the canes tend to rot quickly or break easily in high winds or when the resident foxes jump on them(!), so this wasn't ideal.  I was aware of the Build-A-Ball system and thought it looked interesting but a bit pricey, so to be offered one for free.......

Not only did Grace give me the dark green balls with the holes in, but there was also the requisite aluminium poles to go with it that you normally have to buy separately.  I wanted to use last year's very fine mesh again and knew that it was a long thin shape, so had to build the cage to match (I could have made it squarer), and I was thrilled to discover that the finished cage size matched the mesh size exactly!!  Brilliant!  It went together fairly easily, some of the posts had to be cajoled into going into the holes and I had to fight to get them into the ground (it's dry as a bone at the moment so rock hard not far below the surface) but it's a fight I won, although not without bruises on my chin (don't ask....). 

Brassica cage without mesh...

...and with!

I then weeded it and planted into it the Calabrese seedlings you can see in the polystyrene tray in front of it.  (My germination rate with Calabrese seeds has been lamentable, but a local Garden Centre were selling trays of good sized seedlings half-price, so I bought one.)  But I'm thrilled with the cage.  I shall have to let Grace have some of my produce from it as she didn't want anything for the cage itself.

That's all for now.  So, until next time, I'll be continuing to sow seeds in my plastic-houses, pampering my cucumber seeds in the hope they'll germinate (picky blighters, they are) and weeding the plot.

Happy gardening!!

Mid-April update

Because I start off all my seedlings in the plastic-houses at home, I don't spend much time down at the allotment at this time of year, so that's why there's not been much in the way of updates.  All the work's happening at the end of my garden at home and, frankly, the allotment can just get on with it until I'm ready to start transplanting stuff down there.

I realise I'm making work for myself because, if I was sensible, I'd do a few hours per week just to keep the weeds down but, let's face it, I'm lazy as hell.  Which is a bit weird really, because I genuinely love it when I'm down there - it's just getting there in the first place that I find a bit tricky. A bit like going swimming.  Sort of.

Anyway, I went down yesterday, just to see what was going on but mostly because the PIGGIES HAVE ARRIVED!!!  Eli, our Steward, sent an email out saying that 3 piglets were now on one of the plots and we were all to be careful of the electric fence, etc.  This, of course, was enough to get me down there to check them out - I mean, who doesn't adore baby animals?

Sadly, though, they were hiding in their shelter when I turned up, camera in hand, so I'm afraid there's no pictures just yet, but don't despair, I won't be denied!

I had a quick chat with Eli about them as she was digging at the end of her plot.  She said that she had effectively knocked the community pig project on the head because there were too many objections from a handful of plotholders, but as the keeping of small livestock was allowed in the allotment regulations, one of the pro-pig plotholders had decided to go ahead and put some on his plot instead, as his own project.  Feathers have already been ruffled by this so it will be interesting to see how it pans out.  I have to say I don't object to anyone keeping or growing anything on their plot as long as it's within the regulations, so all power to Gary and his piggies.

My plot is looking very sorry for itself:

Very post-winter.  The half nearest the shed is semi-covered with black weed suppressant fabric, the uncovered side (nearest the greenhouse) is where the last of the cabbages and kale were, which got dug up as they had bolted.

The horizontal strip of black weed suppressant fabric (going across the middle of the picture) is where I've decided the potatoes are going to go this year, so after the picture was taken, I removed the fabric and used it to cover more of the ground near the shed.  I'm hoping The Lovely Husband will come and dig the trenches for me, like last year, as it's so much quicker.  This year I'm just growing maincrops - Desiree and International Kidney (aka Jersey Royals).  I've also got Sturon Giant onion sets to go in but I'm not sure where.  I'm sure I'll find a home for them.

The raspberries are putting out runners like billy-o, so I spent a good half an hour digging most of them up, and then decided it was time the last of my root crops should come out of the ground.

There were 2 medium sized and 2 giant parsnips:

I know from experience that the 2 largest would be very woody and unusable, so into the black dalek they went - the other 2 came home and will be going into Parsnip and Carrot Soup.  I also dug up some baby carrots that I sowed as late as I could last autumn, as an experiment, none of them are bigger than your thumb but I forgot to get a picture.  They're going into the soup as well.

Finally, there was the last of my Leeks:

I can't seem to get my leeks to grow very large.  This variety is Musselburgh which, as far as I know, is your bog-standard leek, but none of mine have ever grown thicker than my thumb (lots of thumbs in this post, for some reason....).  Still, they made a delicious Leek, Potato and Bacon Soup for lunch today.

Next post I promise I'll put up a picture of the seedlings in the plastic-houses, and give you a list of what they are, but everything (apart from the various lettuces) is a bit wee at the moment.

I'm cautiously optimistic that I might actually get some decent soft fruit this year.  Last year I put in about nine raspberries, a loganberry, a tayberry, three blackcurrants, 3 different varieties of gooseberry, 3 different varieties of blueberry and about 70 strawberry plants.  We had a lot of loganberries, quite a lot of strawberries and a handful of blueberries and raspberries.  The tayberry was a disaster and I'll probably dig it up this year.  Because you prune the blackcurrants, raspberries and gooseberries hard when you first plant them (to force them to put their energy into making roots rather than fruit), you don't get much, if anything at all, the first year.

This is now the second year and the blackcurrants are covered in little flower buds, each of which will, hopefully, turn into a blackcurrant:

If you click on the picture to make it bigger, you might be able to make them out.  All three plants look like this, and when I pruned them hard last year, I plunged the cuttings into pots and they've all taken as well, so I have an additional 8 plants to go in this autumn.

The loganberry, which was a surprise hit last year and highly prolific, is sprouting out all over the place and also putting out runners underground, in the manner of raspberries.  But I'm leaving these to grow as the berries were so fantastic last year I want as many as possible this year.

The gooseberries also have little flower buds starting - I did take a picture but it was horribly out of focus so I'm not showing you that.  Fingers crossed I actually get some berries later in the year and, if I do, I'll show you them then.

Last autumn I planted a small orchard at the top of my plot and I'm thrilled to say that they've all taken and are all starting to put out leaves.  Rather sadly though, come mid-May I have to remove all the blossoms from the apples, plum and pear trees so that, as with the berries, they can concentrate on growing roots rather than fruit, so 2011 will be the soonest I can hope to have those.

But I did put a cherry in a couple of  years ago and that, I'm thrilled to say, is absolutely encrusted with little flower buds, hopefully each of which will turn into a cherry:

Cherry Tree flower buds close up.

Pear, var. 'Concorde'.

Apple - I forget which of the two this is.  It's either the Egremont Russet eater or the Bountiful cooker.  Sorry, that's a bit rubbish, isn't it?  Must try harder...

I did take a picture of the Victoria Plum but, again, it was out of focus, so next time.

Anyway, that's the update for the moment - it's all go out there, isn't it?

Digging In

The weather is still being unaccountably glorious, and I've been spending my time at the allotment mostly weeding which is, frankly, not that thrilling to do never mind blog about! So be grateful I've spared you from the boredom of reading about yet more couch grass and aching hip bones.

I'm aware that it's been 10 days since my last posting so this is just a brief catch up really. I've decided that the Leeks have been in the ground long enough. Some of them have started to put up flower spikes which makes the centre of the leek weirdly solid when you cut into it. They've sort of been semi-successful. They didn't grow nearly as big as I wanted and have been in the ground almost a year which strikes me as being an unreasonable length of time but, for all their sins, I'm having another go this year and about 30 seedlings are looking long and spindly in the plastic-house. They can stay there for a bit longer yet, I'm in no hurry to plant them out - I've yet to decide where on the allotment they're going to go; the criteria is somewhere possibly not quite so shaded this time, where they can be left in peace for a very long time and where they're not going to interfere with any other planting.




My potatoes have been earthed up once and need to be done again. The row in the picture here are Maris's of some kind or another (Peer or Piper - can't remember which), but I do remember they're second earlies. The main crop, Desiree, are also about an inch or two above ground and should also be earthed up again. I expect I'll get round to it over the next week or so. The Maris's are immediately next to the right hand edge of the black plastic in the picture, and the Desirees are further over to the right, next to the border of the plot. And, yes, I did shove the hoe between the two rows after I took the picture so it's not currently as bad as it looks - promise!







The Broad Beans are doing very well indeed and (touch wood) don't seem to have been attacked by the blackfly yet, although this can only really be a matter of time. I'm growing more of them this year than last year as The Husband really likes them and I don't think I explored their full culinary potential last year.






The 400+ onions and garlic that were planted up on either side of winter are doing pretty well. I have to admit to having been very slack about weeding these guys - the picture shows where I've started doing the weeding at the top end of the rows but then lost the will to live. I intend to go back this afternoon and pick this up where I left off. Onions and garlic really REALLY object to sharing their beds with weeds and will sulkily not grow so well if there are any, so it's genuinely in my best interest to pull my finger (and the weeds) out. I'll have no-one to blame if I end up with nothing bigger than a spring onion if I don't.

The fruit patch is coming along nicely and I've been expanding it sideways (this just involves clearing more ground really, and is not that exciting to see so there's no pics). Not sure what I'm going to put in the newly cleared ground but it's always good to have some space. I fear that at least 4 of my raspberry canes haven't taken, which is a bit of a shame, and they'll have to replaced this autumn. The 46 strawberry plants have all got flowers on them so fingers crossed for a good crop this year. I've been pampering the Blueberries - not only are they each sitting in a pocket of ericaceous compost but they've also been fed with Azalea feed and are only watered with rainwater (tap water is too acidic - or is it alkali? can't remember). They've all got flowers on them but the early fruiting bush has the most - see?

What else? Oh yes, it was my birthday last month and some very good friends gave me an Apricot tree, which was lovely of them. Strictly speaking I'm not allowed to put full-size trees - or trees that will grow full-size - on the allotment, but I've got nowhere else to put this (I literally don't have the room in my garden at home). So I've decided to sneak this in, between the cherry tree and the fence at the end of the plot, and try and keep it pruned a bit so it doesn't get too large. I planted it yesterday and was a bit concerned to notice that, upon extracting it from its pot, it barely had any roots at all. I stuck it in the ground with some Growmore fertiliser anyway, and we'll just hope for the best. If it takes and starts to put out any leaves - at the moment it just looks like a bare stick - then I'll post some pictures.

I also applied for and received my free seeds from the BBC's Dig In campaign that they're currently running. Over a million packets of seeds were made available on a first-come first-served basis if you applied online or happened to be somewhere where the Dig In van was. In the envelope you get a packet each of Lollo Rossa lettuce, Butternut Squash, Gardener's Delight Tomatoes, Boltardy beetroot and Early Nantes carrots. I'm currently already growing Lollo Rossa lettuce and Boltardy beetroot, tomatoes won't work for me unless I have a greenhouse (which I don't) and, anyway, I'm experimenting with Vittoria ones, I grew Early Nantes carrots last year and they turned into comedy vegetables AND were eaten to death by carrot fly; for that reason this year I'm having a go with a variety called Resista which are meant to be resistant to carrot fly. So, in all honesty, I'm just having a go with the Butternut Squash seeds, to see what happens. Still, they were free - I may plant them up and give them away to friends, who knows?

So what have I learned?

I expect this will probably be my last post for 2008 as I really don't intend visiting the plopment much more this winter, once every 1-2 weeks is likely, so there won't be anything truly scintillating to tell you until next year, so I'll use this post as a roundup of what I've achieved this year and what I intend to do differently next year.

So, to start, the weather today is absolutely gorgeous - crystal clear heartbreakingly blue skies overhead, the slight smell of woodsmoke, cold enough to see your breath but not freezingly so - and what did we decide to do? That's right, along with most of the population of southern England, we went christmas shopping in Guildford. We were expecting it to be hell-on-wheels but, you know what, it wasn't. Can't really put my finger on why exactly. We decided to get into town early, as close to 9am as possible, even then expecting to see queues of cars trying to get into Sainsbury's car park but we more or less swooped in AND managed to park in The Husband's favourite area of the car park easily. We then gaily threw the diet to the wind and started off with coffee and warm chocolate croissants, enabling me to leave The Husband with a newspaper while I pottered around some nearby shops. 'This is all going far too easily' I thought, 'something's bound to go awry' but, today, Our Shopping Game Was Strong. Ninja warriors had nothing on us this morning - we were in and out of Marks & Spencer, TopShop, House of Fraser, Game and (less excitingly) Sainsburys as fast as a fat kid going for the last sandwich at a birthday party. We were done and home in under 2.5 hours. The rest can all be done online. Hooray!!!

Rather excitingly, I picked up my christmas present that my parents-in-law are going to give me yesterday. You might think that it would be pink, possibly fluffy, most definitely sparkly and you would be wrong. Girl's done got herself a Stihl FS38 Brushcutter! And, look, I even just found a picture of a girly using one (although that's not to say it isn't a desperately manly piece of kit - in case you've got one and you're a bloke and you feel I've just slurred your inherent butchness and manliness...) I think the picture's just to show that it's light and so simple to use that even (*snort*) a woman could do it! Still it made a VERY exciting sound when we fired it up at the store and I suspect I'll have to wrench it out of The Husband's hands if I want to use it myself - he had that definite gleam of "ooh, toy!" in his eye. It's a petrol-driven 2-stroke strimmer that I need to keep the edges and paths of the plopment under control. A cordless electric one just doesn't have enough oomph to be able to deal with allotment strimming so even though it's an expensive item, I had to have one. Thanks in advance, Desmond and Minnie.

So I went down to the plopment today, then, just to check that everything was still where I left it and to take some final pictures for the 2008 blog.

About 2 weeks ago (and I forgot to take pictures), my fruit tree and bushes arrived so The Husband and I spent a couple of hours planting them while the ground was still warm. There was:

1 x	Raspberry Autumn Bliss - 5 Canes
1 x	Cherry Maynard - 2 Year Bush BARE ROOT
1 x	Blueberry Patriot - 1 Litre Container
1 x	Raspberry Glen Prosen - 5 Canes
1 x	Strawberry Aromel Runners (10 plants)

3 x Blackcurrants Wellington XXX
2 x Gooseberry Langley Grange

I also moved the Raspberries that I'd planted out back in May this year as they were now in the wrong place, so I put them with the others.

First, then, I put all the Raspberries and Blackcurrants in two rows. They may be too close together but I'll have to deal with that next year. The Husband has said he'd construct some posts and wire next spring to tie the new growth to.

The cherry tree is a new self fertile dwarf dessert sweet cherry which should not reach any taller than 2 metres in height and requires no pruning. Strictly speaking it's a patio plant and is probably intended to be kept in a pot, but I'm not allowed to grow 'proper' trees at the site so dwarf varieties are the way to go. Picking is in early July so we'll see (a) if it works and (b) if I can get to the cherries before the birds.

The strawberries have now all gone in and don't really look like much in the ground so I've not bothered taking a picture of them. The three different varieties of blueberry are now planted in a row so fingers crossed they'll also work. The gooseberry bushes arrived a little late to plant in the allotment due to the recent very cold weather so I've put them in a large pot in a sunny sheltered place on my patio and they can stay there until next March.

As for everything else, my overwintering onions are doing fabulously - looks like there should be a good crop to come up before I put in the next lot in spring.

All the brassicas are thriving still, the sprouts and purple sprouting broccoli are still producing and the Savoy Cabbages are doing their thang - hopefully we'll have one (plus sprouts) for Christmas Dinner.

I'm also still harvesting Chard and I just love the effect of the sunlight shining through the Ruby Red Chard leaves.

Oh, and I've forgotten to tell you that the allotment site will be having communal chickens for the first time! The site secretary announced in the summer that the site was going to become part of the Community Chicken Project depending on how many people were willing to get involved. The Husband and I seriously thought about it for a very long time - I would so love to keep chickens - but doing anything by committee, with rotas for this and that, never works out. I mean, whose responsibility is it to take the chucks to the vet if/when they become ill? What happens if someone forgets to put them to bed at night and the foxes (and we have a lot of foxes) get them? What happens when they come to the end of their laying life? Does anyone get to eat them? There are just far too many potential problems with far too many people involved so, rather sadly, we decided joining in wasn't an option for us. I'd much rather have my own chickens with no-one else being involved. However this hasn't stopped me being rather excited by their eventual arrival and, to this end, a rather magnificent Chicken Palace is currently being constructed on site! I don't know how many hens are going to be installed but their run and henhouse is taking up the whole of a vacant half plot - you can see how big it's going to be in the picture - the framing will obviously eventually be covered with fox-proof wire/netting/whatever.

So - what have I learned?

Growing vegetables is not that difficult but there are different levels of work needed at different times of the year. Obviously I started the plot this year in February and it was just totally grassed over. Clearing the ground of the ordinary grass, the couch grass, the mare's tail and all the other weeds took a huge amount of hard, dirty, heavy work but I always knew that I would really only have to do this once; after that it's just maintenance, weeding and adding/digging in compost/manure as and when necessary. The first year is hard and more expensive than you can imagine unless you have the time to shop around and get second hand stuff like sheds and greenhouses and manure corrals, etc. I just wanted to get on with it but, as with the clearance, I knew I was only going to fork out ('fork out'! Geddit? Oh, please yourself....) once for all this stuff. The shed has been absolutely vital, not just for somewhere to put tools, etc., but also somewhere to shelter from the rain and to dry out onions too.

What vegetables worked this year?

All the brassicas were a revelation and so easy to grow - they'll definitely be coming back. The lettuce was very successful but I must do more successional sowing. 20 or so Cobra French Bean plants gave me a yield of over 40lbs that I ended up giving away. The Rainbow Chard has been an eye-opener. Potatoes have been very successful as have the onions and the sweetcorn. Broad beans, despite getting blackfly, grew well and The Husband loves them anyway. Basil and Coriander grew like weeds and I'll try drying them next time. Telegraph variety of cucumbers loved the outdoors weather this summer (although they're mostly a greenhouse type) and were juicy and crunchy. These I will all grow again next year.

What was less successful?

Tomatoes were hopeless - all succumbed to blight. Carrots, although extremely flavourful, grew so many extra limbs that preparation took forever. They also got hit by Carrot Fly. However I will try again next year with them as the flavour was so good, but they only get ONE MORE CHANCE. Parsnips had woody centres and, again, resembled octopuses. Sweet red peppers didn't do as well as I had hoped and probably need a greenhouse to be successful. These I will probably (bar the carrots) not grow again next year.

What would I do differently?

Not that much, in hindsight. Obviously there'll be some crop rotation next year and I think I'll grow the climbing French Beans up 3 or 4 teepees of canes dotted around the place rather than in a long line - the winds wreaked havoc with them this year. I'd very much like to save up my pennies next year and get a 6'x8' greenhouse and perhaps try again with the tomatoes in there, plus chillis and red peppers, but we'll have to see. That can always wait again for another time.
Whether I do potatoes again is a question I've not decided yet. Yes, they were very tasty and easy to grow but they do take up quite a lot of room. However, since S gave up the top half of the plopment and I took it over, space isn't quite so much of an issue. Dunno, I'll have to decide later. Also quite how the new fruit area will turn out is another unknown factor. But you'll have to come back next year to read what happens there!

Well, then, many thanks to those who've vicariously travelled with me along this path of discovery - here's to next year!

Happy Winter Solstice and New Year to you all!!!

Pictures, as promised

Further to yesterday's post, and as it is SUCH a beautiful day today, I dragged The Husband away from his comfy chair to come and take some photos at the plopment, so here they be (you can click on each picture to make it larger - and I apologise for the fact that I can't work out how to reduce the gap on the page between each section of pic & text...):


This is the existing brassica bed to which I've just added a few more red cabbage, spring cabbage and a dozen sprouting broccoli seedlings. They've been in a couple of days now and the pigeons haven't discovered them yet, so I'm hopeful that I won't need to put up netting.









This is the carrot bed. There are about 100 carrots in there. With a bit of luck I might actually get some that are proper carrot shaped rather than something that would amuse Esther Rantzen...












This is how the Dwarf Curly Kale is currently looking - lush and green, I think you'll agree!

















These are my Brussel Sprouts - I really am quite inordinately proud of just how well my brassicas have done, never having grown any of them before. Perhaps they just really like the soil and the conditions are right for them....









This is how the herb bed is looking. As I said in yesterday's posting, the Coriander and French Sorrel have both gone beserk. The Coriander plant turned into a bush that had to be staked and even then still fell over - it goes all the way out to the right hand edge of the picture. Underneath it is the French Sorrel which has also gone a bit mental. [You'll notice I've discovered how to label things on the pictures - classy, huh?]






This is where I've planted up the 200 onion sets and garlic cloves. Not very clear I know, but you can just make out at least one of the 3.5 rows. The birds had only pulled one of the garlic cloves out, which I was relieved about as I didn't relish having to replant them all again - the backs of my legs are still stiff from planting them the first time!












This is where the fruit is going to be planted, when all the bushes, etc., arrive. Two blueberry bushes are already in but they're hard to make out in the picture. I need to get more black plastic to cover the rest of the ground....









So then, a shot of the bottom half of the plopment, taken from beside the future fruit bed.













And a view taken the other way, from the shed looking up the plopment.














And finally, an action shot of me! Taken by The Husband pretending to be a papparazzo hiding behind the raspberry canes!

Damn - October already?

Oh, hey, look I KNOW I've not done an update since the beginning of September and I KNOW there's no pictures with this one but that's just the way it goes sometimes, doesn't it?!? I promise I'll take the camera next time (probably later on this week) and just take a whole bunch of pix.

First things first - just how mental is this weather? Just after I last posted it got cold, then we definitely did have an Indian Summer for about a coupla weeks which was most welcome, then it got a bit colder, and now it's raining but unseasonably warm!! Every time I go to the plopment I have to take a change of clothes because I don't know if it'll stay the same from one hour to the next....

Right then, to business. With the help of The Husband, we've managed to clear the beds that S dug while she was working the plot which meant, rather sadly I suppose, that I've had to dig out the 2 rhubarb plants she put in (mostly because I don't think I'm going to be growing rhubarb and, if I did, it wouldn't be where she'd planted them) and about a gazillion self-replicating strawberry plants (I AM going to be having a strawberry bed but, again, not where she'd put them and probably a different variety), so I'm starting with a clean slate. Also we took out about 10 pounds of Desiree potatoes! We ate the bigger ones but I have to say that I'm about to chuck out the little fiddly ones that are left because not only are we eating hers, but also all the ones that I planted, so we're swimming in spuds!

The top half of the plot is going to be mostly dedicated to fruit so, to this end, we've planted two different varieties of Blueberry bush - 'Jersey' and 'Duke' - one is early fruiting, the other later, and I have a 'Patriot' on order. I've no idea what acidity the soil is so we just played it safe, got 2 smallish (40 litre) bags of ericaceous compost, dug big holes, filled them with the compost then stuck a blueberry bush in each, watered them in and are hoping for the best.

I have many other things on order - 3 Blackcurrant bushes (Wellington XXX), 2 Gooseberry bushes (Langley Gage), 2 Raspberry varieties (Autumn Bliss and Glen Prosen), Strawberries (Aromel), and 1 dwarf Cherry tree (Maynard). I'm also looking into apples and pears but they need to be on very dwarfing root stock and we've not decided what varieties we want yet. I've decided against Redcurrants because we don't eat them now so god knows what we'd do with a bushfull of them.

Yesterday, while it was dry, I took the opportunity of planting 200 overwintering onion sets, consisting of 100 'Swift', 50 red 'Electric', and 50 yellow 'Shenshyu' varieties. I also put in cloves of Solent White and some other kind of garlic whose name I've forgotten.

Last week I cleared the Sweetcorn (as they've now finished) and weeded where the French Beans were (leaving their roots in the ground as they fix nitrogen into the soil) and put in 6 red cabbage, 4 spring cabbage and 12 sprouting broccoli seedlings for brassica fartiness next Spring. We've been eating the Curly Kale (in a fabulous pasta dish which includes bacon, anchovies and chilli, topped with grated fresh parmesan - yum!), and we've had one meal with the Brussels Sprouts, so it's all coming good. Although I do need to find a recipe that uses Chard - any ideas?

My coriander has gone beserk and I'm planning on doing something with the seeds, and the Sorrels are also clambering all over the place - think I'm going to have to thin them for next year. The peppers have done their darndest but none of them turned red. Oh well, I want to grow Chillies next year anyway so may have to rig up some kind of glass frame to go against the shed, into which peppers could go as well.

I think that's is for the time being. I'll put up piccies in the next few days...

I'm expanding!!

I can't believe that it's September already - where did the year go? And when's summer going to arrive? To be honest, I think we've had what little summer we're going to get back in May and June when it was really hot and sunny. The hottest day of the year was 11 May when The Husband and Da were putting up my shed down at the plopment. Oh well, not much we can do about it, perhaps that's the way our weather's going to be from now on - hot and sunny in late spring, and then damp and warm until winter starts hoving into view.

Yes, I'm expanding! Admittedly I've just had a 3 day Royal Visit from the venerable parents-in-law which always involves sitting around and eating a lot, but this year was entwined with sister-in-law's landmark birthday (i.e., one with an '0' at the end) including a big party with people attending from all over the country and, frankly, I'm feeling poisoned from all the food-that's-really-bad-for-you-but-tastes-SO-good plus alcohol that I've been forcing down my neck and now my clothes have mysteriously shrunk, but, more importantly for this blog, I've now taken over the top half of my plopment! Yay!

If you recall when I started posting all this drivel way back when, I told you that I had actually only taken on a half-sized allotment as an old girl, S, had been allocated the top half. Now the occasions when S and I visited at the same time where very few and far between but when we did happen to be there at the same time, she always said that she thought she'd taken on too much, that it was a lot of hard work and she felt a bit overwhelmed. Therefore I knew it would only really be a matter of time before she gave it up. With this in mind I decided to ask the Site Secretary a few weeks ago about the protocol for taking over when S decided she wanted to give up - could I just have it? Or would I have to go to the end of the waiting list? The Secretary said that as I was already working the lower half, then I could automatically have the top half, as and when S decided to jack it in. Annual rental is paid in Spring so I thought I'd have to wait until then but last Wednesday the secretary rang me to say that S had contacted her to say she was giving it up and that she'd taken everything off the plot and out of the ground that she wanted. The secretary said it was now all mine and that I wouldn't have to pay any extra until next Spring because S had already paid until then! So now I'm really excited and daunted at the same time. I can now plan for soft fruit (which I couldn't grow before as I had no room) including proper raspberry and strawberry beds, gooseberries, blueberries, (possibly) rhubarb, a small apple tree (strictly speaking I'm not allowed to plant trees on the plopment but I can't see that a small one, no more than 5 feet high say, can hurt...), Victoria plum tree, etc. But the site is overgrown - mostly with grass I have to say, but still overgrown and will need to be cleared properly, so I'm back to where I was, ground condition-wise, in February this year. I'll have an autumn and winter of digging and weeding ahead. The two pictures (you can click on all the pictures in the blog to make them bigger) show the full length of the plopment taken from the end of S's plot (my existing plot is the bottom half - you can see from where the french beans are growing up bamboo canes? I was growing stuff just in front of that, and then down to the shed - have I explained that properly? oh well, you get the idea hopefully!) I think what I'm going to have to do is clear as much of it as I can and just buy loads of black weed-suppressing plastic to cover the ground until spring. I'm also going to have to look into getting a petrol-driven strimmer as well - a rechargeable cordless one just doesn't have enough power or battery life to do the job, and I really can't manage a full size plot with a pair of garden shears - even doing the half plot was a pain.

So that's my Big News at the moment, but what's happening in the growing half? Sadly, as I suspected, my big, beautiful tomatoes have all contracted blight and have had to go on the bonfire (or will do when it dries out enough to burn stuff). You can't put them on the compost because the spores will survive, and they're too heavy to put in bin bags to take home to go to landfill so I'm going to have to burn them. Like most people, I enjoy a good bonfire but I'm extremely aware of how close to people's houses the allotments are and if I lived there I would be livid at bonfire smoke constantly drifting through my washing, so I'm going to have to time it properly. Actually, as a group of people, the allotmenteers at my site are pretty good about keeping bonfires to an absolute minimum.

I'm digging my way through my second early spuds, Maris Piper. The yield for these has been at least 2 or 3 times that of the Pentland Javelin, but they are prone to scab. Scab is unsightly but doesn't affect the eating quality of the potato once you've peeled them, so while it's a bit of a nuisance, scab's not really that much of a problem.

We've started eating the sweetcorn and it's fantastic! I've got 18 plants and they've all grown beautiful large cobs which we're currently eating for lunch! They're a variety called 'Applause' and they've been really successful.

Oh, hey, look, the sun's just come out - I think I'm going to have to sign off now and shoot out to do some digging, while I can.....

Plop for the Plopment!

Blimey! Can't quite believe it's June already - the year's half gone!!! In three weeks it'll be the solstice then it's all downhill to winter. It's only 205 days to Christmas, dagnabit.

Anyway, apologies for the delay in updating the blog - I've no excuses really, just haven't had that much to pontificate about although I've been working like a Trojan at the site.

As you can see, the makeshift brassica cage has now been properly constructed with net that fits and everyfink, plus I've also extended it and planted it up a bit more. It's now got the original Red Cabbage and Early Sprouts - which are looking very healthy indeed - and I've just added Late Sprouts, Broccoli and half the Kale (the rest aren't quite big enough to plant out yet). Within the next few weeks I'll extend it further and pop in the rest of the Kale and the Savoy Cabbage and that'll be it! I'm hoping that the holes in the netting will be small enough to at least put off any Cabbage White butterflies that decide to have a go at this tasty buffet. I've also found what are purported to be organic slug pellets so I've scattered those liberally around the plants. I'm sort of semi-organic-ish - I don't use fertiliser and pest control is limited to the plants that really get attacked, such as blackfly on the broad beans and slugs pretty much everywhere. However if nothing gets attacked, such as my onions, raspberries or climbing french beans, then I leave them well alone.

I've also finally got round to putting some lettuces in the ground. This year I'm growing Salad Bowl which is a loose-leaf, 'cut and come again' type of lettuce - you just take leaves as and when you need them. Seven have gone in so far and I've put a small polytunnel thing over the top of them until they get established. Hopefully this will keep the pigeons off 'em too. I've also just sown some Lollo Rossa (the red crinkly leaved lettuce) which will go out eventually too.

What is new at the site is that The Husband and I this past weekend built a Plop Corral! I found a company selling through Amazon who make wooden slatted compost/manure bins for the surprisingly reasonable price of £27 and, being a lazy sort and unwilling to trawl skips for unwanted pallets, I coughed up and it was delivered last Friday. It's pretty good - slots are pre-cut in some (fairly rough) planks which you just slot together and, voila, job's a good 'un. I now just have to start filling it up with horse manure from the stables where I go riding (small plug here - www.sariaharabians.com), leave it to rot down for the best part of a year and then start digging it into the ground next Spring. One downside is that it looks like I'll have to dismantle it in order to get the manure out but I don't mind. I also took delivery last week of a 330 litre compost converter. If you go to www.recyclenow.com/home_composting/ and enter your postcode, it'll tell you whether you're eligible for a half-price converter! It's a good deal - I paid £15 for the one in the picture and they're easily twice that, if not more, at garden centres. Unfortunately the little square door that covers the hole was missing when delivered but I'm following it up. So there we have it- Plop Corral and Companion Dalek!

Finally, then, this is how the plopment is looking at the moment - all is well and doing pretty much what it should. I've only lost one Sweetcorn and one Climbing French Bean plant so far, which is an acceptable level of collateral damage. I think the next thing I'll be doing is starting to dig the long side bed where the Leeks are eventually going to go - I may start this afternoon...watch this space!

Feels like home...

The weather report stated that the fabulous weather we've been having recently would break overnight and today in the south we'd wake up to heavy rain, hail and thunderstorms. Well, they got it partly right, we've had more in the way of light showers than a downpour but it does mean that I was right to take the opportunity to spend about 8 hours over the last two days at the plopment getting stuff into the ground before the rains came.

Tuesday I dug out the rows of invisible Rocket seedlings as I couldn't find them and replaced them with Spring Onion and Carrot seedlings. I don't hold out much hope for the Carrots as they've already been attacked by a snail in the plastic-house but I'm fed up of looking at them in there so into the ground they go. I also started to weed around the row of Second Early potatoes because the chickweed, couch grass, bindweed and mare's tail were coming back. I had hoped that walking on them would kill them off but all it did was flatten and harden the earth.

Yesterday (Wednesday) I decided I was going to put up the poles for the Climbing French Beans. For the past 6 or 7 years I've been growing French Beans in two huge round pots at home so I've never done the traditional, all in a line, pole arrangement before. Last week I'd bought a batch of 8 foot tall canes and was worried they were going to be too tall but the ground at the plopment is so soft they easily sank in about 1.5 feet or so. I tied them together and then added smaller ones through the top to stabilise it. There are ten canes in the ground but I currently have 12 plants so two had to double up. I've more coming on in the plastic-house so they can go in later. (I woke up this morning though and realised that I'd completely forgotten to put slug pellets around the bean plants! I'll have to pop out later on when it's dried up a bit and just hope they're still there and not in some snail's belly...)

But I've come to realise that two really quite major things have happened since Sunday - I think it's probably more of a matter of perception within me than what's been happening at the allotment but, even so. Let me try to explain: putting the shed up and being able to use it properly since Sunday has made a big difference - I now feel that I actually own the land, it's a space that properly belongs to me now. I have somewhere to store my things, where I can sit in the shade. It all feels more permanent somehow - before it was just a plot of land that didn't really mean anything even though I've been working it for the last 3 months. I almost felt like a bit of a fraud and I shouldn't really be there - the shed has made a statement, it claims ownership. It denotes that I'm going to be here for a long time and I'm serious about it. I built the shed (well, not me, but you know what I mean), I cultivate the land - I have a place now and it feels like home. When I was doing my various archaeology degrees I was always interested in the Archaeology of Landscape and how the ancient mind related to ownership of space/land, what they did with it and how it was demarcated. Perhaps I should put up a (fake) burial mound on my boundaries.....

Secondly, bizarrely, putting up the bean canes has turned the site into A Proper Allotment. It looks like a real, grown-up one now, not just the results of me fannying around in the dirt hoping to get things right and praying that I wasn't making an idiot of myself and that people weren't laughing at me for getting it wrong. I mean, check out the pictures - the top one here shows, from the bottom of the picture, my little Raspberry bed, then on the right are two rows of Broad Beans, the dark square above them are the newly-watered rows of Spring Onion and Carrot seedlings and above them are my four rows of Onion sets. The light green 'row' next to them all running the width of the plot is actually my row of First Early Potatoes (the plants are actually in the row between the two boards) - yes, I know I need to weed it. Then there's the (weeded) row of Second Early Potatoes running the width. Next to that you can see the bean canes and, lastly, from the canes to the pathway is where the Red Cabbage and Brussels Sprouts are. It looks good, it looks right and I did it all. Yes, you may call me Mrs Smug.

This picture, taking from a slightly different angle, shows the shed in use! It also, unfortunately, shows how much is still left of the plot to be dug, weeded and cultivated. I'm going to try and get it all done this year - I still have Broccoli, Kale, Savoy Cabbage, Parsnip, Lettuce and Sweetcorn to go in yet! - but I also realise it might just be too big a job and it'll have to wait until next year. The remaining seedlings will just have to find a spot in and around what's already been done! The picture actually gives a distorted image - there's quite a lot of ground left to do, probably as much as I've already dug. But, hey, it's stopped raining so I may be there later...