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!!

Don't Panic!!!

Two days after my last posting it was my birthday (I've posted about it in detail on my other, Mrs Jones, blog) and I had a very jolly time indeed, even though I had a slightly scratchy throat all day.

The next morning I woke up with a positively itchy throat and feeling like I was wearing an internal balaclava that weighed a ton.  "Dammit," I thought, "A cold".  But this, my friends, is no ordinary cold, this is the M&S of colds.  It's been going on a week, I've been coughing up my lungs all day every day until I have no lungs left.  I've been incredibly tired.  I must be so dehydrated from the amount of gunk pouring out of my nose (sorry to be so graphic, but there you are....). Everything is completely exhausting.  Hanging out the laundry requires me to have a sit down to recover for about half an hour, and going shopping will knock me back for half a day.

The bottom line is that I'm trying not to panic about the allotment.  I've still not managed to get my spuds in yet, and the grass will be knee-high by now and in desperate need of a good strimming.  I despair when I see how beautiful other people's plots are looking (like Ali's, for instance) when mine just looks, to all intents and purposes, abandoned.

Trouble is I'm just not well enough at the moment to do anything about it.  I could probably get down there and do a bit of light weeding but then I'd have to plonk myself down in my chair there to recover for twice as long as it took me to do the work. And it needs so much more than 'light weeding', now that the weather's warmed up and we've had a small amount of rain.  I've told myself that when I'm up to it I'm just going to have to invest a decent amount of time into knocking the plot into shape, but even if I'm feeling better soon, I'm not going to be able to get there until the end of next week as I'm off to visit the in-laws in South Wales from Sunday......

My stepdad has very kind said recently that he would give me a hand at the plot and I may just have to take him up on his offer.

A tail of three piggies....

P is for piggie

Digging the trenches for the potatoes is coming along quite shamefully slowly.  I manage to inveigle The Lovely Husband to come down to the allotment after lunch on Monday this week to help with some digging, with the proviso that we went to the pub afterwards - a plan!!

It was a beautiful day (as they have all been this week), and 2 hours of digging in the sunshine was rewarded with another couple of hours in a pub garden where I was eventually joined by my good friend C who brought her three kids with her - nothing like training them up from an early age!  All five of us then decided to head off to a local curry house for our evening meal.  I think we eventually rolled home at about 10.30pm.  Now THAT'S how a day should be spent.  I'm not sure why I'm sharing this on my allotment blog when it really belongs on my other, blathery, blog but they're both mine and I'll write about what I want.  See if I don't.

But at least the piggies had come out to lounge in the sun and rootle around in their enclosure, so I took the requisite photos:

Their enclosure

We stood there just watching them going about their snuffly, grunty business for ages - they were absolutely adorable.  I didn't like to think of their eventual fate.

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?

Quick catch up

Oh, look, I know I'm slack at doing updates here but, you know, that's the way I roll sometimes, homies....

I have, actually, managed to, like, do a few hours down the allotment over the last few days, yeah? *flicks hair in desultory manner* so you can stop getting all judgey on me 'cos stuff is being done although painfully slowly.

Mind you (serious point here), it's the start of the new digging season and having spent the last few months sat on our fat arses watching telly and eating chocolates in the warm (if we're sensible, that is), the last thing you want to do is rush outside, dig frantically for several hours, put your back out, swear a lot and vow never to go down the allotment again.  Take it easy, people.  An hour here, an hour there, build up to it.  Let's face it, you're never going to get the upper hand with the weeds, the buggers will always come back, unless you napalm them and the committee's not going to like that now, are they?

So I'm easing myself into it, and am concentrating on my fruit patch which has got very weedy indeed over the winter, and because I hadn't covered it with weed suppressing fabric, I've got a bit of a job on my hands.  I find the easiest way for me to dig and weed is actually to sit down on the ground - I don't get on with bending over all the time - and this works for me.  It also gets me very close to the earth (I mean physically, not in some dippy spiritual manner - I'm not a hippy, you know!) which means I was able to spot that my rather fabulously prolific Loganberry has put out runners underground that are just breaking through.  Loganberries were a complete revelation last year - a cross between blackberries and raspberries, I had about 5 times more fruit from a single Loganberry bush than the 8 or so raspberry bushes that it's growing beside.  Brilliant!

I've also planted a small rhubarb crown earlier this week, can't remember the variety, something-or-other Champagne.  The Lovely Husband is partial to rhubarb, and I don't mind it so am happy to find space for it.

That's the only thing I've planted out so far, but seedlings are starting to emerge in the plastic-houses at home.  So far there's leeks, spring onions, brussels sprouts, green curly kale, that black kale (cavallo nero?  is that it?  You know the one I mean, the one that grows more like an aspidistra and less like Side Show Bob), Little Gem, Salad Bowl and Lollo Rossa lettuce that have all come up.  Sown but yet to appear are beetroot and red cabbage.  I've also sown basil and coriander but it might be a bit early for them.  Oh yes, a couple of courgette seeds got sown this morning as well. I've got onion sets waiting to go in and the potatoes will go in very shortly.  I'm only growing two varieties of maincrop this year - red Desirees and the delightfully named International Kidney (which, if they were grown on Jersey would be Jersey Royals) - which don't need chitting (which only benefits first and second earlies).

I had a chat with the lovely Eli who has bravely taken on the mantle of site steward and she said that it's not been finalised about having pigs on the site yet and people have raised questions, such as what would happen if foot and mouth erupted again, and so on.  I must admit I'd completely forgotten about there being pigs on the site. I will probably not take part, for the same reasons that I decided not to take part in the chicken project.  I think sharing responsibility for looking after animals has the potential for being quite stressful, so I'd rather not get involved.  Plus I'm sure I'd get too fond of them to want to eat them at the end of the day.  But I'll go and make friendly oinking noises at them as I'm passing.

That's it for now, sorry for the lack of pictures, I forgot to take my camera but, frankly, there's not that much to see down there just now.

Hope you've all managed to get out now it seems the weather's cheering up a bit....

Spring is definitely on its way....

 

Today was sublimely gorgeous.  More than a little chilly in the shade but the sunshine was really warm and the sky was as blue as blue can be.  So I did what any sensible person would do and spent an hour down at the allotment.

Our allotment steward sends out a monthly email newsletter and March's edition arrived yesterday.  It seems, rather sadly, that the local yoof have been entering the site in the wee hours and doing whatever it is you would do at that time in the pitch black in the middle of winter (or, rather, early Spring).  The newsletter said some plots had been damaged so I thought I might as well trot along and just see if everything was hunky dory.

I was the only person there and the chickens were very excited to see me - they all rushed up to the fence of their enclosure in a great clucking flurry (be careful how you say that....) and I was rather saddened to have to tell them that I couldn't do anything for them.  They watched me with their accusatory beady eyes as I passed by and then they scuttled off when they realised I wasn't going to give them any food. Rather excitingly, it seems that because the chicken project has gone so well, there's talk of having pigs on site now as well!!

There has been a lot of activity at the site over the last few weeks.  The newbies have got all enthusiastic and come and dug everything over, and it all looks well-worked and anticipatory.  I couldn't see any obvious damage to anyone's plot and I was relieved, but not too surprised, to see that mine was untouched.  I don't have a padlock on my shed so that no-one has to break anything to get into it to see there's nothing to nick from it anyway.  I keep all my 'good' stuff (petrol-strimmer and petrol) at home and bring it when I need it.

Everything is still mostly dormant but there are some signs of emergence - my cherry tree has new buds on it:

 

Cherry Tree buds (it's a bit out of focus but I was having a few problems with the camera this morning - or it might have been my eyes!)

And as I was wandering around the site, I spotted this emerging rhubarb which looked like a heart:

The black weed suppressant fabric that I use a lot of had been blown around a bit so that took some straightening out and pinning down, and then I decided to tackle the Moving Of The Dalek.

The black Dalek compost maker bin thing is very slightly cone-shaped and has no base on it, so once it's filled to your satisfaction and the compost has started to be made at the bottom, there comes a time when you have to lift off the whole thing so that you can get to the compost more easily.  The little doors at the bottom don't really work very well - it's easier to shift the whole thing.  You then have to fork the top layer of stuff (which is the newest and unlikely to be rotted down very much) back into the dalek to form the new base layer.  You can then use the compost on the soil.  I forked a load into a trub and used it as a mulch on my raspberries, blackcurrants and loganberries.

That was about it down there for today.  I was out in the brilliant sunshine and sharp, fresh air for an hour and it felt fabulous.  More seeds got sown at home later on in the afternoon but before I left, I decided I had to take a picture of this particularly atmospheric shed on the site:

The sowing has started

Just a very brief update on the allotment scenario:

It's still too damn wet to do anything there properly so I've gone through my seed stash and decided what to grow this year, what I'm abivalent about and what not to bother with.  The 'not bothering with' list is the shortest  -

• swede (just won't grow in the soil properly), 
• tomatoes (blight every time so not bothering again), 
• sweetpeas (too many greenfly), 
• broad beans (ditto), 
• Swiss chard (grows well but pretty underwhelming flavour - pretty colours though, but no), 
• sweet peppers (until I get a proper glass greenhouse, these just don't work for me).

Ambivalent -

• Dwarf Yellow Beans (prolific but got dry and leathery very quickly), 
• Mange Tout/Sugar Snap Peas (I grew both intermingled but only liked the flavour of one - seemed a lot of effort for not too much reward), 
• Red Cabbage (rubbish yield this past season, not much better season before), 
• Garlic (grows well but we just don't use that much in cooking), 
• Onions (don't grow very large and cheap as chips in the shops - I know that's not the point but sometimes it's best to be realistic), 
• Broccoli (big plants for not many spears, plus mine flowered extremely quickly).  

Chances are I'll probably still grow all these anyway, as I have the space and the seeds so might as well....

Checking the packets to see what can be sown now, I've taken the risk and sown half a dozen little pots each with Leeks (Musselburgh), Spring Onions (White Lisbon), and three kinds of lettuce - red Lollo Rossa, green Salad Bowl and green Little Gem.  You're not supposed to sow any of these until March but I thought I'd experiment with them a bit early and pop them into one of the plastic-houses at the end of the garden.  No pictures I'm afraid as they're just too dull.  Some dark brown earth in paler brown pots stuck on a gently rusing shelf in a dilapidated plastic-house whose cover has gone brittle in the UV light over winter and split, now held together with brown plastic parcel tape. Not very Cath Kidston, I know, but at least it works!!!