Mid August Allotment Update

A quick update on how things are doing at the allotment.

About four barrow-loads to go

The muck pile has now finally been moved off the roadway.

There was about 10 tons in total, and the original pile was 7 foot high and about twelve foot across.

When I first started to move it, it felt like someone was coming in at night and dumping more on top, but what a great feeling to clear it completely.

Unfortunately we have changed our minds as to where on the plot it should have been put, so quite a lot will have to be moved, but not until the pumpkins have come out in October/November.

Jacl O'Lantern

Talking of pumpkins, the vines they are putting out are doing really well, but I am concerned about their root system.

Len, a plot neighbour, told me last night that he had watered them both for me through the day as they had both 'flopped' and were looking really distressed.

I had noticed that on the Mammoth when I had arrived so had given it some more water as well.

Mammoth

We checked the manure pile around the plants and it seemed to be quite moist, but the roots don't appear to be getting deep enough to take advantage of it.

I gave them both half a bucket-full of water each, which perked them up no end.  I will have to keep an eye on them over the next few weeks, especially if we get a late warm patch.

Female flower on the Mammoth

On the plus side, the Mammoth has started to put out female flowers.  None have blossomed as yet, but as the males are still waiting too that suits me fine right now.

The French Beans and Peas are both doing well and climbing their supporting canes.  No fruit on the beans as yet, but there are three pods on the peas.

I was sold the French beans as climbers rather than bush varieties, but only one appears to have the necessary tendrils, so I am not too sure right now.

Potatoes flourishing




The potatoes are still growing strongly. 

I will need to earth them up more very soon, but I am struggling to keep the soil around the stems as it keeps washing away, either from rain or my watering.  I shall have to ask for a bit of advice from the Vine forum and also the old hands on the allotment.

A Clean Pond

The pond I inherited has miraculously cleaned up overnight.

Six weeks ago it was choked with duckweed and filled with bits of old wood.  We cleared it out, but the water was very murky and you really couldn't see anything at all.

I checked it again last weekend and the water has become almost crystal clear so you can see the small colony of newts in there when they come out from the cover of the weeds.  Wonderful.

Five of the six raised beds have been filled with manure and left to settle.

The remaining bed is being left for now as it is still too wet.

The plan is to dig a drainage channel through the orchard at the bottom of the allotment in the hope that it allows some of the water to flow away from my plot.

Once that is done I can start to set out the fruit and herbs area, and also the patio area around the pond itself.

More Savoy Cabbages

Step Dad Ken and I have had a little bet on whose cabbages will be best this year.

I have planted three in the raised 'lasagne' method bed, whilst he has a further 11 in the double dug bed next door.

Mine have been put into a square foot gardening grid whilst his are in traditional rows.

We will see how they all grow, and compare at harvest time.

Waiting to go in

I have loads more plants just waiting to go in - plenty at the plot and even more back at home.

I need to get the third bed up and running as soon as possible to accomodate them all.  This may take some time, however, as I have decided to riddle the soil to remove as much of the weed roots as I can before refilling.

30 minutes of crumbling and sorting provided about a spade-full of soil, so I have ordered a sieve from the internet which should fit over the barrow and speed things up quite a bit - I hope.

And then there were six ......

Another long day at the plot again this Saturday - I was on at 6.30am to put the frame together that will eventually hold the netting needed to keep the cabbage whites and pigeons off my brassicas.

A quick check on the plants I had transplanted out earlier this week revealed no slug damage at all to anything - a triumph for slug pellets.



Jack O'Lantern

Both the pumpkins have finally started to put out a vine - the Jack O'Lantern was doing well, but the Mammoth has nearly doubled in size since it was planted out and has what appear to be female fruit forming already.


Mammoth



I may have to pinch these out as they are far too close to the main stem, but I may just wait and see first....

When I planted the courgettes on Thursday evening neither had anything other than leaves, but this morning both have flower buds which I am hoping will open tomorrow.

The French Beans are doing well, with a few flowers and the peas have already got two pods forming.

Hard at work - One of them at least

I went off-site for breakfast about 8am, but was back again for around 10.30am with both step dad Ken and son Will, and we all stayed there until 6pm.

We soon had the frame for the third bed made as all that was missing was the long sides.

Part dug third bed

This bed was installed alongside the existing two and me and Will started to dig it out while Ken continued cutting the rest of the timber to make more beds.

You can see the netting frame that I had made to the left of the picture.


Part way through the afternoon Ken was given some more produce from one of my friendly plot neighbours, Diane, who came across with a handful of beetroot for him.  Thanks again Diane.


 After a lot of hard work we managed to get the final three beds in place, but weren't able to dig them, or even get them properly aligned as we had run out of both time and energy.



 As almost the last act of the day Will planted his first ever seeds - he put in 2 blocks of 9 spinach 'Matador', 2 blocks of 4 x Pak Choi and a single block of Turnip "Purple Milan".  I hope that they germinate and prove to him that he hasn't got 'black thumbs'.

These last sowings have completed the first bed which is now totally full.  Only another five beds to have a go at now.

D-Day

Today is the day I get my allotment!

Had lots of emails back and forth with the allotment secretary last night.

I have now been offered the full plot instead of the three quarters I was going to take - apparently the lady who was going to have the other quarter has been offered space on another plot.

I had a chat with my stepdad (who is my allotment partner) and my wife (who is having a quarter for soft fruit) and they both said to go for it, so this afternoon I will be signing up for the full plot.

I just hope that I am not taking on more than I can handle here.

The secretary also told me that the plot has been recently strimmed - I am not sure if that is good or bad right now as I would have liked to have walked the plot first just in case there were any plants mixed in with the weeds that could be saved as I had been told by a neighbouring plotholder that there was some rhubarb in there somewhere. It would also have shown me where the nasty perennial weeds were.

On the other hand, it has saved me a day's work, and I can get straight on with creating my first couple of beds, depending upon what the ground is like.  It has rained so much here recently that I am concerned that the soil will be so wet that I really can't dig it. or if there is a lot of clay in the ground as my stepdad thinks, there will be standing water all over the plot.



Seedlings ready for planting 



More seedlings!



Last night I totally emptied the blow away to do a thorough check for slugs and snails hiding on the underside of the various pots and planting trays in there.

It was only when I laid all the trays out on the hot tub lid I realised just how many seedlings I actually have ready for planting out - and remember, I also have more on the table in the front garden.

The haul in the blow away that is ready to plant out is:

67 onions - not sure if these are ready as they are only tiny as yet.

15 Winter Cauliflowers

15 Winter Cabbage

15 Purple Curly Kale

15 Brussel Sprouts

15 Purple Sprouting Broccoli

1 Tomato

6 Peas

1 Capsicum Pepper

2 Pumpkins

4 Courgettes



Even more seedlings!

Left over from planting the front garden

1 Swiss Chard

3 Leeks

2 Cavolo Nero

2 Curly Kale

1 Romanesco Broccoli

Not big enough to plant out yet are

9 Lettuce

3 Kohn Rabi

11 Courgettes

I have also got loads and loads of seeds ready to go in.

I just hope I can keep everything under control!

More seeds

Sowed a load of seeds yesterday ready to be transplanted to the allotment as soon as I have a bed ready for them, which I am hoping will be around my birthday on July 10.

I put in loads of cucurbits (courgette family) as last year I put them in late, and although some small fruit formed almost all rotted from the flower end before they were big enough to pick.


I planted 3 x Courgette 'De Nice A Fruit Rond' (never had a round courgette before so really hoping these come up),  4 x Squash 'Patty Pan Custard White', 3 x Courgette 'All Green Bush', 3 x Courgette 'F1 Defender' and 3 x Courgette 'F1 Atena'

I had a few spaces left so I decided to try some Kohl Rabi 'Purple Vienna' - another veggie I have never grown, or even eaten for that matter.  I sowed three or four seeds in each 'plug' just in case some didn't germinate.



What I planted today.



I also planted out a couple of spare plants to replace the slug and snail eaten ones - a couple of Romanesque broccoli and a Cavolo Nero kale.  All my brassicas are now protected by pop bottle cloches.

I don't want to lose any more seedlings so the cloches will stay on until the plant is too big for them and hopefully big enough to survive the odd leaf being munched,

Fully loaded Blow Away

Had a quick look at the seeds I planted 10 days ago - no signs of anything from either of the pumpkins or the spring onions, but a couple of the Kelvedon Wonder peas are showing, and there is even a tiny bit of green from one of the Paris Market carrots.

One of the pepper plants in the blow away has got a flower on it.  Apparently they self-pollenate, so I may have at least one fruit this year.

Flowering Pepper

Also in the blow away is my single aubergine plant which is getting quite tall now, and looks like it has recovered from the slug attack a couple of weeks back.  Apart from the pumpkins I think that this is the plant I am most looking forwards to see growing.

Aubergine - Recovered after slug attack

Maybe I can do this gardening stuff after all!

One new thing I tried yesterday was to mulch round the leeks in my raised bed with grass clipplings.  It is supposed to keep water in the soil - not that we have had any problems with shortage of water recently! and also to deter slugs and snails as it dries and becomes a barrier.

Part-mulched raised bed

We will see.

Has the Growing Season Finally Started?



The first of the peas I sowed straight into the bed eight days ago is just starting to show through the compost.

I had begun to think that they might have been taken by marauding mice (even though we have four cats in the house - they are all inherrently lazy!) so last Sunday I carefully removed the top inch or so of soil over them.

Thankfully they were still there, and were starting to sprout, so I replaced the soil, watered heavily and went back to waiting impatiently until tonight when the first tiny green shoot was visible.



The first pea shoots make an appearance


I am expecting great things from these legumes and can't wait for them to start to grow up the trellis, not just for the harvest but to also give our patio a bit of privacy.



One thing in the garden that I am over the moon with is my dwarf apple trees - for the past two years I have had plenty of blossom, but not a single one has set.





Very young apples forming



 This year I moved the trees down the garden as my wife thought that the pollinating insects might be missing them where they had been sat close by the front door - looks like that may have been a good call as we appear to have several potential apples forming, but even now I have not even had a single flower on my Conference Pear.

Non-Flowering Pear

Maybe next year?

New Sowings

With the hope of the allotment looming close I suddenly realised that once I have managed to clear the plot (or perhaps just part of it) I have nothing ready to plant.

Rather than waiting until early July to get started I decided to use my blowaway to propogate some seedlings that I will be able to transplant once I have space cleared.

I chose to plant the following :

Peas - Kelvedon Wonder
Spring Onion - White Lisbon,
Carrot - Paris Market
Basil - Minette
Pumpkin - Jack o' Lantern
Pumpkin - Mammoth

I planted plenty of the first four, but only one each of the pumpkins because if they germinate they will need a huge amount of space, and I want to grow more than a single plant to a bed this year.

Bloody Cats!!

I was a bit annoyed when I went out this morning to check on yesterday's plantings.

I was looking for any slug damage, and thankfully there wasn't any, but one of our cats had decided that the newly dug and planted raised bed was a good place for a toilet, and had gone between the rows of leeks :(

Nothing was dug up, but I had gone to the trouble of carefully planting the leeks in deep holes and not back filling with soil, but simply filling the hole with water, as recommended by all my gardening books.  Now about half of the plants have been buried  and knocked sideways by soil thrown about by the cat's scratching.

By carefully removing the excess soil (and poo) I have managed to get most of the plants stood up straight again, but a lot do not have their specially prepared growing tunnel any more - I wonder if that will stop them fattening up?  I will have to ask on The Grapevine.

There is really only one plant I an a bit woried about, but it was the runt of the planting and if it dies off I still have a couple of spares that I wasn't able to plant due to running out of space.

Tonight it is time to finish off planting the young plants I got from the garden centre yesterday.



Curly Kale to the left, Romanesco Broccoli to the right

I have got half a dozen of Curly Kale and Romanesco Broccoli in the front raised bed.  I always called the Romanesco a cauliflower before, but good old Google seems to be split 50:50 between broccoli and cauli.  Still, it said broccoli on the label from the garden centre, so that's what they are.

I also managed to get a couple of rows of peas in tight against the back trellis.  The plan is for them to be trained up the trellis and away from the slow developing brassicas.  Then again, that was the plan with the sweet peas I put in a couple of weeks ago, but they don't seem to want to do much so far. (they are starting to climb the canes to the left of the picture above)

There are also a couple of peppers and an aubergine for a growbag in the back garden, and a Horseradish - never grown one before, so that should be interesting.


Horseradish Plant

I will also have to rig something up over the raised bed to stop our boys using it as a litter tray again tonight - wish me luck!

Just got back in from planting - looks like I was celebrating no slug/snail damage too soon - they have taken great chunks out of my aubergine and one of the peppers.  I shall have to keep them on my tool store roof for a day or so to see if they recover before planting them out in the grow bag.

I also had a look at my tomato experiment - to be honest it isn't looking good right now.  It has only been a day since I planted it up, but it has already tried to double back on itslelf to try and head for the sun.

I will let it grow a bit larger - maybe the weight of any fruit will straighten it out a bit.  (assuming I actually get some fruit, that is)

Best Laid Plans ....

It's time to dig over my raised bed today - if it stops raining for long enough, that is!

I want to get a couple of rows of peas, chard and some spinach down.  I might even look at putting in a few sweetcorn, even though last year's attempt to grow the 'trinity' of sweetcorn, squash and beans failed miserably.

The potatoes in the growing bags need what will probably be their final earthing up as they are almost at the top, but the ones in the old washing basket (much better to recycle it than throw it away) will take a bit longer as the basket is much taller.

I am going to try planting some kale in containers this year - never tried it before so that should be interesting.

The monster

It is also time to harvest some rhubarb - the plant is becoming a bit of a monster, and I believe that harvesting will cause it to have a growth spurt - we will see about that :) 

I could do with a couple of kilos to make some rhubarb wine this weekend.