Allotment Catch up - Early October

After having nearly four weeks away from the allotment due to a combination of holidays, illness and bad weather I wasn't looking forwards to my visit earlier this month.

I was expecting caterpillar munched brassicas, slug munched lettuce and courgettes and drowned everything else, but I am please to say that although there was some damage, it was nowhere near as bad as I was anticipating.

The torrential downpours had washed away every slug pellet, so there were quite a few fat slugs enjoying the fruits of my labours.  They soon got the sharp end of a trowel and were flung onto the manure pile.



Onions hanging on - just !





In bed 1 the square of 15 onions had suffered some slug damage, with about four whose tops had been munched but the rest seem to have been left alone.



Big lettuce pressing against the netting



In the next picture you can see just how well the lettuce are coming on - when I planted them I thought they were the sort where you harvest the outer leaves as and when you need them, and that they didn't form a heart, but every one is now a huge, full-hearted lettuce that are very sweet tasting.

One problem with all the rain we have been having is that the very outer leaves which have been touching the soil had started to rot on the plant, but I soon whipped those off.



Brussels, PSB and Kale



The brassicas also under the netting in bed 1 are still growing strongly - there have been a few caterpillars on them due to the flimsy construction of the netting and cage, but nothing major so I am hoping for great things from them later this year/early next.



Before removing the finished courgette plants



The peas at the top of bed 1 had withered so I pulled them out, and the courgettes had been badly attacked by the slugs, so they came out too.

The turnips planted from seed are starting to bulk up a little - the largest was about 2 inches across, and some of the spinach is also doing well, but a lot of it has been swamped by the cabbages in the next squares so was still pretty spindly.  A lesson to be learned for next year here, don't include brassicas in a square foot bed unless they are all similar size plants or they will overwhelm their neighbours.



Pak Choi doing well



The pak choi planted from seed have done fantastically well, so I harvested a couple for our tea, and very nice they were too.

Some of them were also having trouble with the huge cabbages next door, so I did a little trimming of the lower, larger cabbage leaves to give the pak choi a bit more light, which will hopefully allow them to grow a bit more.





The star of bed 1 so far has got to be the french beans.  I have had four small harvests from them already and all four plants are still loaded with flowers.  I just hope that the frosts keep off and we have enough sun to be able to harvest the rest as they have an unbelievable flavour.









Lots of Bean Pods




The Mammoth pumpkin hasn't really lived up to its name despite an early showing - the one remaining fruit hasn't really grown very much since the last time I measured it.



Mammoth Pumpkin



The Jack 'o' Lantern, however, has nearly doubled in size.



Jack 'O' Lantern



I just hope that at least one of them will toughen up enugh to be carved for our Halloween Party on Oct 27th!





Top of bed 2





At the top of bed 2 the Savoy cabbages are doing well despite their somewhat shakey start and are pretty much the same size as those in bed 1.

I had to remove the two cherry tomato bushes as they had signs of blight, but I have left the chillis in place - the plan is to trim them and try to overwinter by wrapping in fleece with the surrounding brassicas also providing some shelter.

In the space left by the tomatoes I have planted some of the kale that was pigeoned, slugged and caterpillared back in July as they appeared to be staging some kind of come back.

I also planted three Kohl Rabi that had been sitting at home and should really have been in the ground by now.



Bottom of bed 2



At the bottom of bed 2 the donated rhubarb is growing fantastically well - all my rhubarb at home is starting to die down ready for winter but these two are still going great guns.

The transplanted turnips have taken well, but aren't as far along as the ones left behind in bed 1.

The radish at the botton right of the picture have started to form bulbs, but they aren't much more than pea-sized right now.

The chard and perpetual spinach are flourishing, but some of the slug-munched onions appear to have been too far gone to save.

I have also started to plant into bed 3 as I had to bring out all the remaining brassicas from home, plus those munched on earlier but still with full hearts.

The whole of bed 3 now contains spring cabbage, curly cale, brussel sprouts and purple sprouting broccoli.

I think the next thing to do is to get beds 4 and 5 ready using the lasagne method.

This isn't as I planned, but I need to get some onion sets and some garlic in and the way the weather is closing in as we head through Autumn I doubt that I will have enough time to double dig as I had wanted.

Seven Week Itch?

It is now exactly seven weeks since I signed up for my allotment, and so much has happened since then.

I started out with loads of ideas, plenty of book and internet knowledge but very little in the way of practical skills or experience in how to create and manage a full sized plot.  In fact, it wouldn't have been an exageration to say that my learning curve was pretty much vertical in those first few weeks.

So, what have I learned in this short space of time?

 Pigeons like to eat anything green.  They made short work of the Savoy cabbage that I planted in bed 2, but fortunately I was able to get them covered over quick enough so that they have been able to make quite a dramatic recovery.



Covered bed

I also learned that even if some of your seedlings have been left alone by the pigeons, you can't rely on them always being left alone.  I had put all the spare seedlings to one side, on top of the pile of wood and they hadn't been attacked so I made the mistake of not making sure the netting was over them.  The pigeons found them and totally decimated them, including my three patty pans.

Len, one of the old hands on the allotment, told me that the pigeons prefer to land and walk to their food, which has explained why nothing in my square foot bed has been touched, as the network of strings marking out the squares must have put them off.

The hardest lesson so far is that there is always another pest on the plot ready to carry on where one has finished.



The mauled remnants of my seedlings



After the pigeons had taken most of the seedlings on the wood pile I covered them with netting and planned to plant the survivors on my next visit.

Two days later when I came to look at them I found them crawling with slugs that had taken almost everything that the pigeons had left behind.  They had even got into my onions and cored them out.  I am still hopeful that one or two may survive despite the mauling they have had, but I have moved everything to the front of bed 2, surounded by slug pellets and protected by netting, where they should have been from the start.

Purple Milan Turnip Seedlings

It hasn't all been bad, though.

Most of the planst sown direct have germinated, and are showing strongly.  The ones that surprised me the most were the turnips - first to show with almost 100% germination they are going strong.



Chard going wild



Some of the transplanted seedlings have also done really well, with the chard and leef beet being the most vigorous.

Lots of Leaf Beet

The plan was to keep them under control by regular harvests of the young leaves by my son Will, but he hasn't been to the plot for a couple of weeks so they have got a little bit out of control.  I am going to have to pick and freeze a lot of leaves over the next few days.

Lettuce doing well

The All Year Round lettuce which I didn't have much hope for when it was planted out is flourishing.  A couple of the more sickly plants didn't make it, but out of 16 plants I have 11 strong plants putting out lots of great tasting leaves.

I have taken a few leaves to have for the next day's dinner a few times now, and I am impressed by the flavour.  Definitely one to grow again, I think.

Courgettes Nice de la Ronde and All Green Bush

The two courgettes that I did manage to get into the ground are also doing OK, but nowhere near as good as the chard, lettuce and leaf beet.

There have been a couple of flowers on both, but so far only males until I looked this morning and found a couple of female flowers ready to open, one on each plant so I might get courgettes this year after all!

Brussel Sprouts and Purple Sprouting Broccoli

  Under the netting the brassicas are coming along nicely, most of the brussels, PSB and curly Kale are all about 18 inches tall now, apart from one brussel that has yet to grow past five inches tall!

The plant itself looks healthy enough, it is just a midget compared to the others.  Hopefully it will catch up soon.



Recovering Savoy Cabbages

 In bed 2 I have the Savoy cabbage that were attacked by the pigeons.  Fortunately they all seem to have survived and have put on quite a bit of new leaf this week.

They are still quite a bit behind the three I planted into bed 1, though.

Step dad Ken is still convinced that bed 2 will do best for cabbage.  Personally I think it will be a close thing but I hope bed 1 wins so I can say 'Told You So'



Nearly Ripe Cherry Tomato

 

More Tomatoes Ripening

 Another transplant into bed 2 were my cherry tomatoes from home.

These had outgrown their pots and desperately needed planting out, and have done really well so far, with three  fruit from each this week.  A bit more sun and I will have plenty more ready.

Jack O'Lantern Male Flower

Stars of the show for me so far must be the two pumpkins.



Jack O'Lantern Vine

 I have never tried to grow anything like these before, and now they have got themselves established you can almost watch them growing.

A set Fruit?

Mammoth Vine

Both plants have now got what looks to be two fruit that have set, and with the current climate of sunshine and downpours it couldn't be better growing weather.

Mammoth Fruit

Once they start to get a little larger I will have to make sure that they are supported off the ground to try and keep them rot and slug free.

The first fruit from the Mammoth that I hoped had set hasn't changed size at all, so it may be better to cut it off and leave the other two to grow, but I will probably wait to make sure first.

Water, Water, Everywhere .......

We spent some time at the plot tonight trying to figure out the best way to deal with the sodden ground that covers most of the back half of the allotment.

The plot is bordered by cinder paths, so yesterday afternoon I dug a test pit through one to see if we could persuade the water to start to flow in that direction.  The pit was about 18 inches deep.

Test Pit

This was what we saw there tonight.

This was good news as it meant that it would be possible to persuade the water to flow away from the plot.

We started off with a few shallow channels in the mud to encourage the water on the surface to flow.

This was followed by a deeper, wider channel which soon became filled with run-off.

We were unable to follow up on our discoveries as the boundary fence near to the corner of my plot is due to be replaced, and so any drainage channels that we dig would be likely to be destroyed when the contractor brings in his equipment.

On the plus side, we are going to ask if they will dig the channels for us with their equipment whilst they are there.  If you don't ask ....

Whilst we were there I took the opportunity to plant a few more specimens from home - three tomatoes and two chillis.


Two of the tomatoes are already producing fruit - I was able to harvest three red and three yellow cherry tomatoes from them.

Tomatoes and Chillis

The chillis and third tomato have come from the bedroom windowsill - I know it is probably far too late in the season to be planting these out, but as the only other option for these plants was the compost heap I am going to give them a fighting chance.



Rhubarb

I also planted up the rhubarb that Diane gave us a couple of weeks back.  It was planted into a hole that had at least six inches of manure in the bottom, and was finished off by another spade-full on top.  This is only a temporary home until we can get the water problem sorted,




Now for a quick spin round bed 1.

The lettuce are really doing well now, despite them looking rather sick when they were first planted out.  The Kale and PSB are also doing well, as are the Brussels, with the exception of one plant.  This little one looks healthy, but is only about half the size of the others - I wonder why?



Leaf Beet, Cabbage and Turnip



Flowering French Beans



The Leaf Beet, Chard and Savoy Cabbage are all coming on strongly, as are the French Beans which are now flowering.  The leaves on some of the peas continue to look a little yellow, but they now have four pods.

The majority of the seeds that Will sowed nine days ago have now come up - all the turnips and most of the pak choi, but strangely enough not all of the spinach have (apart from the ones he spilled and didn't pick up).  It may be that he planted them a bit too deep perhaps?

One bad note - the pigeons have decimated the plants that I had waiting to go in - I forgot to cover them up again when I left on Sunday, and they have eaten about 90% of the seedlings.

Week 5 on the allotment - Stuff in the ground - at last

After four weeks of hard work I have finally managed to start transplanting plants from home to the allotment.

It was starting to get pretty desperate as plenty of the seedlings that I have either bought in or started from seed have really outgrown the trays that they were planted in and have started to get root bound.

On Monday night I took a few trays from the blow away down to the allotment and started to plant up into the first bed.


The first planting

 In the picture above you will be able to see that I have marked out squares so we can employ the square foot gardening techniques.

Unfortunately the beds are 4.5 feet by 9.5, so the beds to the right and the top of the picture are 18" wide, but I have taken advantage of this to plant some of the larger, taller brassicas on this side as they won't shade out the smaller crops.

From right to left in the picture above I have planted:

Row 1 - 5 x Brussel Sprouts
Row 2 - 5 x Purple Sprouting Broccoli
Row 3 - 5 x Purple Curly Kale and a square containing 4 x leaf beet
Row 4 - 16 x Winter Onions, four squares containing 16 x All Year Round Lettuce

The two squares of climbers at the top of the bed contain 4 x Blue Lake Climbing French Beans.

One thing I wanted to get out but forgot to bring down were my peas - there is a spare square waiting for them next to the French Beans.

I went back to the plot again last night to finish off the second bed that you can see in the picture, and watered everththing with 1 cup of water per plant.  The lettuce in particular were looking wery worse for wear, but perked up remarkably with the water, so I think I will have to make daily visits to make sure they have enough water until they get their roots deep enough.


Potato Bed

I am also really pleased with the progress of the potatoes.  These were simply supermarket spuds that had been left in the bag too long and had sprouted. 

I stuck them in the ground on Friday July 13th so they will be four weeks old tomorrow.

These are growing so fast it you are actually able to see the difference in size from one day to the next.  I will have to start thinking about earthing them up soon, and I will probably use some of the bought in compost rather than taking from the bed itself.  I had originally made troughs and ridges in this bed and planted into the troughs, but the local foxes trashed the bed on the first night so it is pretty flattened by now, with no spare soil to use.

They were supposed to be there to break up the ground and also to provide some foliage cover to suppress the weeds - if they carry on like this they will certainly provide the cover, and if I do manage to get a crop from them, well then that will be a bonus.

The two pumpkins that I planted straight into the manure pile seem to have got over the transplanting shock and have started to grow again - the Jack O'Lantern is doing best but there are signs that the Mammoth is about to send out a vine - lots of little leaf buds (at least I think that's what they are).

The problem I am now coming up against is one I never expected when I took on a full plot - I am running out of room to plant things in.

The existing bed has 12 squares remaining, but four or five of them are already reserved for Savoy Cabbage - I have a mini competition going with stepdad Ken who is convinced that the bed I made using the no-dig method cannot possibly compete with the bed we double-dug together, so we are going to plant cabbages into both beds at the same time and monitor the results.

The double-dug bed is nearly ready for planting into - I finished filling it last night but I still need to level it and break up any large clumps, and I also need to pull out as much cooch grass root as I can.

There is so much at home waiting to go in that I really don't know how I am going to be able to fit it in, even with another four beds ready to fill the space we rotivated two weekends back.

Plants waiting to go in

There are already loads of plants waiting to go in that I have moved from home, with more Kale, Sprouts, leef beet  and PSB plus cabbage and cauliflower.

We have also been given a little rhubarb plant for when we eventually get the soft fruit area going, plus a couple of comfrey plants - thanks Diane.

All these, and I have still got a blow away at home absolutely full, plus the table in the front garden as well.

Damned Snails - Again

With the nice weather we had for a few days last week all the plants in the garden are doing great, and there was a distinct lack of slugs and snails too, which helped tremendously.

This nice weather didn't last too long, however, and we were soon back to the torential downpours we have had all summer long so far, which has led to the resurgence of huge snails in the garden.

One of the mange tout has been mange touted by the snails, and they have also had a good go at the borlotti as well.

The Romanesque Caulis have started to get small holes in their leaves so I had a look on the underside to find a few pale green caterpillars busily munching away - not sure if these are cabbage white larvae as last year when I found them on my Purple Sprouting Broccoli they were deep green and much larger.

Whatever they were they are now squashed - I will have to look at getting some kind of netting up to protect the brassicas.

While I was closely inspecting the plants I noticed that one or two have actually started to form a curd (I think that's the right name for it) already.  Hopefully good signs for a good harvest in winter?

Down at the allotment not much has happened since my last post at weekend due to the horrible weather.



Pumpkin - Jack O'Lantern



Will and I managed to move the timber pile from the roadway to a couple of holding piles just off my plot, and I also managed to get both pumpkin plants from home planted up directly into the manure pile.  I am hoping that the heat and texture of the manure will keep the slugs and snails off the plants until they have had time to grow large enough to withstand a few nibbles.



Pumpkin - Mammoth



I checked on them after a couple of days and they looked OK, but that was a couple of days back now so I hope they are still as healthy when I check tonight or tomorrow, weather permitting.

In the blow away everything is really more than ready to be planted out so it is really important to get both beds manured and dug over so these plants can be transplanted before they get too root bound in their modules.

One good thing - the peas in the blow away have started to flower - the ones in the front have been mainly either been eaten by snails or dug up by cats scratching, so these are now my only hope of a harvest this season.

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!

Yet more Seedlings

My stock of seedlings awaiting the allotment increased dramatically yesterday when I made a quick trip to Aldi.

They have just got in a batch of vegetable seedling plugs - a pack of 15 for £1.99.

I bought Winter Onions, Winter Cauliflower, Winter Cabbage, Spring Cabbage and Purple Sprouting Broccoli.

All I have to do is to transplant them into a proper seed module tray and water them in.  Once the roots start coming out of the bottom of the module it is time to plant them out.

The seedlings are in a tiny amount of compost which is sitting in a layer of gel (it is supposed to help with water retention and you can mix it with your compost in the seed tray if you want).

A quick spin around the seeds I have recently planted -

In the blow away almost everything is starting to show - both pumpkins are going well  (the Jack O' Lantern is doing best).



Jack O'Lantern on the left, Mammoth to the right





White Lisbon Spring Onions





Paris Market Carrots

The spring onions

are also coming on, as are the carrots. 



Kelvedon Wonder Peas



The peas are nearly an inch high and growing noticably every day - there is even a sigle kohl rabi sprout as well.

 

Basil - at last!

Best of all - there are a few basil coming up as well.  This will be the first time I have managed to get basil to germinate in over three years of trying, so I am very pleased with this.

Nothing from any of the courgettes as yet though, but they were only planted six days ago so I really shouldn't get too impatient just yet.

On last Monday evening I planted chillis, tomato, another pumpkin 'Mammoth', borlotti, sugar snap peas and radish on the box room windowsill, so they have only had four full days so far.

The only movement is from the radish.  It started to show after only two days, and this is where they are now.

Some of the seedlings are nearly an inch tall, and almost all the seeds have germinated meaning that I have two seedlings at each station.

I may try to transplant the weaker one of each pair, but I have read that radish doesn't like being transplanted, and you should seed it where it will be growing.

It will be interesting to see how the radish that I will move fare compared to those left behind.