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.

Windowsill Update - Part 5

It's been two weeks since the last update, and the windowsill is looking distinctly bare nowadays.

I planted both the borlitti and mange tout into my garden last weekend as they were getting a bt out of control - the borlotti was over four feet tall and the mange tout was ranging all over the windowsill in search of something to climb up.

I think I should really have moved them earlier as a couple of the borlotti stems got bent while untangling ready to transplant, but they seem to have come through OK and are thriving outdoors,

I have got the borlotti growing up the trellis in my original narrow beds, and the mange tout are growing up canes in the 4' x 4' bed.

Of the plants left on the windowsill, the two 'Sweet Baby' tomatoes are now both over 6" high, both chilli 'Anaheim' are about 4" tall and showing plenty of leaf.

My two experiments, however, are not doing as well.

Of the 17 radish plants in a single tray that I separated most have withered and died.  There are six whose leaves have simply dried out completely and are nothing but a stem with crispy bits attached.

A further six have some greenery left, but aren't looking happy at all, and the remaining five aren't looking too bad at all, but still have some crispy leaves attached to them.  Three of the five were actually transplanted, so I'm not sure if it was the act of transplanting that disturbed the roots and caused the problem or not.

Either way, I'm not confident that any will survive much longer.

The spinach I planted in the tiny root cells that my veg plugs from Aldi came in is also having problems. 

I have had to water them, even though they were sat in a water retaining gel, which has caused some kind of algae bloom in the gel itself, the gel has dried up to about half its original volume and is completely filled with an amazing root system from the spinach.

Some of the spinach seedlings haven't rooted themselved properly and are lying on the surface, and many of the ones that are standing up straight are up to three inched tall, but have already started to bolt and set seed, probably as they are under stress in the mini-cloche.

I am going to plant these out either tonight or over the weekend to see if any can be salvaged, although I am not going to be holding my breath over them.  I think I will have to cut open the mini cells to plant them so I have some chance of not destroying the roots completely.

I think I will be underplanting my kale and Romanescue caulis which although they are growing well, don't need the full space as yet.

So, what have I learned from the windowsill this season?

Some successes with the tomato and chilli, I have strong plants which are nearly ready for planting on, even though they may be a little late in the season to do much.

Another success was the home-made light reflector that stopped the plants from leaning alarmingly towards the window - definitely using that again next year.

Lessons have been learnt with the beans and mange tout - next year I will plant them singly into pots and plant them out much earlier to avoid damaging the plants when doing so.

More lessons with the radish and spinach.  Neither seem to be happy on the windowsill, and radish certainly don't like having their roots disturbed.

Re-using the mini cells from the Aldi plug plants seemed like a good idea at the time,  but it has not gone quite to plan so I won't use them again.  The mini-cloches will probably be used but with seeds planted straight into compost in the base, without the cells or gel.

I may grow spinach on the windowsill again, but into larger pots with a couple of seeds in each to avoid the problems caused by the mini cells.

End of week catch up

In the past week since I last posted things have been moving on quite a bit, both at the allotment and at home, and I have had a major catastrophe too.

On Sunday afternoon I was relaxing in my hot tub after a few hard hours at the allotment when one of our cats knocked my mobile phone into the water.

Needless to say it was a complete write off, so I haven't been able to post up any more pictures since, which has kind of put me off writing anything.

So - what has been going on this week at home?

I have harvested a few more rhubarb stems which were stewed down with some sugar and a bit of water - very nice, but it really needed a bit more sugar.  All right - a lot more, to be honest.

The first few raspberries of the year have been eaten too - they didn't need any extra sweetener as they were gorgeous by themselves.  There is another handful ready too, looking forwards to picking those tomorrow.

I have also harvested a few Rainbow Chard leaves and steamed them with some cabbage given to me by a very generous allotment neighbour.  Not sure if I prefer them to spinach right now, but I will have plenty more opportunities to decide as the chard has really started to fill out and develop into really big plants.  I'm glad I decided to give them plenty of room when I planted them out six weeks ago!

The lettuce tub by the front door has also been raided quite a lot this week, but as they are starting to show signs of bolting we will be eating them as fast as we can before they turn bitter.

I have also picked up a young melon plant and stuck it into my largest pot - you never know, we might actually get some sun over the next few weeks to allow fruit to develop.  I am thinking of building up a frame for it to climb up - apparently this will encourage it to set more fruit along the length of the vine rather than just at the end as it would if I let it crawl along the floor.

The borlotti and mange tout on the windowsill desperately need planting out - the borlotti is now nearly four foot tall and looking for something to climb up, the mange tout has flopped over and is rapidly spreading along the windowsill.  I have a space picked out in the front garden in front of the trellis for them, so hopefully they will be able to handle the shock of being outdoors for the first time

The two tomato seedilngs in one pot have been separated into their own pots and are coming on well.  The chillis have now got four leaves each, and are slowly getting stronger.

The spinach grown in the gel is doing remarkably well, the only problem I forsee is trying to get the plants out of their cells without losing half of the root system which is now well established within the gel itself.  I am going to plant these inbetween the leeks in the raised bed - they should be picked and eaten long before I need to get at the leeks.

Not too sure about the radish at the moment - the majority of the first leaves have withered and died, but only a couple of the plants have well developed true leaves as yet.  It may be that I am going to lose a lot of these plants.  The plan is to plant them out below the brassicas in the bed in front of the trellis once they have all got good true leaves showing.

In the blow away it is like looking through a jungle, the plants are doing so well.

I am considering bringing some of the trays out and leaving them on some greenhouse staging just to give a bit of room to the others left behind.

I am very pleased with the pumpkins - both are getting quite big now, so I will have to look at potting them up into bigger containers as they really don't like being cramped.

One disappointment so far has been the onions.  They have been pricked out into individual modules for some time now, but there is virtually no signs of growth from any of them as yet.

With the weather having been so bad this week I haven't had much time to get down to the allotment, but I have had 8 tonnes of cow manure delivered in anticipation of some nice weather that will allow me to rotivate part of the plot and get it all mixed in.

I have spent an hour tonight moving the first of it off the path where it was dumped - 11 barrows-full and I have hardly dinted the pile!  I reckon there is about another 150-200 barrows-full to go, so at my curent speed it will take me 10-15 more hours!  I just hope that I will speed up as I get more used to the work.

Windowsill Update Part 2

After posting yesterday morning about the fourth borlotti not looking too healthy, this morning it is three inches tall and looking good - it just shows how much I have to learn here.

http://vegpatchkid.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/windowsill-update.html

Also, one of the spinach Matador that I sowed on Saturday has germinated after only three days - amazing!

Not sure if this is down to the gel that came with the 'mini-cloche' or not - I will have to plant some more in normal planters with just compost as a comparison.


I have several more of the modules that the ALDI plugs came in so I will try one of those on its own.

Still no movement from either the chillis or pumpkin, but the radish are now nearly three inches high, but none of them look like they are even attempting to form a second set of leaves yet.

The sugar snap peas are doing well, one looks almost ready to pot on as it is six inches tall already but I will wait until weekend.

I will have to do some more research on Google.

As I am running out of growing space here at home I am going to take a couple of pots into work and try to germinate a couple more courgettes as a backup in case something happens to my original seedlings.

Windowsill Update

As I am hoping to get the keys to the allotment on Saturday which is only five days time, it is time for an update on how the seeds I planted on the windowsill seven days ago are faring.


Borlotti doing well



Three of the four borlotti that I planted are doing well and about four inches tall.  The fourth has just started to show but is a sickly yellow colour so might not do as well as the others.



The first true leaves are well established with signs of the next pair already evident.  These will soon need potting on into individual pots with some support from a cane before I can get them into a prepared bed on the allotment, hopefully by next Monday or Tuesday, weather depending.



Mange Tout



The Oregon Sugar Pod mange tout are also showing lots of growth. 

Despite germinating before the borlotti they are only three inches tall but are more developed and already have set their second, or even third set of true leaves.  These will also need to be potted on fairly soon, but probably after the borlotti.

 

The French Breakfast radish are romping away and are now nearly two inches tall.  I planted two seeds in each of nine stations and as you can see from the picture all bar one has come up.  Once the second set of leaves arrives I will be trying to transplant the weaker seedling to ensure that each has plenty of space for the root bulb to develop.  I have read that radish don't like to be moved - this should be a nice experiment to compare those that are moved to those left undisturbed.



Radish French Breakfast



Of the other seeds planted at the same time only the tomato, Sweet Baby have germinated as yet, and only two out of the four seeds planted.  At less than an inch high these will not need their own individual pots for a long time.  No movement at all from the chillis or pumpkin.  The pumpkin took 12 days to show when I germinated one outside, so I was expecting this one to come up faster.  Still, it does have five more days to go so I shouldn't be so impatient.



Sweet Baby tomato



The only other planter on the windowsill is my experiment with water retaining gel where I planted some spinach Matador into the modules in which I got the veg plug plants from Aldi.




Spinach Experiment



These were only sown on Saturday, so nothing is moving as yet.

One thing I have noticed with all the plants on the windowsill is that they are all bending towards the light instead of growing upwards.  At the moment I am combatting this by giving the post a quarter turn every morning, but I think I will try to make a simple light box for them.

This is done by covering a piece of cardboard with silver foil and standing it behind the plants to reflect whatever light comes in so that the seedlings will no longer have to bend towards it.  Hopefully it will work and I won't have to keep turning the trays and pots.

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.

Windowsill Goodies

Even though I have run out of room in the blow away, and the table in the front garden is completely covered with seedlings just waiting to be taken down to the allotment when I finally manage to get in there (8 days and counting!) I just had to pot up some more seeds tonight.

I am going to put them on the bedroom windowsill in the boxroom, right next to the computer so I will be able to take good care of them.

I sowed 9 radish 'French Breakfast' - I grew these last year but only managed to get a couple of them before they were munched by the pests, so I am hoping that by growing indoors I might be able to have a few more.  Sowed a couple of seeds per station.

There are three pots of Chilli 'Anaheim'.  We love chillis and already have some strong plants growing in the blow away, but I fancied trying a new variety.  Only put a single seed into each pot as I want to see how the Square Foot Gardening method of sowing works out - it is recommended to sow one or two per station.

Windowsill Goodies

There is a single pot of tomato 'Sweet Baby'.  I think this is a bush-type, and most of the others I already have growing are cordon, so I wanted a change.  About 4 seeds in this pot.

I have also got a pack of Borlotti and one of SugarSnaps - going to get them going tonight too.  I realise that they may be too late for this season, really, but hey - it's only a few seeds.

Finally, I couldn't resist potting up another pumpkin - 'Mammoth', just in case the one I potted in the blow away doesn't come up - no movement as yet.

Talking of the seeds in the blow away, I had another peek at the ones planted eight days ago.

Still no movement from either pumpkin, got a few peas showing now, quite a few carrots are starting to germinate and I even have a couple of spring onions coming through, but not a thing from the Basil.

I have never been able to get Basil to germinate, either inside or out - I really don't know what I'm doing wrong.

Time to check Google, I guess.