I have had a couple of very useful weekends at the allotment. Plenty has been sown - radishes, lettuce, spring onions, leeks, corn salad and beetroot (all now germinated) and parsnips, perpetual spinach and kohl rabbi (sill awaiting germination). At home in pots I have runner beans - almost ready to be transplanted, greyhound cabbage and brussels sprouts (growing nicely) and courgettes and cucumbers (just sown today). I am not harvesting anything except purple sprouting broccoli at the moment, but it is magnificent! I dug up the last of the leeks last week, and shall be sorry to see the end of them. They lasted all the way through winter. I hope this year's will be as successful. The really big news, however, is that the tame photographer built me a fruit cage to cover the raspberries, gooseberries and blackcurrants. Apart from the netting, we didn't have to buy anything; we just used an assortment of iron posts and canes and it looks just great.Rather like a see-through marquee. You can't see it in the photo, but there is netting on all the sides as well as the top of the cage. And the following is a view skywards.This was taken before the sides were attached.

My other big news is that a friend two plots away has let me use three of her beds this year so that I have room for courgettes and butternut squash and whatever else I need. She is going to be too busy to do much gardening so the arrangement suits us both well - she gets her plot looked after and I get a bit more space. I have begun to dig the beds over, but they are full of weeds - couch grass and bindweed mostly. The marestail is beginning to appear in my plot, so I will have to deal with it quickly and not let it get out of hand.

It hasn't rained for two whole weeks (until today) so I have had to water once again - but only the seeds. And finally - I had the first rhubarb last week - and it was delicious.

Spring is here!

At last - a spell of lovely weather! The sun has been shining, the rain has held off for at least five days and I have been to the allotment and dug, dug, dug. I have also got sunburned shoulders, nose and ears!

So - since Friday I have planted all the potatoes, first earlies (rocket), salad potatoes (Anya and Charlotte) and maincrop (Picasso), sown red and green salad bowl lettuce and tom thumb lettuce, french breakfast radish, spring onions, corn salad and leeks. I have also planted a couple of dahlias that I had dug up last autumn. Of course all this planting and sowing has meant a correspondingly large amount of digging, raking, tilthing and soil preparation, but I have enjoyed it. The upside of all the rain is that the soil is easy to dig and the weeds give up the grip much easier than normal.

The broad beans have germinated and are growing well in the sunshine and the onions and shallots are all sprouting and taking off. The gooseberries are flowering and the three blackcurrant bushes I transplanted last autumn are looking good.

I have dug up the last of the leeks and parnsips and all we are eating at the moment is mounds of beautiful purple sprouting broccoli.

We have also begun the fruit cage over the raspberries, gooseberries and blackcurrants. The tame photographer has pounded in some tall posts and we started to cover it with netting, but on account of my inability to count properly, we need to buy some more netting to finish off next week - otherwise it looks good, and hopefully will keep the birds of the precious fruit. The strawberries have to remain unnetted for the time being, but we can spread netting over them for the fruiting period.

At home, I have sown greyhound cabbage and runner beans for planting out when the weather is a bit more clement.

All in all - a hugely productive and enjoyable weekend!

Rain, Rain, Rain

I haven't done anything at the allotment, gardening-wise for simply ages (except harvest once a week - mostly brussels sprouts, leeks, cabbages, parnsips, kale and parsley. The purple sprouting broccoli is just about to start.

The following photos will show you why it has been impossible to to anything practical!

No more needs to be said, I feel - but it hasn't rained today so maybe things are looking up!
The last photo is not my plot, but one of my friend's. They too are suffering! The two photos before that one are the plot neighbouring mine.

End of January

I didn't get to the allotment last weekend - other pressing activities and rotten weather. Today, however, the rain held off for a short while, but when I got there, the frost was still heavy, making digging nigh on impossible, and when the sun came out the ground got soggier and soggier - so I didn't really do much. I picked brussels sprouts, and beautiful January King cabbage, some kale and parsley and two parsnips - not bad for a freezing winter day. I looked at the raspberry canes, but decided to deal with them next weekend!

I did get my onion sets - enough for a couple of rows of white onions and a couple of red onions and some shallots, as well as two bulbs of garlic. I also got the seed potatoes - Rocket for first earlies, Picasso for maincrop and Anya and Charlotte as salad potatoes. I didn't get many of each, but enough to enjoy next summer, hopefully. The are already chitting in eldest son's currently vacant room. All I need now is some some decent weather so I can get the plot ready for spring.

My next task is to get my seeds sorted and ordered. I have been very remiss about that this year.

Happy New Year 2010

A new year and a new start to regular blog-keeping, I hope.

I made a New Year's visit to the plot yesterday in glorious sunshine, but bitterly cold weather. I had accumulated three buckets of compost over the festive period and a black bin bag's worth of paper shredding so I spent most of the time dealing with the compost. I cleared the old compost and laid down the shredding and then covered that with the old compost, new compost and a barrow-load of stable droppings. It looks good enough to eat! I then cleared a bed of weeds and covered it with the manure for winter.

Given how beautiful the weather was, I was astonished to see that the whole site was deserted, but it was wonderfully peaceful and I really enjoyed being there.

The Tame Photographer and I went again today, to carry on clearing beds and covering them. TP cleared one bed while I worked on a second one and we got one covered. Hopefully tomorrow will see the completion of the task. Some of the beds are far to wet to work on, but a couple of days without rain should help. Also, the heavy frosts we are having should help kill off some of the pests. Today the soil was frozen to about 4 inches down.

I harvested my first January King cabbage today - and it looks magnificent, as well as leeks, beetroot and brussels sprouts. Also growing at the moment are parsnips, swiss chard, perpetual spinach, kale, purple sprouting broccoli, parsley and sage.

There is a lot to be done - tidying the shed, emptying the old manure heap and starting a new one, clearing and covering the rest of the beds, cutting down the raspberries and manuring them and so on. But now I have only one plot and have really got going again, the whole things seems much less daunting and I am really looking forward to 2010 on the allotment.

Starting my blog again

I haven't posted since May and a lot has happened. I have had varied success with my crops - The courgettes were fantastic - and far too many - five plants is too much - next year I will do just two, and maybe one yellow one for fun. The marrows produced well but didn't get as big as we hoped - but I made some delicious marrow and ginger jam with them. I have had a good crop of butternut squash and squash, but only one pumpkin - albeit a very handsome one! It will be carved for Halloween tomorrow if I have time. Also on the new plot were excellent potatoes, jerusalem artichokes, sunflowers and dahlias.

On the old plot I had mixed results - fantastic strawberries, gooseberries and raspberries - we had the last helping last week which is amazing. The rhubarb really was not great for some reason - I think it might be old and tired. The beans - all of them were pretty sad - I'm hoping for much better next year. The winter onions did very well, but the summer ones were disappointing. The shallots were brilliant. I had some fantastic cucumbers and carrots and beetroot and the chard and spinach beet did well. The fennel was not good - in fact I had no harvest at all from it. The lettuce and radishes cropped well as did the greyhound cabbage. The calabrese did well, but I don't think I will bother again - a lot of growing for only one head didn't seem worth it. However, the Cavolo di nero kale and brussels sprouts and cropping very well indeed, inspite of a whitefly invasion. The sweetpeas did very well until I went on holiday and the dry weather and lack of picking did for them. So, as you can see, a very mixed result - possibly because of the very dry weather we had this summer.
This was my harvest last weekend - not bad for a week before November!

I haven't mentioned the show! I entered in several categories and won 2nd prize for my courgettes and raspberries and shortbread and third for blackcurrant jam and rock cakes! I was very chuffed. My victoria sponge was disappointly unplaced as was my delicious beetroot chutney! Never mind - there's always next year!

I have decided to give up my second plot - with some regret, but it was becoming a bit of a chore and I felt I couldn't do justice to both plots. One of the main problems was that the plots were so far away from each other. I think if they had been closer together, it would have been easier to manage. Anyway, I think I have made the right choice and I shall have to move my blackcurrant bushes before next week, when I have to hand it back to the council. I shall just have to be very careful about what I choose to grow.

A month ago I found this lawnmower in the skip and couldn't resist it. The tame photographer is going to smarten it up and it will a make a perfect machine to move the grass paths.
This is just a short post to get me back into the habit of posting more regularly - I do have plenty of photos taken over the summer, but it will take too long to post them all. If I come across some really good ones, I might post them, but I think I will just start again from now.

To finish up last week we tidied up the old plot in preparation for giving it up - harvesting the remaing crops and emptying the shed - all that is left if to transplant the blackcurrant bushes and rescue the metposts and wish it farewell and hope it has some energetic new owners.

In the old plot I did a bumper weeding session and the harvesting. What I really need to do this weekend is turn the compost and put down some manure on top of the empty beds in preparation for winter.

Bank Holiday Weekend

This has been an intensive allotment weekend. I have managed to persuade the tame photographer to come with me to the allotment on Saturday, Sunday and Monday - but we have had to curtail the length of time there as he seems to have lost his staying power.

The better weather and longer days have really brought on the crops. Everything looks good, and I was very glad I didn't give in last weekend and plant out my beans as the touch of frost on Monday and Tuesday nights got most people's beans and potatoes. Our potatoes seemed to unharmed and I earthed them up yesterday, pulling out bindweed as I went along. We harvested our radishes - French Breakfast - and they were the best radishes I have grown and we also had a bowl of mixed salad leaves for supper.

Other major tasks included quite a lot of weeding, preparing the soil and planting out a row of Greyhound cabbages, a row of calabrese, a row of brussels sprouts and four walking stick kale plants. I thinned out the salad bowl lettuce, iceberg lettuce and tom thumb lettuce and the tame photographer tidied the path edges and pulled up the purple sprouting broccoli plants while I dug up the remainder of the leeks, to make way for the brassicas. I also watered the strawberries with some tomorite to encourage nice fat juicy fruit.

Up at Lakey Hill the tame photographer laid 9 paving stones as a foundation for the shed on Sunday and today we erected the shed. We haven't put the windows in yet, and the roof is very makeshift, but apart from that it looks good. We are planning on a corrugated iron roof which extends four foot on two sides to create a veranda effect. The only problem is that it is very hard to come by corrugated iron - if anyone out there knows where we can source some close to South London - please get in touch.

The blackcurrant bushes I planted a week ago look fine - well two of them do and I have hopes the third one will perk up soon. The dahlias are no progressing very fast, but the potatoes look good. I had a real binge on the bindweed, but I'm sure it will all be back by next weekend.

Goodness, how times flies! It's a month since I last posted an entry and lots has happened. The weather has improved, meaning I have been to the allotment a lot, and it has been the Easter holidays which has given me more time. Also, eldest son was home from university and encouraging me to visit the allotment.

Where shall I start? I guess, with the harvest. We have been eating purple sprouting broccoli for some time now, in fact I think today will be the last picking as it is all beginning to go to flower. It has been quite delicious and a totally satisfactory vegetable to grow. We are still picking leeks and spring onions but everything else from last year has finished, except for some spring cabbages which are still not ready to harvest. We have had the first rhubarb of this year - twice already so far, and the first thinnings of the radishes.

The two plots are both looking good - but Home Farm is really beginning to look like we mean business. I have sown red and green salad bowl lettuce and it looks almost ready to pick, the leeks are growing well and so are the iceberg lettuce and the tom thumb lettuce. The parsnips have germinated and the spinach and swiss chard are coming along fine. The onions - winter, sturon and red and the shallots and garlic are all looking good and the beetroot and carrots are taking off. I have sown peas, and some have germinated and others have not - I shall have to fill in the gaps with more seeds. The broad beans are growing, but do not look nearly as good as last year. The strawberries are in full flower, so I am hoping for a good harvest there. The gooseberries have fruit developing on them and I have netted them against the birds - we might even get a bowlful!
In my greenhouse I have three types of brussels sprouts, calabrese, kale, kohl rabi, courgettes, pumpkin, marrow, runner beans, french beans, cucumbers, sunflowers, and cabbage all growing away nicely, ready for transplanting into the alloment as soon as I have prepared to the ground for them.I also planted out my sweetpea seedlings so I'm hoping for a good show of flowers later on.
At Lakey Hill things are improving. Eldest son and I planted the potatoes just before Easter and they are now emerging and almost ready to be earthed up. This weekend I planted three blackcurrant bushes and four dahlias - an odd mixture, to be sure but it should look good. We are still digging and trying to removed as much bindweed as possible - but it is a neverending task. The grass at the top end of the plot had grown to knee height so the tame photographer and eldest son set to with a scythe and garden shears, and did a remarkably good job cutting it down. We will need to get hold of a strimmer, though to keep the grass at bay.Today we acquired a second hand garden shed for Lakey Hill. A friend of mine had one she no longer needed so the tame photographer and I dismantled it this morning and took it to the allotment. Next weekend we will try assembling it and we will be a two shed family (that is excluding the four sheds we have in the garden at home!).

Wow! It's a long time since I last posted an entry on my blog. Time seems to have sped past. The weather has not been kind, and we have been busy - however, I have managed to get up to the allotment most weekends so I will now do a fairly quick recap.

On Lakey Hill we have turned over the soil and weeds for about half the plot and begun to dig up any brambles outside the main patch at the back of the plot. I have been rather taken aback by the amount of bindweed root I have been uncovering - but hopefully, some serious digging will sort it all out eventually. I have also done a fine dig at one end of the plot and removed as much weed as I can find and it is now ready for the potatoes to go in next weekend! The rest still needs quite a lot of attention. Three of the trees on the plot are completely dead and will need to be pulled out shortly but the others are just about in blossom and hopefully will produce some fruit in the autumn. There is one bit of rhubarb which is looking a bit feeble at the moment. The tame photographer is planning a grand shed with a verandah around two sides for total sun catching - all he needs is the time to complete it.

Things on Home Farm are looking good as well. The purple sprouting broccoli is cropping really heavily at the moment. One neighbour told me last week that it was "Waitrose Quality"! What higher praise could you hope to achieve. And, incidentally, it is quite delicious as well as looking good. There are still leeks but not much else at the moment. The winter onions are doing well as is the garlic. I think the white onions are ok, but I can't remember seeing the red onions or shallots. I shall have a closer look next weekend. There are some spring onions ready to harvest that have been growing all winter. What else? The broad beans have not done well - only about half germinated but I have replaced the gaps with new seeds, so hopefully they will grow on. I have sowed radishes, swiss chard, spinach beet, leeks, parsnips and salad bowl lettuce, most of which has germinated. The parsnips and leeks haven't appeared yet, but they always take a bit longer. The spring cabbage I planted last winter is beginning to grow, so hopefully that will be ready in a month or so. My gooseberry bushes are looking good, the rhubarb is starting and the raspberries are also beginning to put on new growth - so all looks well.

Last weekend we turned the compost - and I was a bit surprised that it didn't look as good as I expected - but the turning and the warmer weather will probably bring it on quite quickly. We also tidied the shed as it was a terrible mess after the winter, and also a rodent (rat or squirrel) had helped itself to our bag of well rotted manure and spread it all over the floor of the shed. The manure now has to live in a bin outside the shed to keep it away from rodents and the shed has been left with an interesting aroma!

Well, that was a whistle stop tour of the last three weeks at the allotment - and hopefully the tame photographer will send me the pics soon so I can add them to the blog.

Spring is in the air

Finally, the weather has improved enough for some serious allotmenting.

On Monday, I met up with the allotment manager and he showed me where the boundaries are for the new plot. It is all a bit hit and miss, but when we did some digging this weekend, we did find several posts hidden the grass that were probably the original boundary markers. I started doing some digging, but I have to say it is very hard work. There is a horrible amount of bindweed in the ground, but most of it is large whitish roots quite near ground level so not too hard to see and remove. The one advantage of digging at this stage is that there is nothing in the ground to get in the way - you can just dig and not worry about other plants being disturbed.

This weekend the tame photographer joined me and together we managed a goodly chunk of digging - about half of the area we want to cultivate this year. I must say, without the tame photographer, the digging would take forever - once he gets going, he is a real power horse! This is only a preliminary dig - just turning the ground over. I will do a finer dig and weed removal later on.

The only other major work was planting two gooseberry bushes I got for Christmas. They have been installed at Home Farm as the ground at Lakey Hill (new plot) is not quite ready - also there is already one gooseberry bush at Home Farm so it seems sensible to keep them all in the same place. The existing gooseberry is showing some good buds and I hope the new ones will follow this one's excellent example and produce buds soon. I also managed quite a bit of weeding during the week. Home Farm is looking very spruce at the moment. We are still eating January King cabbages; they are delicous and I shall be growing them again next year. We still have leeks and it won't be long before we start on the sprouting broccoli. I really need to get the onions and shallots in, but it will have to wait until next week. We bought the onions and shallots from the allotment shop a couple of weeks ago.We also got our seed potatoes from the shop - which we didn't last year. Also, I think I need to sow a row of broad beans to go with the aqua dulce broad beans that are just beginning to grow. The garlic is growing nicely now after a winter of very little action.The tame photographer brought me home a large bag of compost so that I can get started on sowing seeds ready to plant out as soon as the weather improves. I can't wait to start using my new lean-to greenhouse - it will be a treat not having seed trays all over the house this year. I have just checked the potatoes and they are all beginning to chit nicely.

I have just realised that I never posted any pictures of the great snow we had at the beginning of February. The pics are mine and not the tame photographers - so please excuse them!The rest of the photos of this week's work will follow as soon as they arrive.

A New Plot

This week I signed the contract on my second 5rod plot. I hope I haven't bitten off more than I can chew, but I am really excited about the extra space so that I can have room for more crops. This new plot is at the other end of the site from my existing one and is situated at right angles to it, so that it gets the sun all day. It also seems to be less sheltered. It is slightly uphill and I know for a fact that there is no mares tail at that end of the site. However, a very brief dig today revealed plenty of bindweed root. At the moment about half the site has fruit trees on it, and there seems to be some rhubarb, and asparagus, I think. We shall see. It is quite overgrown, so it will be a challenge to bring it up the standard of our current plot. From the pictures below you can get an idea of the state of the plot.This is looking up the hill from the main path. Our plot is the one in the distance. It begins where you can see the shed on the left (that is not our shed but belongs to the plot next to ours). This is a more close up view, showing the state of the weeds - quite some digging to be done, me thinks!
These weird logs have been "planted" at the end of the site. They have holes drilled in them at intervals and some of them are filled with a wax plugs. I have no idea what they are for, and suggestions include some sort of insect haven, or a mushroom log - does anyone know? Please let me if know if you have any ideas. Otherwise, I'm afraid they will probably find their way onto the fire.And finally, a view from the end of the plot looking towards the path which is just the other side of the sheds that you can see in the distance.

My plan for the new plot is to use it for more permanent crops like artichokes and asparagus and more fruit - some currant bushes and perhaps a grape vine. I also thought it would be a good place to grow pumpkins, marrow and squash as they need so much room. I want to use Home Farm (existing plot) for most of the veg growing, not least because it is is better nick and I have an emotional attachment to it.

The allotment shop was open for business today following it's winter closure and I got my seed order. It feels as though spring is just around the corner. However, the weather is certainly doing its best to belie that! It was freezing there today. There was ice on the water tanks and at one point it began to snow. It was far too cold to do any work on the new plot (the wind was whistling straight up there) but back at Home Farm we did manage a little. I picked that last of the brussels sprouts and pulled up the plants. I then dug over the patch and the tame photographer collected some manure to mulch the bed with, to prepare it for potatoes later in the year. I then cut down the raspberry canes and the tame photographer collected yet more manure to mulch them. You can see the pruned raspberry canes on their way to the communal dump as I felt they would take too long to compost. Also, there is a lot of bindweed amongst them, including quite a lot of bindweed seed which I really do not need. Again, a very cursory dig revealed vast quantities of bindweed root. I really am going to have to make it my mission to curtail the stuff. I also dug up a parsnip. By this stage the cold was beginning to infiltrate every part of me, and some hours later I am still not completely warm.

An update on the state of Home Farm is as follows: the sprouting broccoli is almost ready to harvest, there are several healthy looking January King cabbages ready to harvest, as well as plenty of leeks and still a few parsnips. Above is one the beautiful January Kings. The onions are growing, but looking very chilly and the garlic looks fine (see below) and the spring onions are just about holding their own. The little spring cabbages are hanging on in there as well and I think there is some corn salad ready to be picked.

The broad beans have germinated and we have covered them with this shop bought netting. It looks a little poncey for the allotments, but it does the job, and in about half the time! Below is today's picture of Home Farm! Not bad for a freezing February day, if I say so myself. For Christmas I got two more gooseberry plants, but the weather has been so cold and wet I haven't been able to plant them, but maybe I shall get it done next weekend.

My birthday card

I have wanted to post this card that was made for me by my mother-in-law. My birthday was a couple of months ago, but this card was so wonderful that I had to share it.

The pictures to go with the last post

Here, finally are the photos that go with the previous post. Below you can see a recent harvest and the parsnip in all it's glory!This was almost a perfect specimen, only one straight root, and very tasty it was too. And the January King Cabbage and very fine it was!I forgot to mention in the blog that we spent one Saturday removing an old water tank from behind the shed so that we could use the space for our enlarged leaf mould collection. The water tank, albeit rather attractive in an old metal sort of way, was extremely heavy to shift, not least because it was full of soil, but move it we did, and the wheelbarrow even survived the experience. You can also see the new leaf mould container, which is now full to the top since our trip last weekend. Now for some Christmas presents; the edging shears in action and the pitchfork, both in silhouette and in action at the manure heap.










And finally, the storm kettle in action. You can see the Christmas present trug with a collection of twigs for the storm kettle, and if you look carefully, the new pair of green gardening gloves!