It’s all go now that spring has sprung!

It’s all go now that spring has sprung!

As most of you will know that is the pure truth for us gardeners! Now that we also have the extra hour of light in the evening & the lengthening days when the sun is getting stronger & we notice the difference day by day we are desperate to get out & get our hands dirty!

I’ve had little to say about the allotments during the winter but that is now about to change. I will try to bring you up to date on what I’ve been doing over the winter & the helper who has been a real Godsend to me during the last month or so.

I hope to start my fortnightly blogs on the allotments I share with Gerry & my very own half allotment, Plot 12A.

How should I do it I wonder??? Should I make a weekly blog, alternating Gerry’s plots with Plot 12A, my own plot? Or should I “mix ‘n’ match” them both in the same fortnightly blogs. I think perhaps I’ll start this new season of blogs with the “mix ‘n’ match” approach as there is so much to mention.

Let’s make a start with my very own plot 12A as this has undergone the greatest transformation:

First a look at what Plot 12A looked like when I first took it over in September 2011:

The first 3 photos give you an idea of what work I had to contend with at the start & the state of the plot whose tenancy I took on in September 2011. This is just a quick look, month by month, of what I’ve done since. Please bear with me:

This first photo shows the first of the old Raspberry beds that I dug up as they were terribly overgrown & would never produce any decent crops in the future:

This 2nd photo is a view of the bed above now finished. It took me a long time because first I had to skim off the Couch grass or Twitch & the old Raspberry canes. Having done that I had to dig over the bed with a fork trying to remove as much as possible of the roots of both these plants. When that was complete I had to go back over the bed & add horse & chicken manure. Once that was done it was a case of raking it more or less level & then covering it with soil improver:

As Gerry was able to make several trips to get hold of horse manure & soil improver I dug the former in each bed & then, after covering the beds, I used soil improver to fill up the paths between beds making it much easier to access them without standing on the soil:

As my daughter was able to get hold of a couple of really big packing cases from the firm where she works & Gerry was able to bring them down to the plot I was able to start laying out the wooden boards to make up the raised beds I wanted to do:

Here is one of the beds after I had put in the temporary pegs to hold the boards in place as I went along:

Many of you will still recall the heavy snow & frosts we had in February. Well this is how my plot looked at that time. Snow stopped work:

At the beginning of March one of my brothers came down from Northants & stayed with us for some weeks. Thanks to his work on my allotment I was able to get an awful lot more work done than if he hadn’t have helped me. That allowed me to get my very first crop of new potatoes into the ground. He cut the hoops to size for me & even pushed them into the ground:

Finally here is my helper, Ken, as he was finishing off the remodelled compost heap. The compost bin has now been completed & the plot is practically finished.

That then has been a quick run through of the work that has been done on Plot 12A since September 2011 to March 2012.

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Gerry’s allotments Spring 2012

Now I shall add a few photos from Gerry’s allotments & a few comments.

Gerry dumped the soil conditioner he brought in his trailer here, at the very top of his plot. I’ve already removed a great deal of it in this photo but you can get an idea of what it is like:

This soil conditioner is made from the composted green material that the local council collects all over the county & which is composted on a site they have a couple of miles from Huntingdon, where we live. This is an industrial process & the resulting material is sterile & probably doesn’t contain nutrients for the plants but it makes an excellent mulch! It won’t allow weeds through either, well, at least not the annual ones. Most perennial weeds have been removed during the last few years I’ve worked on the plots with Gerry:

Gerry bought some new potatoes, ‘Rocket’, which are 1st Earlies & my brother, Ken, planted them for him:

At the beginning of March Gerry brought down some Broad beans which I put in the soil. I don’t know the name of the variety & he doesn’t remember! After planting them out I then covered the ground with soil conditioner:

I also planted some Broad beans, Aquadulce Claudia, of my own that I had received in a swap with a gardener on another forum where I also post. I planted them alongside Gerry’s as I want to compare how the plants do & the final yield we obtain from them:

At the end of March the Rhubarb alongside the shed is beginning to grow strongly & there was a nice clump of bright yellow Daffs. I thought they made a good photo opportunity & something to cheer up a rather dismal looking plot at the present moment:

A short time ago I bought a 2nd bag of seed potatoes. The first bag, ‘Rocket’, I put in on my own plot at the very beginning of March. These spuds are also 1st Earlies but they are called ‘Arran Pilot’. They have been planted a month after ‘Rocket’.

I used a very thick dibber to plant them in a bed filled with compost. After I finished putting them in I watered the soil back down over them. The compost & the soil were very dry in spite of some rain a few days before. After I had finished watering them in I covered the whole bed in a thick layer of soil conditioner which I hope will allow them to go through their growing period without further watering. I’m doing my very best to use as little water as possible this summer:

The Onion sets, ‘Sturon’, which we planted between Ken & myself in the bed just in front of the greenhouse, are now beginning to grow. I lost my seed onions, ‘Alisa Craig’, to a mouse that got into the GH & dug all the seedling out of the compost & left them to die on the surface of the compost one weekend. So I got some sets. I’ve also planted some sets in my plot & have another bag I must sow in the next few days:

Some of you may remember we have a couple of Fig trees growing on the allotments. As we have had late frosts for two years in a row during May I decided that this year I would try & do something to stop them getting frosted this year. So when Gerry brought down a couple of bags of horticultural fleece I thought I’d use it to cover the trees & hopefully stop them from getting frosted the following spring. That’s why they look like “wigwams”! The bed has been covered in soil conditioner to stop the weeds from coming up amongst the Raspberry canes.

View from the Shed

To finish this first blog of the new growing season I’m including one of my “traditional” photos of the “View from the Shed” that I try to end my blogs with:

Here then are some lovely Daffs that contrast so strongly with the rather dismal scene of the rest of the allotment as seen from the shed on a misty day!

Please leave comments on the blog below. *ALL* comments are welcome. Until next time, happy gardening to one & all.

Allotment 2011 – My second season!

Allotment 2011 – My second season!

My second season on the allotment is now getting underway. I have been down there on occasions during the winter but as I suffer from Reynard’s Syndrome, which causes poor circulation in the extremities, I find it difficult to spend time out in the cold as I lose all circulation in my toes & fingers & it can be very painful at times.

Anyway there is little that can be done down there during the winter. I did go down on the 20th of December & this is what I saw!

The whole allotment appears to be covered in snow – actually it’s hoar frost!

Here’s a reminder of autumn! A lovely pear tree in flaming red – didn’t half light up the dismal days back then! 🙂

I went down on Boxing Day 2010 for a few minutes – too cold to do anything! I wanted to have a look at how my plants in the greenhouse were holding up.

This is how the plot looked:

Buddelia before pruning & in full flower in the middle of July 2010:

Buddelia after pruning by Gerry:

I’m very impressed by the way the Lentils & Garbanzo beans (Chick peas) took all that hard frost & snow we had in December! Yet the poor Pinto beans succumbed at the very first whiff of frost! (I’ve deleted the photos of them that I put on here as we are now coming into spring & I don’t think anybody wants a reminder of what happens when a plant is killed by frost – we’ve all seen too many of them killed off during the winter).

The green manure looks like another victim of the cold winter. I had a look today at the bed (2nd March) but I can’t make out the shapes of the mustard leaves! Plenty of weeds now though!

These tiny little Lettuces “Tom Thumb” also survived the frosts & the snow but the rain eventually did away with them & I had to pull them up as they were rotting.

New Year 2011

Now let’s get into the New Year 2011!

Here’s snapshot of some of the things I had growing in the greenhouse while looking forward to another year on the plot.

Around Christmas I sowed some onion seeds. It’s the first time ever for me! Last year I grew onions from sets – again a first for me! They did very well. I hope the onions from seed do at least as well!

Here then are the very first seedlings to be transplanted & you will see that I’ve sown some more in the tray behind the seedlings:

Today, 2nd March, I planted all the seedlings into the soil on the allotment, you can see them in the photo below:

I put some Garlic cloves into the soil on the plot around Christmas time. The ground had thawed out a little so I made holes with a broomstick handle & dropped the cloves into the holes scraping some soil over the holes but without firming down as I thought I had made the holes too deep.

I later got some more Garlic but this time I planted them in trays in the greenhouse & this is what they looked like near the end of January:

A couple of weeks ago I planted them into the beds on the allotment.

The earlier sown ones have now come up as well & this photo shows them today:

They are in two beds but occupy only about a square meter, perhaps less:

I’ve planted the seedling onions in the same bed as the Garlic cloves but continuing on down from the cloves. Although I planted dozens of onion seedlings today I still couldn’t fill up the bed!

Below you can see the seed potatoes I’ve put out to chit on the greenhouse staging. The eyes are now just beginning to grow a fraction. I don’t have a more recent photo than this one of the day I put them out on the staging:

These are called “Rocket” & are first earlies. I saw they were highly praised by people growing them & who post on the BBC Gardening boards. When I went to Wilco’s to get a bag of seed potatoes I noticed these & remembered them from there & so I bought them. I’ve been told they have very nice BLUE flowers! I’ll be sure to take some photos when they come into flower!

I’m going to wait a couple of more weeks before planting them out. I see no advantage in putting them out now into cold, sodden soil – even if it does tend to dry out pretty quickly – I don’t want them rotting!

I’ve also sown a few seeds of the Green & Red Peppers my wife brought me back from Spain last year:

Red Peppers sown 15th February:

Another variety of Red Peppers:

I was astounded by the amount of seeds in each packet. The packet says there are 5 grammes of seed in each packet – that’s 100s of seeds in each packet! – quite literally! The seeds are loose, not in a foil envelope inside but the whole packet is made of foil with the picture & instructions printed on the outside.
The first packet I opened was the Lettuces & they spilt everywhere! I managed to get most of the seeds back into the packet but there must be thousands!

I managed to sow a few but they have also come up amongst my transplanted onions!:

Here is a photo of the seeds recently germinated – not sown, you will notice that I’ve tried to modify the caption on the photo but could only add on top!:

I also sowed some of the Tomato seeds brought back from Spain by my wife. Again I’ve 100s of seeds!

I looked at the trays today but none of them show any signs of germinating at present. Perhaps the temps are too low for the moment. I’ll give them another week or 10 days before I sow some more at home & put them in the airing cupboard to germinate!

To finish I’m going to put in a couple of photos of the new strawberry bed I made up last autumn & my “traditional” photo taken of the plot from the shed!

New Strawberry bed after the winter & in desperate need of weeding if we are to get any Strawberries this year!

After an hour or so of hard graft this is now what it looks like:

I shall now stay on top of it & this will be the last time it gets into such a state – at least while I look after it!
Last year when I started my series of fortnightly blogs I added a last photo of the view as I saw it from the shed. As a lot of people liked that I’ve decided I’d do the same this year – at least until August when the Raspberries will block the view down the plot.

Actually this is not the most recent photo ( I haven’t taken any more yet) as since taking it I have cut the Raspberry canes right back to soil level & cleaned up all the leaves & weeds from the bed. They are just now beginning to sprout once again. These are autumn fruiting canes.

Well that’s the end of this first instalment for this year! Hope you won’t find it boring, I’ve tried to make it interesting but your comments are most welcome.

Until next month then. Enjoy your new growth & the spring flowers.