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.

The overgrown Raspberry bed’s demise

The overgrown Raspberry bed’s demise

The overgrown Raspberry bed’s demise is well under way! Just over a week ago I dug up the first 3 or 4 rows in this bed & afterwards I dug in horse manure & sprinkled a little chicken manure on top of it in the hope that it would help it rot down faster. I then covered the whole bed with soil improver – the name given to the composted gardening waste the local council collects from people’s homes.

This is composted on an industrial scale & reaches very high temps & is therefore sterile. When Gerry & I went to the place they do it there was an enormous mountain of the stuff for free collection by anyone. Every time we broke away some to shovel into bags you could see the steam rising & feel the heat it gave off! Even after a couple of days in the bags on the allotment it was still warm!

The overgrown Raspberry bed in September:

The overgrown Raspberry bed is being dug up to make way for other crops next year. I don’t believe they are worth keeping & anyway they occupy far too much space for a half allotment. They haven’t been looked after for years & are full of dead wood from previous years as well as tons of couch grass, which, as most people will know, is very invasive & is terrible to get rid of as the smallest piece will grow into another plant which will spread its roots everywhere as well after a few months!

Gerry also has two beds on his allotments (1 & 1/2) & this year I’ve eaten tons of them, (to the point I began to think my face must look like a Raspberry! LOL! ), & as I will continue to help him with them I don’t want any more on my new plot!

The Raspberry bed is roughly divided up into about 4 rows with rows of canes 3 or 4 wide. It looks as if originally about 4 rows were planted with a path between each but these rows were subdivided into 3 or 4 rows in each subdivision. As Raspberries make new canes alongside the originals there isn’t a very clear division between rows. The paths may have been made just by the previous tenant over years of walking alongside the rows, perhaps when he first used to tend them &/or when picking the fruit. When I took over the plot at the beginning of September there were a couple of fairly clear paths where it was obvious the grass had been trodden down fairly recently.

Raspberry bed in October – A start being made:

This is what the the bed looks like now! It’s covered in the black soil improver which I’ve put on as a mulch after soaking the soil, to kick start the decomposition process of the horse/chicken manure & to try to stop as many weed seeds as possible from germinating.

Raspberry bed in November – The battle continues

I spent the better part of 4 hours on the next bit of the bed today, 5th November. I started off with clearing as much of the top growth of Raspberry canes & Couch grass as I possibly could. Just that phase took more than an hour! Then I started to dig as much as possible of the roots out – a mammoth task! As the grass roots form a thick, almost impenetrable layer several inches thick it’s very difficult to dig them out & is a backbreaking exercise – even for someone with a healthy back & mine is by no means healthy! So it requires constant stopping for a breather while stretching my back. I also had to be very careful to lift each forkful with my legs rather than my back! I only managed to finish 3/4 of the bed, but then I’m in no great hurry as I have all winter in which to get the canes & grass dug out. I’m only doing it now because the mild weather is giving me time!

I’ve got rid of the rusty old barrel you’ll have seen in previous photos! I had hoped it was full of composted waste but no, it was mostly full of Couch grass roots & a few canes & tons of stones & a little soil. I dug out the grass & canes & tipped the remains on the ground to dig in!

An hour later:

On Monday I hope to finish digging out the roots in the last 1/4 of the bed so I can start to dig in the horse manure. I doubt I’ll have sufficient time on Monday to finish digging in the manure so that’s a job to finish off on Tuesday.

Time now to go home & refuel!

Early summer on the plot

Early summer on the plot

Summer put in the very briefest of appearances on Sunday & Monday 26-27th June. We reached around 30ºC on Monday! On the allotment it was so hot that you could see the plants wilting! Especially the Sunflowers but even the Beetroot & other plants, like the Potatoes in front of our shed, were wilting! I may not be a plant but I was wilting as well!

On Tuesday we had thunderstorms on & off for most of the day. After which the next few days saw much lower temps.

Gerry has 2 rows of Gooseberries on his plot. A row of 3 at the beginning of the plot & another half a dozen behind the shed. This year they are so laden with berries that the branches are bending over & touching the ground! I’ve already picked some 3 times for myself. Gerry has taken quite a few & we tell other people they can help themselves!

The 6 bushes behind the shed haven’t been watered in the 2 years I’ve helped Gerry on the plots. The 3 near the beginning got watered several times a couple of weeks ago.

I planted some French Marigolds & Tagetes amongst the Tomatoes as companion plants as they are supposed to repel Whitefly. I’ve since learnt that they attract them – away from the Tomatoes!

My Lettuce is now bolting! This one has flowers that will open any day now! Even so we have had many heads from them & everyone has commented on my giant Lettuces! They’ve been quite impressed! Yet I did nothing more than water them after I transplanted them! They have had no fertilizer nor compost or manure nor was that part of the plot treated in any way beforehand!

Lettuce bolting:

The bed of Tomato Mallorquin after tying in & removing sideshoots:

1st Early Potatoes Arran Pilot

My very first Cucumber in the greenhouse!

Onions from seed Alisa Craig:

Rocket 1st Early Potatoes:

The Potatoes are flowering at the top of the plot & they really look fantastic:

The seeds were sown on 28th May. Sunflower bed with wood chipping mulch. A lorry full of wood chipping came to the allotment field on Wednesday 29th June. I got a few barrow loads & covered this bed in them to a depth of a couple of inches! No more weeds in this bed!

Sunflower bed with wood chipping mulch:

This is how my Sweet Peppers looked before weeding:

This is how my Sweet Peppers looked after weeding:

First Black Currants of the year to be picked:

A week later:

Gooseberries:

2nd sowing of Beetroot Bolthardy harvested:

Onion sets Turbo:

The Onions I am growing from seed Alisa Craig:

Three Sisters planting:

As we come to the end of this update of the allotment I share with Gerry, I’m adding the last couple of photos of the plot as seen from inside our shed, they are taken about 2 weeks apart so as to get a feeling for the speed of developments down on the plot:

View from inside shed on 11th June:

View from inside shed on 27th June:

This last photo of this blog is a photo down the length of our allotment taken from the top & looking down to the bottom:

Our 1/2 plot is on the right from the Sweetpeas to the end. The half plot, up as far as the bin & the Sweetpeas, belongs to another lady & her daughter. On the left is a partial view of the whole plot that Gerry has.

Hope you find this blog interesting & I hope to post the next blog around the middle of July. Several more crops are being harvested & I will include them there.

Happy gardening to all.