Busy Day down 'lottie

Sun's out birds are singing, and I spent most of my time digging.

But before that got a few more seeds in the propagator, Pumpkin, Courgettes, and Squash all sown and nice and warm in the Brewshed.

 Then a walk in the sunshine down to the allotment. To start the harder part of the day.

Dug over the bed ready for the Pumpkin,Squash, & Courgettes, smashed up the lumps of earth and raked it over. Planted two rows of early direct sown Courgettes (All Green Bush) two seeds to a hole and watered them in.

Then onto the Hop plants, they are doing quite well, winding their way up the strings. I have now pruned the hops back to 2 bines per line, so 6 bines per plant. I hope that 2 bines for each line is not going to be too crowded.



Gave them a good watering with added Super Tomato food (Free with a Sutton's catalogue) after a good old weeding.

Weeded around all of the plot 119's paths, all around all of the fruit, felt like I was working on a hectare not a standard allotment plot. Seemed to take forever.

Greenhouse next, check on the ol' Chillies after a cold snap last night. The Telimena sweet peppers didn't like the cold and are looking a bit sorry for themselves but all the others are doing fine, even with a -2.5'c cold snap.  I have now covered the Telimena's with a layer of fleece to try and save them.



Weeded and watered the Elephant garlic and Solent Whites.

They seem to be holding up okay after all the floods and now a very dry spell. I really hope we get a good crop from these as I would like to keep hold of quite a few of the cloves for replanting next year if possible. We will save a few quid if they do, always a bonus, mind you, we ended up eating all of last years crop.

Back to the digging!! Where the digger compacted the area on plot 120 the whole section is now like concrete.

Started digging a new veg bed, very hard going indeed and it is also a bit stinky from all the rotting material that was plowed in. Should be good for Jane's runners when they get planted.

It's all looking a lot better now on 120, I still need to rake and smash quite a few more clumps of solid earth, but it's almost ready for the climbing beans that Jane is going to direct sow.

Finished my 5 hour allotment session with a bit of hoeing and weeding around the onions, got a good chunk of it all done, I've got about a third of the onion patch do finish, but I had to call it a day due to running out of fluids and getting a little sunburnt.

The allotment is looking loads better, and I feel better being down there again after all the troubles, my enthusiasm has returned.

Afternoon in the Sunshine

Day off today and spent the afternoon up at Plot 69, a beautiful day, out in a t-shirt and soaking up the sun.  Onions and shallots are doing very well, took their protective wire mesh off now that the threat of birds pulling them up has gone.  All nice and firmly rooted.  Excuse the weeds on the path in the foreground, the paths are a bit of a mess still, some we have re-seeded but they aren't brilliant.  Wanted to concentrate on getting the veg sorted first.

 

So, today I planted a few broad beans in the spots where some hadn't come up,  will provide some more beans later in the season too.  Then planted some Chantenay carrots and another row of beetroot in the root veg bed.  Enough room left for the parsnips (currently growing really well in the greenhouse at home) and the celariac (growing slowly but surely on the kitchen windowsill).   Not impressed with the Autumn King carrots I had planted there a while ago, not a sign of one shoot, yet the ones I planted at home later have all emerged.  Amazing how things can be so different in two different places.  Then I planted a couple of rows of perpetual spinach and a couple of purple sprouting broccoli.  Used the protection from the onions to keep the marauding predators off..... an allotment neighbour said the local badgers love to roll around in newly dug earth.... and there was certainly a few badger poos around to prove it!  Warning... here comes a REALLY boring photo!

Then to finish off, a long row in the 2nd brassica bed of green rhubarb chard.  Just one row as I will do another in a few weeks and stagger it a bit.  And we have the rainbow chard to go on our other plot and dont want chard with every meal forever more!  The only disappointment so far is the garlic, growing really well at home but only had 3 come up here..... not sure why, maybe not cold enough to get them started.

Gently Ticking Over

Had a day off today so split the day between the two plots.  Plot 69 is ticking along quite nicely, few carrots poking their heads up, the broad beans I direct sowed are also being brave.  Onions and shallots are doing very well.  And the beetroot is emerging.

Gave the whole site a hoe, amazing how quickly the weeds come up after a week of sunshine then a day of rain!  Yes, rain!  We had rain!  Nice to see the ground all damp without the effort of watering!   Then over to Plot 119 and not very happy......  we last went on Saturday and since then our two big water butts have gone, as has some of the greenhouse staging and a few other bits and pieces.  All we can put it down to is the previous tenants coming to take some bits away.  Wish they had left a note or something to let us know.  We took over the plot a couple of weeks ago and it looks almost fully cultivated now, we cleared all the rubbish away (a whole car full) and had the allotment looking pretty good, bearing in mind it was in a bit of a state before.  No sign of the previous tenants all that time, then what must have been on their final tenancy day I think they must have come down to take the bits they wanted.  If it was me, I would have seen that someone had taken over the plot and just left them to it, especially as we were allowed to have  it for 2 weeks now.  People can be funny....  So now we have to find some water butts.  Not impressed.  And then to top it all, 3 of my tomato plants were in a draught in the poly tunnel and died.  As they forecast some cold weather now and my greenhouse at home isn't very warm I decided to take all my other tomato plants down to the proper greenhouse on 119.  Always really warm in there, even when the weather is cold, seems to retain its heat really well.  Also took down the rest of the grow bags.

Then managed to get a bit more digging in before it started to rain again, only this last little corner to do now.  Dug up some fruit bushes and transplanted them, not sure what they are yet, will have to wait and see when they fruit!

Wet and Soggy Raised Beds

Too wet to do anything on the allotment today so just pottered around at home checking on all the seedlings, got some cauliflowers up now and one celariac!  However, the raised beds are looking very sad, it was all a bit of an experiment as we had never done it before and the winter hasnt been too kind to our little plants.

Our broad beans are leggy, think they needed more light, our over winter peas are hardly worth bothering with and the winter carrots have been the same size since about November!  But the onions are doing ok, and the garlic is very respectable, and the spring greens are good, we have eaten quite a few of them already and they taste amazing and are the most incredible colour when cooked.  As you can see from one of the photos though, the beds are quite waterlogged, they are full of good quality top soil and compost but they are sitting on very heavy clay soil and I dont think they are draining particularly well.  Thinking we might have to move them, but as the whole garden is heavy soil I dont know that it would make much difference, even the lawn is waterlogged.



 

Waterlogged 'Aquadulce Claudia' broad beans and sad little Meteor peas who didnt like the cold

 



 

The slowest growing carrots in the world!  Onions are ok, and garlic too, planted in the gaps between the beds

 



Very pleased with our spring greens!  Will be having some more with our dinner tonight!  When they are all gone, this bed will be prepared for salad.