January progress

January is not a good month for getting work done on the allotment. Snow and ice is often the problem, this month is has been rain and wind.  But there have been bright spells.  We've watched the weather forecasts to decide if it's been safe to go to the allotment for an hour or two.  We've managed that a few times this month and every little helps.

At the start of the month the job was to tidy up some of the rubbish still lying around on plot 8. This was mainly stuff cleared out of the old shed and wood from the demolishing of the shed. We spent a few fine days sorting through the rubbish, deciding what we wanted to keep (it might come in useful one day). We ended up with several bags of glass, plastic, metal and general rubbish which went to the local recycling centre. There is now a pile of wood waiting for the right day to have a bonfire and stacked up at the back of the shed out of the way is all the wood which we want to keep. There's always something to be made or repaired on an allotment so it's useful to have some decent pieces of wood.

We gained a few useful items as well as wood--lots of plant pots, a folding wooden garden chair, several sheets of membrane fabric, loads and loads of tubular poles and connectors which were probably once assembled as grow houses and staging. One day we will sort through them and see if we can make anything with them. It will be quite a puzzle I'm sure.

I started to clear the weeds from the new beds which had been dug over at the end of the summer. There's still lots of  weeding to be done but it's a start.

The next job was to top the raised beds on plot 10b with composted manure. This was a job we started in the autumn but stopped as Christmas took over. First job was the rhubarb bed then the blackcurrant and gooseberry bed. Finally the old roots bed which will have peas and beans in later this year. The raised beds on plot 10b now look very tidy.

The polytunnel was in need of some attention and I made a start on cleaning the inside with Algon.  I then  tackled the borders which are heavy clay soil.  I topped the beds with some manure and compost.

In the meantime Richard has made a start on building the path up to the polytunnel. This area has been causing some problems in wet weather because the soil is clay and becomes very wet and slippery. He's making some long steps up the slight slope. So far he has made a wooden frame (using our supply of spare wood of course) and is now filling in with hardcore before the final gravel topping.

 

As we come to the end of the month, the weather is not just rainy but extremely cold too. I'm glad we made the most of the fine days to get those jobs done.

Growing plans

My daughter Helen and I have been thinking about what we want to grow on our allotments this year. When making our plans we thought about what mistakes were made last year, what didn't do well and why, what we thought was a waste of time or what we didn't like.

We had a few gluts last year, so we want to make sure we don't grow too much of some things. We get a bit greedy sometimes faced with a tray of seedlings and instead of planting just the healthiest ones we always want to plant them all. That's our downfall. Like the many little gem lettuces which went to seed in the hot weather. The kale grew well and still is doing, but again we put too many plants in. And the chard, well that grew enormous and once more there were too many planted. We couldn't keep up with it. Beetroot was another which we couldn't keep up with, as well as turnips which grew absolutely massive in a short space of time. I should have picked them as baby turnips.

We definitely won't be growing runner beans again. It was my 7 year old grandson who insisted that was what he wanted to grow. They grew up into the sky, he was really pleased, but we prefer the stringless French beans which we also grew. So as you can imagine we were overrun with beans. I know we could have frozen them, but we ran out of freezer space, it was full of allotment fruit. We'll have to steer him towards growing something different this year.

Other mistakes were the purple podded peas. It wasn't a mistake to grow them, we loved the taste and colour of them, but we didn't realise how tall they grow. They were flopping about all over the place. So this year we will put up a better support frame. The cabbages were great, given to us by an allotment neighbour. But I forgot to sow more for the autumn and winter. We need to think ahead and grow more at intervals.

So for our first proper year of allotment growing we made a few mistakes. This year we will grow less of  some things but maybe try some new types of vegetables. I'd like to try celeriac again, I grew it when we had our starter plot a few years ago, but it didn't do well. We thought we might also try growing some baby sweet corn.

Our seeds, ordered through the allotment society,  have arrived and I can't wait to get sowing them. As for the spare seedlings, well we can always give them away or put them on the compost heap.

Soup and silence

Food is becoming quite important to us at the allotment. Yes I know it's important because we grow it, but I mean the food we take to keep us going for a long day of digging and hard slog.  I've written about food before so I may be in danger of repeating myself, but the right food can make the day so much better.

Cake is essential. Nothing sticky or messy--a wholesome fruit cake or banana loaf is ideal. The sort of thing you can munch on whilst wandering around looking how your seedlings are doing or counting the caterpillars on the brassicas or admiring the sweet peas.

Last week we had lunch down there. I took soup--home made leek and potato--made with our allotment leeks. It was perfect for a chilly day. We sat just outside our home made shed in the winter sunshine, enjoying the soup, watching the long tailed tits on the fence and listening to the silence. It was all very good, so good I just had to tell you about it.

A bit of fair weather gardening

 The other day one of our allotment neighbours jokingly described us as fair weather gardeners.  It was a lovely day and we'd not been down there for ages because of the bad weather except to pull up a few veg and feed the allotment cat.  But there's not much to do on the allotment when the weather is as wet as it has been lately. We can't dig because the soil is wet and sticky. We can't even go in the polytunnel at the moment because the path up to it is too muddy and slippery.

I suppose we are fair weather gardeners really. We watch the weather forecasts avidly and quite often plan the week, looking for the days when it is expected to be fine and we will be able to go down to the plot.  I'm sure most gardeners are the same.

Once Christmas was over, fired with the enthusiasm of the new year I was longing to get down to the allotment. Well we were lucky last week, we had some good sunny spells.

One of the first jobs on our list planned for the allotments this month was to manure the beds.  Being fairly new allotments they still need plenty of improvement to the soil. Some of them got done last autumn, but we didn't manage to finish them before Christmas.

We have a supply of manure delivered to the allotments every week from a nearby stables.  I was really pleased to see that the bin which we had filled last year was well rotted down, so I set to work shovelling and barrowing.  I started on the rhubarb bed, where there are signs of new growth. Then I did the fruit beds and finally some of the vegetable beds.  Some of the beds still have winter veg growing, so they didn't get done and I didn't cover the ones where we plan to grow root crops this year. 

That was plot 10b done, plot 8 needs weeding and manuring yet, but I was pleased with the work done, it all looks much tidier.

Path plans

I think it's going to be the year of the paths on our allotments, plots10b and 8. When we took on plot 8 last year some of our plans for plot 10b got put on hold. These were the remaining paths around the top raised beds and the path up to the polytunnel (see picture below).

During this winter we realised how important it is to get these done as we have all slipped on the mud recently and the various planks which have been thrown down to act as temporary paths have got slimy with moss. Helen and I are reluctant to go anywhere near the polytunnel at the moment during this damp weather, so it's becoming a matter of urgency to get the work done.

Over on plot 8 we want a path from the entrance gate up to the top of the plot ( see above picture), another around the shed and more around the growing areas.

Richard has a plan in mind for the path up to the polytunnel which involves steps as it is on a slight slope. Hopefully he will be able to build all of these with materials we have collected and which are freely available on our plot. The least money spent the better. And the great thing about allotment life is that there is always someone with some spare wood, paving flags or anything else. We all help each other out.

Getting myself together

I've been finding it difficult to get back into blogging.  It all sort of fizzled out in December. But then December is such a busy month and the time just after Christmas is a time when I get a bit lazy, eat too much, drink too much, get up late and seem to lose my energy.

I'm also aware that having been blogging for nearly two years now I am in danger of repeating myself. So I've been running out of ideas of new things to blog about.

But now the decorations are down at last and Christmas has been banished to the attic for another year. The red candles and vases of holly have been replaced with pots of white hyacinths and tete a tete narcissi. I'm liking them a lot, they are so simple and fresh looking after all that sparkle and colour of Christmas. They make me think of spring and give me lots to look forward to.

Now we are into the new year I'm feeling more enthusiastic and want to be doing things. I want to be working in the garden or on the allotment, it just needs to stop raining so I can get out there without slipping and sliding about in all the mud. So I'm starting to get myself together and think about our plans for the allotment this year. I'll tell you about those on another blog.