End of the year on the allotment

December is the month when there are very few visits to the allotment. We go to pick  a cabbage or some leeks if they are ready and to cut some greenery for my Christmas door wreaths.

Everything is quieter and the pace is slower. There is no rush to get seeds sown and plants in the ground or weeding done. The leaves are now all fallen from the sycamore tree, we have swept them up and put them in the leaf bin. There is a lot of mud and water about because of the heavy rains, so not a good idea to work on the soil. On our few visits to the allotment we always feel it looks really sad, dark and gloomy.

 We have been so busy at home during the last 6 months, making a new garden, doing work on the house so our visits to the allotment haven't been as frequent as usual. It's not looking too bad though. On the last few visits we cleared away all the veg which was finished, weeded and spread a layer of manure on the surface and  planted the garlic. There is still some tidying up and weeding to be done, more compost or manure to put on the beds, the shed and little greenhouse both need cleaning out but I feel we have got most of the important things done for the time being.

I love this time of year on the allotment.  I love the clearing up process and putting the beds to rest for the winter.  There's a sense of slowing down and resting, but at the same time looking ahead to next year and planning. I have a few plans in my head and over the winter I will set them down on paper. I will be thinking about what to grow next year and any jobs which need doing. Mistakes may have been made, but I will try again or do something different.

The seasons come and go and now it's the season to slow down. The allotment will come back to life and will soon look fresh and green again.

Wishing all my followers a peaceful and happy New Year. If you are a gardener I wish you also a productive and bug free New Year.

Through the garden gate--November

If you've been following my blog posts about our new garden project you will know how we are struggling with wet clay soil. There has been quite a lot of rain in November and the garden is now very squelchy. Squelchy is a word I use often to describe our garden. The garden is a bit drab looking too as we haven't got many plants in yet. So not much colour about now in November.

The front garden looks better though.  The weigela  took on some lovely colours before its  leaves started to fall, and the hydrangea by the front door still has dark red flower heads just starting to go brown now. I'm hoping I'll be able to use some for Christmas flower arrangements.

This week I heard a lot of noise coming from a massive chaenomelese by the front gate and spotted lots of sparrows in there. This made me realise that  my bird feeding area is focused on the back garden, so I shall have to start putting food out in the front too.

Because there's not much colour in the back garden, I planted up a couple of tubs for autumn and winter colour.  I used cyclamen, trailing ivy, skimmia and a silvery leaved plant--I've no idea what it is but it looks good.

I've also been planting bulb pots with tete a tete, crocus, puschkinia and chionodoxa, so there should be a colourful display in the spring.

Thank you to Sarah at  Down by the Sea for hosting this monthly Through the Garden Gate post

Our new garden project 2--making plans

Over the last few months since we started working on our new garden, I've spent ages pouring over garden magazines and books on garden design. Although we knew some of the features we wanted in the garden, how to put them all together was difficult. The books said make a plan before you do anything else, so we measured the garden and made an outline plan of the shape.

Having assessed the soil and shape of the garden we knew we had a few problem areas. Clay soil, waterlogging and a sloping plot were not going to to be easy to deal with.  We thought we could see signs that there had once been borders around the perimeter of the plot because of the change in the grass and weeds. There were also some big bumps on the right hand side, an old rockery maybe?

A few weeks after we had moved in to the house, our daughter Sarah came up to visit for a weekend and was full of enthusiasm for getting started on the garden. So Sarah and our other daughter, Helen set to work digging out a border down the right hand side of the garden.  Sarah also drew up a garden design plan.  As I still hadn't done a plan of my own, I found this really helpful to form a picture in my mind as to how it could look. The soil on this side of the plot is easier to work as it doesn't have the drainage problems as that on the other side of the garden.

When Sarah had gone home I continued digging but once I reached the bottom end of the plot I encountered stones, lots of them. It was impossible to dig so I left it for a while.

We then started on the bottom of the garden digging out a bed along the fence. The soil here was really bad and filled with water whenever it rained. We bought grit, topsoil and farmyard manure to try to improve the drainage and soil structure.

I had brought a lot of plants from our old garden and I started to set them out along the newly dug out borders. I decided not to plant up yet as I kept changing my mind on where to put them. It did at least make the garden look a bit more colourful.

As Richard started digging along the bottom of the plot he reached that bottom corner with the stony area and we both decided that this was an impossible area to dig and we needed to make it into a feature of some sort. We decided to put some paving slabs down. First the area was levelled then a membrane was put down. This was topped with some gravel, then the paving slabs were put in place. We weren't sure at the time what we would put on this paved corner, but it looked quite good.

It has now become a bird feeding area. We bought a bird table, the bird bath and  a few potted plant arrangements have been put in place and it looks quite good. The birds like it.  At first we had a couple of magpies, later we spotted blue tits, a couple of sparrows and a blackbird. We now have starlings and a robin. The squirrel likes it too.

Our plans are flexible as we encounter problems, but we are progressing.

Our new garden project

When we moved into our new house nearly five months ago one of our priorities was to make the back garden look good.  Having a lovely garden is important to us. The garden in our previous house had been my pride and joy and we loved spending time there so we wanted to make this new garden into a space where we could sit and relax, and enjoy.  We still felt that we had enough energy in us to be able to create another garden, although we didn't want as big a garden as our last house had. Over the years we've created two gardens and two allotments so we're not afraid of hard work. Although we're much older now, so we didn't want to tackle anything too adventurous.

The new garden was a blank canvas, just a lawn. We thought it would be easy to dig out some borders and plant them up. A couple of seating areas for different times of the day would be nice, morning coffee in the sunshine on the paved area near the house and later in the day, sitting with a glass of wine over the other side of the garden in the late evening sunshine. I'd love a pergola with climbing plants,  a water feature and of course a shed.  

We thought about our budget which wasn't going to be very much. Being in our late sixties, early seventies we don't want a garden which is going to take years to develop, we want to enjoy it now. It's a bit like those garden makeover programmes on TV which provide instant gardens. The only instant colour and interest was from plants in pots which I had brought  from our old garden. I placed them around the garden where I thought they might eventually get planted and put some on the flagged area to add a bit of colour.

We soon found out that the garden has lots of problem areas. The  garden slopes down south west to the bottom and we noticed a number of  humps in the lawn, we wondered what those were. When we started work on digging out borders we found heavy clay soil. When it rains (and it has done a lot of raining this summer) the garden does not drain well. There were puddles down at the bottom of the garden and the lawn was very squelchy.

We've dealt with clay soil before in our first garden, so we had an idea of what to do. Digging a land drain and trying to break down the soil by incorporating plenty of bulky organic material was important and maybe building raised beds.  I have been making lists of plants which will grow in wet, heavy soils. There are lots of plans going around in my head and I need to put them down on paper.
This garden project is not going to be as easy as we first thought.

Through the garden gate--September

It's a month or two since I contributed to Sarah's 'Through the garden gate ' post, but things are moving on in our new garden, so I thought I would share a little bit of  it with you.

September and October are lovely months in the garden as the colours change. The trees beyond our garden are taking on their autumn colours and every day the leaves are changing from green to yellow or red. Our new garden is starting to look better as we spend time working on it. I have planted up borders and this month I have been so much enjoying seeing some colour. 

I bought a hydrangea paniculata 'Limelight'. It has lovely greeny white flowers which are now starting to take on some pink tones.

We discovered another local garden centre  recently which had a sale of perennial plants. I bought a lovely yellow/orange  crocosmia which has a dark ring in the centre. This is brightening up my new border at the moment and contrasts well with a dark red grass.

Also in the border I planted some hardy geraniums which I brought with me from our old garden when we moved house. I have no idea of their name, only that they have bright pink flowers. They have no flowers at this time of year but the foliage is starting to go red and goes well with the other plants around them, giving the border a lovely autumnal look. 

 In another bed I have planted a pink Japanese anemone. It has been brightening up the border for a few weeks now.

Our garden is a little bit sparse yet, but I know it will improve as plants grow and fill out the borders. There is a lot of work still to be done, but next year it will look much better.

Thanks to Sarah at 'Down by the Sea' for hosting this monthly post.

Where did summer go?

I've read so many gardening and allotment blogs recently where people have been struggling with time to get all the work done. And that makes me feel so much better about my own allotment, which has also been neglected because of my own busyness this summer.

With all the preparations for our house move in June followed by the settling in, unpacking boxes and organising building work to be done and planning a new garden project (more about that on another blog post).  I feel that I've missed out on summer this year. Trips to the allotment have all been a mad rush and only the bare essentials done. The weeds grew and started taking  over. My plans to sow successional rows of lettuce and radish didn't happen. Neither did the sowing of purple sprouting broccoli and spring cabbage.

Its not all doom and gloom though. Earlier in the year before I got too busy, I planted potatoes and onions. I sowed seeds--peas and beans, brassicas, sweetcorn, courgettes and flowers. And although I didn't get as much in the ground as I would normally, there have been some good harvests.

At the moment I'm still emptying potato bags, cutting climbing beans and the tomatoes are all over the greenhouse. The sweetcorn is now ready for picking, there are cabbages, kohl rabi, and climbing beans. The greenhouse is full of ripening tomatoes. I have also had enough green tomatoes to make some chutney. Peering through the weeds I can see brussels sprouts, flower sprouts, kale, leeks and beetroot. Plenty of stuff for the winter months.

Last weekend I took myself down to the allotment to do some weeding. I cleared away the sweet peas and weeded the bed. I finished off clearing away the peas and broad beans and weeded that and other beds too. There are still some massive weeds in the kale bed and cabbage beds, but that's for another day. Soon I should have some time to spare to get down and start the autumn clear up. I'm looking forward to that.

Blackberries down the lane

The blackberries started ripening early this year and there have been so many too. Last year I missed out on picking them down the allotment lane, by the time I got there everyone else had got there before me and there were none left. So this year needing to stock up my freezer supplies I was determined to get my share of them. Accompanied by my grandson, whenever we went down to the allotment, we finished our allotment work by walking down the lane to fill a box with blackberries. My grandson took his rake with him so he could pull down branches for me to pick. The best ones are always just out of reach. I was the one who got scratched filling my box, he just ate the ones he picked.

On the plot I've been picking blackcurrants, red currants and gooseberries. Luckily they are in a net cage which keeps the birds off, as I'd left it a bit late before I finally got around to picking them. But I still think I lost quite a lot through them dropping off.

I was pleased to get a few more red currants this year. The blueberries were a disappointment but I think again I'd left it late to pick and many had dropped off.

My fruit freezer is well filled up now and will keep us going in fruit for the coming year. Now I need to start thinking about making jams and fruit gins.

Pulling up the onions

The onions have had a lot to put up with this year.  Soon after planting the sets, the moles moved in, that must have been a bit traumatic for them being pushed up out of the soil before they were ready, but they seemed to recover and carried on growing.

Then as time went on the weeds arrived and took over. Now I know that onions don't like competing with weeds, they like their own space, but we were busy moving house and so the poor onions got neglected, but they continued to grow.

At this time of year it's now time to harvest the onions. All around me on the neighbouring allotments I can see racks of onions drying out in the sunshine. So I decided it was time to pull my onions up. I have to say that although I did try to do a little bit of weeding in the onion patch over the last few weeks, the weeds won. So when it came to pulling them up, I had great difficulty in finding them amongst the weeds. But I managed and I was amazed to find big onions.

I laid them out to dry in the sunshine on the greenhouse staging which we dragged out from its summer storage behind the shed and also in the cold frame.

And so, despite all the trauma of bad growing conditions, the onions have done well and seem as good as in previous years. I'm pleased with my harvest.

Clearing out the pond and bog garden

The allotment pond has been much neglected in the last few months and every time I have been down to the allotment recently I have looked and thought I really must do something about it. The plants in the boggy garden around the pond needed deadheading and the weeds were growing tall around them obscuring the pond. The pond itself was completely covered in pond weed so that I couldn't see if the tadpoles were still living in there.

My time on the allotment has been limited recently so the most important jobs have been getting vegetables in the ground and looking after them.  But I recently found myself fairly up to date with the jobs and having an hour to spare I decided to tackle the pond.

I started by weeding around the pond and deadheading the plants. The irises, trollius, candelabra primroses and marsh marigolds had all gone over, so they got cut back. But the lovely pink lythrum was flowering away and I was so pleased because I only planted it last year and then earlier this year decided I had planted it in the wrong place so decided to move it. At the time I wasn't sure if I had done the right thing, but it seems to like its new place.

The rodgersia has lovely red leaves, but is still quite small. This plant should grow really tall when it gets more established.

Once the weeding and deadheading had been done I could find my way to the pond and using a small metal tea strainer I scooped the pond weed off the surface of the pond, leaving it on the stones at the side so that any little water creatures could get themselves back into the pond easily.

 I put this water soldier in a few months ago.  When I bought it from the garden centre it was quite small and I nearly bought a couple more.  I'm so glad I didn't, it has grown quite big and I have since heard that it can be quite invasive and may not be suitable in a small pond. So I will watch it carefully.

The pond and bog garden looked much better after this tidy up and peering into the water I could see that the tadpoles were still there swimming around. I was even more delighted when I spotted two huge frogs next to the pond and when I moved and disturbed them they both took a big leap into the pond and disappeared. At least I know there is plenty of wildlife in there.

Competing with moles

When we first took the allotment on  4 years ago we soon became aware that there was a mole on the plot. As well as finding little piles of soil around the plot we also saw the earth moving.  That was quite weird.  Most of the time  the piles of soil were at the edges of paths and next to the shed so we weren't too bothered.  But the mole has now decided to take over one of the big beds where this year I have been growing onions.

I often used to find soft spots in the bed as I was planting or weeding and sometimes there would be a mole hill, but never any damage to plants. This year I have been growing onions in the bed and 

soon  after I planted them I found some of them had been disturbed by the mole. After a while I decided to admit defeat as more mole hills appeared in the bed. I thought that was the end of the onions. But remarkably they seem to have survived and they have been swelling nicely the last few weeks.

This week I have planted the first lot of leeks. I always plant one lot at this time and another lot after the onions have been lifted. The first lot are usually ready for harvesting in the autumn and the others are ready after Christmas.

I always enjoy planting leeks, making a hole with the dibber, popping in the leek seedling and then topping up the hole with water. This year though it has been quite a challenge as the bed is now riddled with underground mole tracks and the ground is quite soft in places. Some of the planting holes must have gone down a long way underground as when I topped up with water the water just went down and down and down. I wonder how the mole felt about having his home flooded!  One leek seedling disappeared underground with the water. Well despite all the mole holes I still managed to plant the leeks, carefully choosing firmer ground. I just hope they don't get dug up.