Time to start sowing and planting

We've spent a lot of time on the allotment over the last few weeks, with all the good weather that's been around it was best to make the most of it.

The winter jobs are now done and beds are ready for sowing and planting. The first things to plant were the onion sets and it was so good to see veg growing at last. 

The first early potatoes (Rocket) were planted in bags and soon I will be planting the second earlies (Charlotte). Broad beans which I had started off indoors in cardboard tubes were planted last week followed by a double row sowed straight into the ground.

There are a lot of weed seedlings from the sycamore tree all over the allotment and what a nuisance they are. I am constantly pulling them out. I've been taking the weed membrane off the beds which I covered in the winter and what did I find underneath? More of these weeds! So much for weed membrane. 

As I've taken off the membrane I've been gradually hoeing off these weeds. Last week after clearing what is going to be the salad bed I sowed lettuce, radish and spring onion.

The greenhouse is filling up with trays of seedlings. I cleaned out the two cold frames so they are now ready for hardening off plants. 

We bought some wood chippings a few weeks ago from a local log supplier for a very reasonable price. We often get them dumped at the allotment site for everyone to help themselves to, but there hadn't been any for a while, of course after we had bought some they started being dumped again! Never mind at least we didn't have to share ours and they were good quality. So we have managed to cover most of the areas on our plot which needed them with chippings and it looks really tidy now. 

Richard has been busy dismantling the little greenhouse which we decided to move to our garden. It's quite small and will fit in a small corner of the patio. It will make it easier for me having a greenhouse at home as well as the allotment so I can pop out to water seedlings without having to keep going down to the allotment. I will also be able to grow two or three tomato plants there.

There's a nice big space left where it was which we have covered with wood chippings. I think it will become a storage area and perhaps a place for pots of flowers and potato bags.

This rusty old wheelbarrow was on the allotment when we took over and I've been wanting to use it as a planter but never had enough room. It's been propped up under the hedge for years. I think I will be able to use it at last. I'm going to grow flowers in it.

After the rain, the harvesting

We've continued to be busy with allotment jobs. I've kept wondering when will we ever get to the end of them. The answer if course is that you never do, there will always be plenty if work to do. 

We have at last got everything in the ground for now which needs to be planted and sown. I am doing successional sowing with salad crops, lettuce, radish, spring onions, beetroot. I have sown bulb fennel again, although I keep saying I won't. It doesn't grow well for me. After planting  kale, purple sprouting broccoli and more cabbage the beds are full. I am looking for space to plant some more leeks in a couple of weeks.

The tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers and aubergines in the greenhouses are doing well. There are plenty of tomatoes to ripen and we are already picking cucumbers. I offered a new plot holder down the lane my spare tomato plants but she didn't need any. It was nice to get to know her and her friend and I came away with two melon plants.  With two already very full greenhouses I didn't know how I was going to squeeze them in, but I did and I hope they will be ok. I've never grown melons before, so that will be interesting.

After a really long dry spell we finally got the rain we wanted. The water butts got filled up and it was good though to have a break from allotment jobs while it was raining. Now we are harvesting a lot of our produce, potatoes, lettuce, cucumber, spring onions, kale, courgettes, peas and broad beans. Lovely!

A sunny afternoon planting

The last couple of weeks we've been busy at home. With all the rainy weather we decided to tackle some much needed decorating. I popped down to the allotment for a quick visit every couple of days to check the greenhouse plants and on one or two dry days I left Richard doing the decorating while I could catch up on some weeding .  It doesn't take long for weeds to take over. 

It looks now like we're in for a spell of better weather. Yesterday we went to catch up on jobs, the weather was warm, dry and sunny and it was really lovely to be outside again doing jobs. Now at the end of May there's plenty to do. The cold frame is full of plants waiting to be planted. 

I started by planting a block of sweetcorn -- 16 plants in the block. 

In the next bed I planted some sunflowers.  This bed has peas and broad beans in one half and will have some brassicas at the other end with the sunflowers in the middle.

The greenhouses are full of plants too. The big greenhouse is mostly full of the tomatoes which are now ready to go in their final big pots. We moved out some of the staging to make room and  filled the pots with compost.  I have set the tomato plants out where they are going to go and as I was running out of time I will plant them next time we go. 

In the little greenhouse are flower seedlings growing and also the cucumbers. I planted four cucumber plants into big pots-- 2 'Louisa' and 2 'Passandra'. I grew these last year and they were good.

Checking around the plot I could see that the first lot of broad beans now have flowers. The first lot of peas which were started off in guttering in the greenhouse are doing well, but the second sowing which was done directly into the ground are not looking good with poor germination and nibbled leaves. I'm blaming the pigeons for the nibbled leaves although it could also be weevils. But the pigeons hang about that area quite a lot and are a nuisance on the plot. Fortunately I grew another lot of peas in the greenhouse which are ready for planting out now. I will plant these in the gaps in that row and cover them with netting. The beetroot is also looking like its been nibbled and I wonder if that is the pigeons again. More netting needed, I think.

The plot is looking green now with plenty growing.  There is so much to do, so let's hope this better weather will stay for a while.

Through the Garden Gate--April

 The weather in April has been a mixture of heavy showers and sunshine. So it's been a case of making the most of those lovely sunny days and getting out into the garden or down the allotment.

We have been really busy, continuing to develop our new garden and I have been enjoying planting up new beds. It's lovely that we are starting to see more colour in the beds now. To think that when we moved into our house last June, the back garden was just grass. What a difference we can see now.

Richard is building a path around the lawn and although it is nowhere near finished yet we can see it is going to look really good and will be much easier for working on the borders.

We have been carefully watching the growth of all the shrubs and trees we planted in the autumn, hoping that they survived the cold weather. They are now all in bud which is a relief. The Amelanchier is the first to put on a show,  it is now full of blossom and is looking lovely.

Early in April I planted up the border at the side of the house, I want plants to tumble over onto the path. I have planted alchemilla mollis and lavender at the front to edge the path and lupins, sedum, campanula, monarda, salvia further back with grasses dotted about in between.

   

        

We love to sit at our garden table in the back garden having a break from our work with a cup of tea and from here we can  see how the borders are developing.

The colour at the moment in the borders is from the bergenia, cowslips, pulmonaria and Brunnera. In my containers there are violas and tulips. I can see buds on the hardy geraniums and alliums. In a week or two they will be bursting into life bringing more colour. There is so much to look forward to. 

I am linking this post to Sarah's monthly 'Through the Garden Gate' blog at Down by the Sea. 

Through the garden gate--March

The weather has not been very Spring like in March and I know we are all longing for some warmer days with more sunshine. No more snow please!  We have been working on our new garden whenever we can but we have had so much rain.  We get so disheartened when it rains hard and the bottom beds fill with water, but we can see progress. The spring bulbs which I planted weeks ago have brought some colour to the borders.

        

I have been enjoying the Hellebores which I planted. Some of them are a lovely dark red colour, one of them is called 'Anna's Red'. I bought it because my granddaughter is called Anna and she has red hair. I just had to have it! I łove plants which for different reasons remind me of people I know. I wonder now if I should look out for plants which are named after my other grandchildren?

On my potting bench is a collection of small pots of spring bulbs--tete a tete daffodils, yellow and purple crocus, blue Chionodoxa and Pushkinia. It's a lovely display of colour. I have planted some containers of violas too. They are around the garden in different places-- the garden table, outside the kitchen door.

Under the Weigela in the front garden are some bulbs which in  last month's 'Through the garden gate' blog were covered in snow. They are looking much more cheerful now and I have added some lavender and Heucheras to the front of the border. 

This is a border which is tucked away and can get forgotten, but it does get quite a bit of sun. I cut the Weigela back last year when we moved into our new house to make some planting space underneath. It will be good to have a bit more colour there this year.

I am pleased to say that my ankle is recovering well and I am able to get about the garden more, I can even use the spade and fork now, so as soon as the weather is better I will be doing much more planting in the garden beds.

I am linking this post to Sarah's blog at 'Down by the Sea' for her monthly 'Through the Garden Gate' post.

Tomatoes are planted up

There is so much to be done on the allotment now. I go down there to do certain jobs and then find there are so many other jobs also need doing.

The tomato plants have been growing well and I have been potting them on into larger pots until it was time to plant them up into their final planting positions.

This year I have grown five varieties-- Moneymaker, Ailsa Craig, Shirley, Gardeners' Delight and Red Cherry.  Last weekend I potted them up into big pots in the greenhouse.  We have had to move out some of the staging in order to make room for them and as I gradually move seedlings to the cold frame I will be able to move out more of the staging to make room for more pots.

I used a mix of home made compost and multipurpose compost to pot them up into big pots.

They are looking really good and strong and I am so looking forward to picking the first tomatoes. Eating them straight from the plant is probably the best way of enjoying them, but I love to make chutneys and soup too.

Planting time

After what seemed like weeks of continuous rain, the weather finally perked up and it was so good to get down to the allotment at last to get important jobs done. April is a busy time on the allotment and it's important to get seeds started off and plants in the ground.

The first job I wanted to do was get the early peas and broad beans planted. I had started these off in the greenhouse weeks ago. The broad beans were grown in cardboard tubes and the peas in lengths of guttering. They were both looking really healthy and strong. Last year when I did the peas in gutters I had quite a poor germination. So this year I sowed  more seeds in the guttering. The variety is Douce Provence, one I have not grown before. As you might expect, this year it looked like 100% germination, so there were an awful lot of pea seedlings!  They were sown in three short lengths of guttering which fitted easily in the greenhouse. 

The pea and bean bed had been well prepared in the autumn with a layer of manure. A few weeks ago I weeded and hoed the bed and applied some blood, fish and bone fertiliser.  So I was all ready to start. I made a trench about a couple of inches deep and six inches wide, slid the pea seedlings out of the guttering directly into the trench, then tucked them in carefully. In past years I used long lengths of gutter and found it difficult to slide them out, but using the shorter lengths was much easier and because I had sown so many peas they had rooted well together.

Next was the broad beans which I planted about four inches apart still in the cardboard tubes which will rot down in time. I had enough to plant a double row, about ten inches apart. There are two  varieties, The Sutton and Express, which I also grew last year. The peas and beans will need some support and I will do that soon before they start growing properly.

That was enough work for one afternoon and there's still plenty to do, but it's good to see things growing in the ground again.

At last the leeks are planted

One of my favourite winter vegetables is leeks and I like to grow as many as I can. We've usually had a good lot of leeks to harvest down at the allotment, but last  year they didn't do at all well. So I'm determined to do better this year.

We have been planting leeks for a few weeks now as space has become available. The first lot were planted at the end of the onion bed in late May, another lot were planted a few weeks later in what I call the spare bed which is not part of the plant rotation. The last lot were planted this week.

I łove planting leeks, it's so different from planting other vegetables. Make a planting hole with a dibber, pop the leek plant in then fill the hole up with water. Easy but back breaking! It's also a job which the grandchildren enjoy doing.

I sowed two varieties earlier in the year-- Autumn Mammoth and Blauwgroene Winter Bandit. Two problems we have with our leeks are bolting and rust. Blauwgroene claims to have some resistance to both of these problems so I am hoping for better results this year.

All the leeks are planted now, and the first lot are doing well. I am now dreaming of all those lovely leek dishes, soups, cheesy vegetable bakes, stir fries and more.