Time to get busy

It's that time of year when suddenly everything gets really busy on the allotment. So many things to do, veg plants to get planted, seeds to sow, seedlings to transplant. You just think you've caught up when you notice something else needs doing.

Recently at the allotment I've been busy weeding, trying to get the sycamore seedlings out which are growing along the plot boundaries and up at the top of the plot. There are so many they're almost taking over. I was doing really well and quite enjoying getting areas cleared when I noticed the cabbage plants in the cold frame were getting quite big and thought I'd better get them planted before they got too big for their pots.

Then there were the peas which I'd started off in gutters, they seemed to shoot up while my back was turned and were flopping over, so in the ground they went with twiggy sticks to support them. I'd already sown some straight into the ground a few weeks earlier and these were looking a bit nibbled. Weevils or pigeons? I don't know but we decided to net all the peas in case it was pigeons. That was last week and the peas from the gutters don't seem to have been affected. The others are growing well too. 

Richard had the first of his cataract operations just over two weeks ago and he has to avoid any lifting, bending or strenuous work for a few weeks. So no heavy allotment work for a while. He still comes to the plot with me, usually just sitting or helping me with any simple jobs. He sowed some cucumber, courgette and sweetcorn seeds in pots. And he's potted on the tomato plants. It's not the sort of thing he does as he prefers to do maintenance type of jobs, building, mending or heavy work, but it's all a great help to me.  He decided not to attempt transplanting any delicate seedlings as he felt he might be a bit heavy handed.  As he walks around or sits watching me work he see jobs which he plans to do as soon as he is able to. I saw him with his tape measure the other day which made me think he's planning something. 

I've also been planting strawberries. All our strawberries are grown in containers. I'd noticed that the plants in two of the tubs had not survived, so I pulled them out and as I was turning over the compost I noticed some little white grubs. I don't know what they are and if they are the reason why the strawberries died but I emptied both tubs of compost, gave them a good clean out and refilled with new compost before planting the new strawberry plants.

The asparagus has started growing and I've been picking  spears as they get big enough. We never get very many, but it's only a small bed. It's hard to keep up with the weeding in this bed, it gets a lot of thistles and mare's tail. Once the asparagus starts to grow the weeds seem to grow more and it needs hand weeding very carefully so as not to damage spears just below the soil surface. So this is a job which has been needing  doing for a while and every time we've been to the allotment I've looked  and thought I must tackle that soon. So last week I finally got around to doing it and it didn't take long. It looks much better now but I'm sure the weeds will be back again very soon.

My kitchen windowsill has been full of seedlings for weeks now and gradually as they grow bigger, are transplanted and moved to the greenhouse at the allotment. Last week I transplanted cabbages, cauliflowers, swede, cosmos, cucumbers, courgettes and squash.  Both greenhouses are getting full now and I am gradually moving plants to the cold frame to harden off before planting out.

I got the sweet peas planted and some lettuce, then I noticed the onion bed was full of weeds. There's more lettuce, radish and carrot to sow, more peas to plant out, potatoes to earth up, flowers to plant and more brassicas too.

So lots of jobs needing doing, plenty to keep me busy for a while. And I hope I will  be able to get back to weeding out those sycamore seedlings soon before they grow into trees.

Winter jobs on the allotment

After a busy December when all work on the allotment stopped, I have been wanting to get back to work on my plot. December is always busy at home and I don't think I ever get to do any allotment work during that time. We have managed to do a couple of visits since the start of the New Year and it's been a case of carrying on where we left off.

cabbages looking messy

When we arrived for our first visit we were greeted by a strong smell of rotten cabbages.  The cabbage bed still had two or three cabbages left in, but they were very slimy and slug eaten. I got rid of them and weeded the bed.  The rest of the bed has kale and purple sprouting broccoli growing and they looked quite healthy, but not ready for harvesting.

the asparagus bed in need of clearing up

Next I tackled the asparagus bed, cutting down the dead foliage stems and weeding. There were some Rudbekias which had kept on flowering well into November, but had finally gone over, so they got pulled up and thrown on the compost heap.  At the other end of the asparagus bed are some rows of leeks.  I weeded and earthed up the soil around them.  The bed looked very clean and tidy after all that work.  All the beds which I had weeded then got a feed with chicken manure pellets.  We normally put a layer of well rotted horse manure on the beds during the winter once they have been cleared, but our manure bins are empty.  We need to find a source of manure so that we can start storing it again.

a tidy seating area overlooking the asparagus bed

Down the lane some bark chippings have been dumped for the allotment holders to help themselves to.  Richard brought a few barrow loads of the chippings and spread them out where our table and chairs are.  It looks much tidier now and will help to keep the weeds down.  There were also some bags of leaves on the car park so we helped ourselves to some of those and put them in the leaf bin to rot down.

After clearing the vegetable beds my next job was to start weeding the fruit beds.  I made a start with the rhubarb and apple tree bed, but there is still the blueberry and blackcurrant beds to weed yet. I was pleased to see the rhubarb showing new growth already.

the rhubarb bed

There are plenty of jobs still on my to do list and the list never seems to get any shorter.  But as the days start to lengthen we can spend more time on the plot.  The weather has turned cold now and we have had snow in the last day, so we can't do any more work at the moment.  We look forward to better days.

Harvesting, planting and weeding on the allotment

sweetcorn

We've had some welcome rain at last and the water butts on the plot are full again. The temperatures have cooled down too making it so much easier to get our gardening work done. The plot is looking good.

A couple of  weeks ago I  planted kale, purple sprouting broccoli  and calabrese. These are later than I normally plant them, but I didn't want to miss out on them, they are good winter veg.

the brassica bed covered with netting

There are an awful lot of cabbage white butterflies around at the moment so all our brassicas are well covered with netting although they are clever creatures and seem to be able to find the tiniest gap to get in and lay eggs.  The brassica bed is now full and there's no space left for anything more to be planted. At one end of the bed are the young kale and broccoli plants whilst at the other end are the cabbages I planted in the spring. We ate the first of these last week and it was really good. It was as good looking as any you find in the shops and tasted so much better.

the onion bed cleared and a row of late peas coming through

Onions now drying out in the greenhouse

I have been running out of planting space in other beds too. Last weekend I started planting out the leeks and had to search around for suitable places to plant them. The onion bed is now empty but I didn't want to plant the leeks there because they are part of the onion family and  disease could spread. So I spent some time time weeding and hoeing in other places to prepare the ground for the leeks. Leeks are one of our favourite winter vegetables and I have an awful lot of them to get in the ground.

leeks ready for planting

This hot summer has been good for some vegetables, but not for others. The climbing beans have gone mad. I have frozen some and given lots away to friends and neighbours and we have been eating lots of them. There are plenty of courgettes too. I planted more plants than I would need in case any got eaten by slugs. there are two varieties--'Black Beauty' and  'Tondo Di Piacenza' which is a round variety. In past years I have never had good crops of courgettes, so of course this year when I planted too many I have loads. What do you do with so many courgettes? I have made soup and used them in several recipes. They go well with tomatoes, make a good risotto with prawns or bacon or another veg such as beans. This week I may try making courgette burgers.

too many courgettes

Earlier in the year we moved the blueberry plants to a place where they would have more space and Richard made a fruit frame to cover them. We have had a good crop of them for the first time. The sunflowers both at the allotment and at home in the garden have grown to a magnificent height. I don't think I have ever grown any so tall before.

sunflowers

As I work through my jobs list, it's good to cross things off. But I never get to the end of the list because other jobs get added all the time. One of the jobs which always gets left to the end is weeding. The plot boundaries and the pond are in need of a really good weeding but never seem to get done. Each year I think I will make a bigger effort, but something else always takes precedence.  There are two corners of the plot which are getting taken over with bindweed and I really must try to get rid of it. Perhaps when I've got the rest of the leeks planted I'll be able to do it.

Getting back to work on the plot

The allotment has been really neglected the last few weeks whilst we have been busy moving house. Our time has been taken up with so many other things. I have been to the plot to water and check over things and every time I've been so aware of all the jobs which needed doing but I didn't have the time to do them.

This week, feeling more settled in our new home, we finally managed  a couple of sessions on the plot to do some much needed jobs. There was the greenhouse to sort out. The tomatoes needed side shoots removing and then staking. I had plants to get in the ground, some Savoy cabbages and flower sprouts. As this is the first year I am growing flower sprouts I wanted to make sure I got them planted.

Arriving on the plot we could see that the moles had been at work in the onion bed. The onion bed also needed a good weed. In fact the weeds were growing in abundance all over the plot. But it was good to see other things doing well. The Sweet Williams are full of flowers and the sweet peas are just starting to flower. The peas and broad beans have got pods on now and we will soon be picking them. 

And the brassicas are growing well too, although I did spot a couple of caterpillars on one cabbage even though it was covered in netting. Those cabbage white butterflies are very good at finding ways to get under the netting.

We set to work, Richard weeded the onion bed and sorted out netting frames for the cabbages whilst I planted courgettes, cabbage, flower sprouts, cauliflowers and swedes. The tomatoes got a good tidy up and it was good to see some fruits appearing.

I decided not to get too stressed about the weeds, it's more important to get the food crops looked after, the weeds will get sorted eventually.

Allotment catch up

We went to the allotment three times in the last week. That's quite a lot for January. But we were making the most of fine weather to get the last of the beds cleared, weeded and mulched. It was good to get down there, the days are very dreary in January and to get out in the fresh air and do some exercise in the form of hoeing, shovelling and barrowing manure and compost made us feel much better.

It's very quiet down the allotments at the moment, not many people about. Some we won't see yet until March when the growing season starts again. This time of year though, is a good time to catch up on maintenance jobs. Like mending fences, making new beds, sorting out a new allotment.

The birds were glad to see us, we hadn't filled up the feeders for a while.  We have probably now refilled them three times in the last week.

There's always something to do on the allotment, but at this time of year there isn't the rush to get seeds sown or plants in the ground or the feeling that there is so much to do we'll never get through all the jobs. So we can take our time, make the most of leisurely visits to the plot and think about this year's growing plan.  

Easter Monday on the plot

With lots of family things going on over the last week, we haven't had time to get down to the allotment to do any work, apart from occasional visits to feed Ziggy the cat and to check the seedlings in the greenhouses. So it was good to be reunited with my plot on Easter Monday. I had a long list of jobs to do.

Ziggy was there as usual wanting to be fed. I think she would eat until she burst if we kept feeding her. She certainly doesn't look underfed. And she now lets us stroke her. When we first adopted her she wouldn't come anywhere near us and didn't have a voice, just a snarl. Now she follows me around as I work and meows all the time which can be a bit annoying, but I am learning to ignore it.

 I am really loving my two new greenhouses. The seedlings are coming along great and I never fail to get excited when I see new seeds coming through. There is something so amazing about new growth. I was especially pleased to see that the peas I sowed in a length of guttering a few weeks ago are now starting to come through.

 One of my allotment neighbours gave me some cabbage 'golden acre' seedlings which I potted on and put in the greenhouse. I also had some spring cabbage plants which I'd started off at the end of last summer. These were ready to plant out, the first plantings this year. I covered them with some netting frames to protect from the pigeons which are constantly flying around the plots.

Whilst I was doing this Richard did some weeding. Now the weather is warming up the weeds are starting to grow and there are lots of sycamore seedlings from the tree at the top of the garden. We are also seeing some Himalayan balsam seedlings starting to appear. This is an awful weed which can take over if not kept under control. Unfortunately the plot next to us is not well looked after and the seeds are blown over from there, which causes much annoyance to us and several of the neighbouring plots.

The grand children's woodland den is looking very spring like with tete a tete daffodils, blue pulmonaria and anemone. The daffodils which I rescued from Helen's old plot are just starting to flower too.

I managed to tick one or two jobs off my list before it started to rain, but I'm hoping to get down to the plot again this week to get more done.

Weeding and harvesting

The allotment is looking very lush and green now. It's really rewarding after all the hard work earlier in the year to see everything growing well. I always have times of uncertainty when I start in the spring, wondering how many plants will survive or will they get eaten by slugs, will we have enough broad beans and peas
( because we love them).

The cabbages and Brussels sprouts are coming along fine. I planted some cauliflower seedlings last week and sowed another row of swede. I did some weeding in the brassica bed  which wasn't easy as I had to crawl on my hands and knees under the netting. I checked for caterpillars while I was under there just in case any cabbage white butterflies had found a way in through the netting. Fortunately not, and all the plants were looking quite healthy. It's surprising what you find though when you when you get down under the netting, there were some turnips ready for pulling which I hadn't seen before. Once I 'd pulled them out I could plant some purple sprouting broccoli and Cavalo Nero in their place.

We are now picking broad beans and peas and after wondering early on in the year if I had sown enough with two rows of each I know that was plenty. I have been watching the onions to see if they were ready for digging up and last week I pulled up one lot which we had planted in one of the raised beds on plot 10b.  The others which are on plot 8 are ready to dig up too and I shall be doing that this week. Most of the leeks were planted a few weeks ago but I ran out of space for the rest of them. Once I've cleared all the onions out of the bed I can plant the rest of these leeks.

The fennel has produced some good sized bulbs. The feathery foliage looks really attractive amongst the rows of vegetables. Now I'm looking out for some good recipes to use it in. We've been harvesting the potatoes now which were grown in bags.  The first ones we planted were Epicure and they have a good flavour.

Earlier in the year something ate the tops off some of the first lot of beetroot seedlings, we think it was a pigeon which we had seen hovering about in that area of the plot.  The second lot I sowed I covered with netting, but the first lot which were nibbled seem to have recovered and we have been pulling some lovely baby beetroots. We always have problems growing carrots as they get attacked by root fly, so we covered them with fleece and were really pleased to dig up some perfect carrots last week. Just hoping that the root fly didn't get the rest of the row whilst the fleece was off. We've also got some growing in deep containers just in case.

So now in August as I look around our plot I feel pleased with it all. There aren't  too many big jobs to do at the moment so we can have a little rest (not for long though!) and enjoy eating our produce.

Tackling the garden

 I've been so busy on the allotment recently that I've neglected the garden a bit.  The late spring flowers have all gone over now and it was all starting to look a bit wild and out of control, weeds were popping up all over the place.  In the last couple of weeks the work on the allotment has started to ease off a bit, so I've been able to start to give some attention to the garden.

When there's a lot to do in the garden I try not to let it overwhelm me by tackling too much all at once, so I work through the jobs at my own pace. I find it best to set myself a task of working on one small area at a time  depending on how much time there is. I try not to get distracted by the other jobs I can see need doing otherwise I end up up flitting about here and there like a butterfly.

So in the last couple of weeks I have had a few little gardening sessions, just working my way along the borders, cutting back the late spring flowers which have gone over, deadheading, weeding path edges, sweeping up, weeding borders. This is the time of year when I realise I cram too many plants into the borders, but at least they suppress a lot of the weeds.

As I've worked my way along the borders, I 've also made mental notes of bigger jobs which can be done in the Autumn. There are shrubs and trees which need a good cutting back and problem beds where I need to think about starting again and doing something different.

 A few weeks ago the predominant colour in the beds was blue. Now it's all changing and there seems to be a lot of yellow coming from alchemilla mollis, lysimachia and golden grasses. The hot colours of late summer are starting to appear. I can see red crocosmia lucifer, deep pinky red astilbe and knautia macedonica, a yellowy orange day lily and orange Kniphofia.

Although I haven't finished my clearing up of the garden it's looking much better and I'm able to spend time when we get a bit of sunshine, sitting and enjoying it, looking at all the lovely colours . That's what summer is about.

A new year on the allotment

In the last week the weather has been quite mixed. We've had frost, rain and also a mild spell. As there is always much to be done on the allotment we thought we had better take advantage of any fine weather at the weekend. We managed a couple of short sessions and as it was very cold, wrapped ourselves up in several layers of clothes.

Plot 10b was in most need of attention and I cleared the old cut flower beds of dead plants and weeds. Richard then topped both beds with manure.  The two other beds next to them still have parsnips, swede and beetroot in them.  I pulled most of the parsnips and some of the swede then weeded. I intend to make some spicy parsnip soup soon. As these beds get cleared they will have the same treatment of manure.  These four beds will be used to grow peas and beans this year and maybe courgettes too.

On Sunday Helen and I went down to plot 10b for an hour or so. It was a bit frosty although the ground wasn't too frozen. But we decided to prune the autumn raspberries which had died back.  These are sprouting all over the place now in places where we don't want them, so we are trying to control them and keep them in the bed, rather than the paths and the allotment car park.

That work done we ambled over to plot 8 which was looking quite tidy.  We didn't have time to do any more work so we just filled up the bird feeders. Plot 10b looks much better now  for that little bit of clearing up.  You can see here what the beds looked like before.

We need to sit down soon and make our plans for the year, they're all in our heads at the moment and I do like to make a proper list.

Back from the holidays

Whenever I return from holiday, although I always look forward to getting back to the garden and allotment, I'm usually a bit worried as to what sort of state they are going to be in. We've recently returned from two weeks away and I was quite pleased that everything looked quite good on our return. 

Before we went away I had a good weed and cut back in the garden and all that hard work seems to have paid off.  I was expecting to see plants flopping all over the place and lots of dead heading needing to be done.  Instead everything was looking quite perky, some of the plants I had cut back had bounced back to produce more flowers and the borders were full of late summer colour from the rudbekias, heleniums, sedums and phlox.

Down at the allotments the vegetables were growing well. The tomatoes are now ripening daily, the courgettes are growing faster than we can pick them and the french beans are growing fast too.  There are cabbages, cauliflowers, swede, kale, leeks and raspberries all ready for picking. And lots of flowers too.  Everything seems to be ready all at once.

The sweet peas which we had not expected to do well have been flowering for weeks now and had grown so big that they had toppled over.  We hoisted them up,  fixed some more canes in place and tied them all up with thick string. I'm hoping they will sort themselves out, at the moment they look a bit trussed up, but they are still producing flowers so it seems a shame to pull them up yet.

The rest of the allotment just needed a good weed and we started with plot 10b doing all the raised beds and the paths during the week. This weekend Helen and I started weeding plot 8.  We didn't finish but it's all looking much better.

August crops

The heavy rain over the last couple of weeks was very welcome after such a long dry spell.  The allotment is looking good, very green and full of produce.  After the hard work of making sure we got  seeds and plants in the ground at the right time, it's great to be now picking produce every time we visit the plots. In fact this has become a job in itself which we have to allow time for. Weeding is another big job, if we hoe round the beds every time we go it helps to keep them under control. A couple of weeks without weeding allows them to take over again.

Last week we pulled the onions and they are now drying out in the sheds on both plots. we noticed that the onions grown in the raised beds on plot 10b were much bigger than those grown on plot8. This is probably because there is some shade on plot 8 whereas the onion bed on plot 10b was in almost full sun.

We have been picking peas and broad beans for a few weeks now and there are still more to come.  The dwarf and climbing french beans are flowering, but no beans yet.  The salad bowl lettuce finally went to seed and grew to an enormous height, so that has gone on the compost heap. That's what comes of planting too many.  There is still some freckles lettuce and red salad bowl, and plenty of spring onions both red and white.

The cabbage frames which Richard built seemed to have defeated the cabbage white butterflies, but some of the cabbages have been attacked by slugs. They are still edible, just need a good wash first. There's nothing worse than slicing through a slug. Oh, well perhaps eating one would be worse--ugh!

I'm quite pleased with the celeriac, which has started to swell.  The swedes are also swelling and we will soon be able to pick the first ones. Carrots have been a bit of a failure, but then they always are for us. We've sown them in deep tubs this year to try and deter the root fly, but there is only one tub which looks anything like having carrots growing in it.

It's good to see that we will have a continuous supply of veg coming through now which will keep us going into the winter. Once the peas and beans come to an end, we will still have brassicas, leeks, swede, celeriac, beetroot and  fennel.