Seedy jobs

The weather is showing no signs of improvement and I wonder if it will ever stop raining. As the wind was howling outside and the rain battering against the windows at the weekend I decided a good rainy day activity would be to sort out my very untidy box of seed packets. It took nearly all day, but I now have a neatly filed box, a seed list on computer and a long list of new seeds to buy for this year. Very organised, I thought!

Holly was keen to stop me from working

 I will need to be starting off seeds very soon and I am so pleased that our allotment greenhouse is now fully assembled and it looks great. I couldn't wait to get something in there and before Richard had cleared away all his tools, I had put in some trays of spring cabbage seedlings which I started off late summer and seemed a bit slow to grow. They had been living in the shed.  I'm  sure that before long I will be running out of greenhouse space.  This little greenhouse will not be big enough for all the growing we will be doing, so Richard's next project is to build a bigger growhouse type of structure next to it. This is what he was planning to do all along.

My next job is to go shopping for vegetable seeds and get some seed trays washed.

Pottering around the plot

strawberries all over the place

At the allotment in the last few weeks whilst Richard has been putting up the new green house, I have been pottering around doing other things. Pottering around is about all I can do at the moment with the damp weather. 

The fruit bed badly needs sorting out. The strawberry runners are all over the place, but the ground is still too wet at the moment to do any digging up. I managed to tidy up the strawberries in the bath and that looks much better.

a bath full of strawberries

The rhubarb which had been on Helen's old plot got dug up before Christmas and I left the crowns until I had more time to divide and pot up. They have now started to show signs of new growth, so I spent some time splitting them up into smaller plants and potting up. I was amazed at how big and woody the roots are. I have planted some on the allotment and given some away to friends but there are still rather a lot left.

just a few of the rhubarb plants

I didn't get chance to clean out the wildlife pond in the autumn, so that's another job I've done in the last couple of weeks. Armed with rubber gloves I got down on my hands and knees, scooped out the leaves, dead plant foliage and some of the silt from the bottom. A week later there was even more silt so I was back doing it all again. The silt is coming down the drain into the pond from the plot above us and with all the rain we have had recently there is  more coming down the drain than usual. I know that a certain amount of silt is needed for the pond creatures, but this is a bit excessive, I want a pond not a bog.  So my next plan is to empty the pond of all the plants and rocks, so that I can get more of the silt out and then start again with a fairly clean pond. That's if it doesn't rain too much.

murky overflowing pond

A wet plot and a new greenhouse

A new year on the allotment and there's lots to plan and look forward to. Now we just have one allotment to look after there is a sense of relief as we go down there and walk past the old plot. I must admit though there was one moment last week when we arrived at Plot 8 to find water pouring out through the gate and puddling on the beds and paths that I wondered if we had chosen the wrong plot out of the two to keep. But after scooping out the debris from the drain at the top of the plot, the water started to clear a bit. A couple of days later it had all cleared and we had a reasonably dry plot. With all the rain at the moment it will never get completely dry. 

With bad weather around there's not a lot can be done on the allotment but  this is the time of year when less urgent and  maintenance jobs can be done. It's the time to mend the fence or build new compost bins.  On our plot, as well as sorting out the drains, Richard has started work on building a greenhouse. This is a small greenhouse which we got for free from our grandson's school. The door was bent after damage from vandals, but that was easily put right. We spent a cold day last November in the school playground dismantling it. Since then it has been stored in our garage waiting for suitable weather to assemble it.

Finally the storms and heavy rains have eased off and given way to drier, colder weather.  Knowing that in a few weeks time I will be needing space to start off seeds under cover, Richard got started on the greenhouse. It is going where the old plastic growhouse was and the winter storms very kindly saved us the job of taking it down ourselves! The original base had started to rot so we replaced the wood. It's a bit of a puzzle remembering where all the pieces go back together, but Richard seems to know what he is doing, so I'm letting him get on with it. I'm sure he'll have it finished in no time.

Goodbye Plot10b

 It's New Year's Eve and as always people look back on the year just gone and wonder what lies ahead. The last year has not been a good one for me and I'm glad to see the back of it.

At the allotment though, things have been good. Today we did our final clearing up on Plot 10b getting it ready to hand the keys over to the new tenants. And I find myself looking back, not on the last year but the last three and a half years since we took the allotment on. I think we are glad to see the back of plot 10b too and are looking forward to having just the one allotment to look after now.  But although it's been hard work we have enjoyed making it into a workable allotment, it's been a great challenge and we've learnt such a lot.

Some before pictures:

It was my daughter Helen's plot, but we all mucked in to help when she took it on. It was in a terrible state, it had been used to keep chickens and had not been cultivated.  People told us the soil would be good because of all the chicken poo, but we found no evidence of any soil enriched by chicken poo, just heavy, wet, solid clay.  There were three chicken sheds and a big cabin.  We kept two of the sheds and used the materials from the other two to make compost bins, raised beds and a growhouse. Richard did all the heavy building work, Helen's husband David dug beds over and made bonfires of all the rubbish. Helen and I weeded, dug over and made plans. The grandchildren helped when they felt like it or just had a great time playing in the mud.

About nine months later as Plot 10b was starting to look good, I was offered an allotment myself next door but two to Helen's.  So we started the hard work all over again. It was a different sort of plot, but still another big challenge. In the last year though, Helen's work commitments have increased and she is not able to give as much time to the allotment, so she decided to give it up and help me with mine when she is able to.

Allotments are hard work and we feel pleased that we have transformed such a derelict piece of land into a useful growing space. Because we recycled a lot of materials already on the plot we had very little expenses too. We hope now that the new tenants will have a good start to their growing year. We are looking forward to concentrating our efforts on Plot 8.

Thank you to all who follow and comment on my blog. I wish you all a happy and productive growing year in 2016.

Plot 10b looking transformed:

Resting and waiting

The bad weather continues, I wonder how long it will last, there has been so much rain. There's not much work we can do down at the allotment or in the garden when it's so wet.  The soil is too wet and soggy to do anything. It's really dirty weather.  But I'm not too worried, the garden doesn't look too bad, there's still autumn colour about. I don't cut back the dead plants until late winter.  The seed heads  provide homes for insects and food for the birds and some of them provide winter interest in the garden especially when touched by a bit of frost.

At the allotment we've cleared and manured most of the beds except for the leeks and brassicas, which we will be picking through the winter. The pond has been overflowing with all the rain--I hope the frogs haven't left home! We've had some storm damage, the old plastic growhouse got blown down in the gales, but we were going to pull it down anyway this winter to make way for a new greenhouse. And in the garden we have a fence needs replacing after it got blown down by the wind. All jobs for the new year when hopefully the weather will be better


I love getting the allotment beds all clear of dead plants and weeds and covered in manure or compost.  I think of it as tucking up the beds for the winter, clearing out the old and preparing for the new.   As the plot rests over the winter and waits for the spring we think about what we want to grow next year and we plan  projects. We think about what mistakes we may have made or what improvements we can make.

 So  there is now a sense of resting and waiting on the plot. Resting time for us before all the hard work starts again and  resting time for the soil while the nutrients from the compost and manure do their work. And as we wait  for the weather to improve, we also watch for  new growth to appear, we make plans and we look forward to starting work again.

 

Planting tulips

If the rain ever stops I might get some work done in the garden and at the allotment. I keep sneaking out when there is a brief dry spell to do a few jobs. Last week I managed to plant some tulip bulbs in pots. I've never grown tulips before, but I've been admiring the Sarah Raven Tulip collections and for my birthday this year my daughters bought me some. They came in two lovely hessian sacks--very useful.

I planted one lot at the allotment in a big deep plastic tub which I grew carrots in this year. The tulips  should brighten up the allotment next year.

 

The rest I wanted to plant at home in big pots. I used an old enamel bread bin for one planter and a deep pot for the other.  I planted them in layers. The first layer, near the bottom of the pot but with a two inch depth of compost below them.  Then I added more compost and placed another layer of bulbs on this. I topped with a final layer of compost, making sure that the bulbs were at least eight inches deep.

There are still plenty of bulbs left and I was running out of good sized pots, but on a recent visit to the RHS garden at Harlow Carr we spotted a 'buy one get one free' on some lovely pots which will look great planted up with tulips. The only problem was that they had 'Yorkshire pots' engraved on the side of them and we live in Lancashire! Well I'm sure the engraving will soon be covered in moss and no-one will know. So I'm now waiting for another quick dry spell when I can dash outside and get the rest of my tulips planted up.

More and more jobs

The heavy rain and blustery winds which we had last week changed to really cold, frosty days with snow in some places at the weekend--no snow here thankfully, it was dry and sunny so it was thermals on and down to the allotment to get more jobs done.

When we arrived at the allotment site there was a little bonfire on the car park, one of the plot holders had been burning some rubbish. We took advantage of this and added some rotting wood which we had been meaning to get rid of. I love an allotment bonfire especially in the autumn.

Richard then dug up and split the rhubarb plants on Plot 10b.  They have the most massive thick roots so I now need to find some really big pots to plant them up in.  There are far too many to plant on my allotment, but I hate to throw them away. I  did manage to give three of them to some new allotment neighbours.

This was the last big job to do on Plot 10b before we hand over to new tenants at the end of the year. The rest is just a bit of tidying up. The new tenants are lucky to be getting a good plot with beds already in place, and some fruit beds too.

Rudbekia coming to an end

On Plot 8 I  finally decided the annual flowers had to go.  I cut back the rudbekia, sweet peas, calendula, sunflowers and some wonderful scabiosa called 'Back in black'. I will definitely be growing the scabiosa again next year, it's a lovely deep, dark  red/burgundy which  looks good in a vase as a contrast to yellow, pink or blue. Most of my flower seeds were from Higgledy garden, they are really good value. Have a look at his web site if you like to grow flowers for cutting. Once I'd cleared all the flowers away, I weeded and we then spread some well rotted manure on the beds. Next year we will be growing peas and beans on this bed. The  flowers get slotted in where there is space, but they don't seem to mind.

Last of the rudbekia and scabious

You never get to the end of a jobs list at the allotment, there's always more to be done. As I was looking around feeling pleased with all the work I had done, I spotted the brassica bed, full of dead, yellow leaves lying on the soil surface. I knew I had to get rid of those before they spread any disease. Not only that, the bed needed weeding, the purple sprouting broccoli needed staking and there was a mulch of manure to be added to the areas where the cabbages had been. That done, it was getting colder and beginning to get dark.

Still more jobs to be done another time-- clear the pond of leaves,  weed and manure the asparagus bed, tidy up the strawberry bed of runners, empty the growhouse of dead tomato plants and dismantle because it's seen better days, put up the new greenhouse. More of all that on another blog.

Plot 8 looking better