Getting started on the Spring Jobs

We're still getting a lot of rainy weather here and so we've not been getting down to the allotment as much as we would like. Easter weekend though was lovely and we made the most of the sunshine by getting some of the important jobs done. 

I've planted out all the onions now which were started off in cell trays.  There are two varieties, Sturon and Turbo,  I've grown both of these before. They have taken up about half of the bed. The rest of the bed will be planted up with leeks when they are ready. I usually struggle to find room for all of the leeks but this year as I'm not growing  red onions and shallots I should have plenty of space. I will probably grow some salad crops in this empty space until it's time to plant the leeks.

The first early potatoes (Rocket) were planted two weeks ago in potato bags.  This week Richard started planting the second earlies (Charlotte). Unfortunately we have had a visit from a baby rat this week who we think is responsible for nibbling some of the Charlottes which had been left in the shed. This meant we didn't have as many to plant as we'd thought.

I always sow my first lot of broad beans in cardboard tubes. They've been ready for planting for a couple of weeks and were getting quite big, but with the bad weather and trying to get other jobs done this got delayed until the Easter weekend. There was enough to plant a double row with a few left over for another row, the varieties are Super Aquadulce and Witkiem Manika. Once they were in the ground I then sowed another double row directly into the soil, Super Aquadulce again and The Sutton.

The greenhouses are filling up with plants.  I've been starting seeds off at home to grow on the two kitchen windowsills. We don't have many suitable spaces in the house for seed pots and trays so as soon as the seedlings are potted on I take them to the allotment and put in the greenhouses. I cover them with fleece or bubble wrap so they are nice and warm. Seedlings growing in the greenhouses are:

Beetroot (Boltardy)    salad leaves and lettuce (Little Gem)  Cabbage (Kilaton)    Tomatoes (8 varieties)  Sweetcorn (Swift)      Aubergine (Black Beauty)  Basil    Parsley    

Also flowers, Asters, Zinnia, French Marigold and sweet peas at the moment, but others will join them soon.

I made the mistake I always do with sweet peas, they were slow to germinate and I thought they weren't going to grow so I bought a pot of seedlings from the garden centre and within a couple of days the ones I'd sown in pots  were finally coming through. I should have lots of lovely sweet peas this summer then!

The first peas are sown in lengths of guttering in the greenhouse--two varieties, Onward and Meteor.  They are just starting to come through.

    

As well as all this seed sowing and planting, there is much weeding to be done. The beds were all nicely prepared earlier in the year, but we have been plagued with hundreds of sycamore seedlings all over the plot. We have a big sycamore tree at the top of the plot which is to blame. Every year we have this problem but this year there are many more than usual.  Everywhere you look there are these little seedlings. So every time we go to the plot I spend some time hoeing off the weeds a different section at a time. I'm hoping they stop growing soon.

Before

After

Its good to get started on these early jobs and to see vegetables growing in the beds. 

Through the Garden Gate--March 2023

March has not been very Spring like this year. We've had a lot of rain, it's been cold, windy and we even had a bit of snow. The rain has been constant and stopped me from getting out into the garden to do jobs. I've had to dodge the showers and take advantage of the odd couple of hours of a dry spell or sometimes  I've been lucky and there's been a whole day of sunshine too good to waste. We are just longing for some fine, dry weather. 

Despite this bad weather we've managed to do quite a bit of work in between the showers.  Most of the borders have now been cleared of dead foliage and leaves. In the back garden we mulched the beds with a soil improver. We spread a bark mulch on the woodland wildlife bed in the back garden and on the hosta bed in the front garden. The garden always looks so much better when this has been done, it suppresses the weeds for a while and shows off the lovely bright green of the emerging plants.

Although the weather hasn't been very Spring like there are still plenty of signs that Spring is here. There are buds on the trees and some are starting to open up so there's a little haze of green as we look out the house windows.

In the beds the spring flowers are coming into bloom. There is plenty of yellow from the daffodils.

Clumps of primroses are dotted around under trees and shrubs and as a contrast blue pulmonaria and the forget-me-not like flowers of the brunnera are opening up now. 

The pulmonaria pop up all over the garden. This little one has turned out a pale pink, I've never seen one that colour before.

I bought some drumstick primula and planted them in the front garden.

The patio pots are mainly full of daffodils, but there are some violas too and the tulips have buds which hopefully will be flowering next month. 

The clocks went forward last weekend so we have longer days for gardening. There's lots to look forward to in the coming weeks. Hope you all have a happy  Easter. 

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

A few wildlife jobs on the allotment

Last week was a chilly week with snow again, but earlier in the week before the snow came we tackled a few wildlife jobs on the allotment.

The woodland area at the top of the allotment is an area where we can't grow anything because of the big sycamore tree which dominates. The good thing about this is that it provides a home for a lot of wildlife. I've written before about how we cleared the area to make somewhere for the grandchildren to play. They are teenagers now  and are no longer interested, but I still love this area. 

Our seating area is just below the big tree and when we sit there having our tea breaks there is so much activity from the birds flying in and out. There is a privet hedge behind the tree between our plot and the next one up. Also there is elder which provides us with lovely blossom in the spring and berries in the autumn. I pick the blossom  to use when I am making jam. It goes well in gooseberry or strawberry jam. 

When I first created this wildlife area I planted bulbs and shade loving plants. There are crocuses, snowdrops, Tete a Tete daffodils and bluebells. The bluebells do well and I am happy for them to spread. I've tried to get some foxgloves going too. 

The downside of the sycamore tree is all the leaves which fall all over the plot in the autumn and need clearing up especially from the paths. I don't clear them from under the hedge and around the base of the tree and any other nooks and crannies. Then in the spring the plot is covered with the little sycamore spinning Jenny seeds which fall everywhere then germinate and I am constantly trying to hoe them out.

The tete a tete and crocuses are flowering now and I can see the new growth of the  woodland plants I put in there.  Soon it will look more colourful like the picture below which was taken last year when all the euphorbias were out. I like them but they tend to take over, popping up all over the place as they send out runners underground. 

Last week I did one of the  jobs I do on the allotment every year at this time. That is to have a bit of a tidy up in the woodland area. It might seem the wrong thing to do, to tidy up a wildlife area, but it needs to be kept under control so that the weeds don't start to encroach on the vegetable beds and the rest of the allotment. And I pull up those euphorbias from places where they are not wanted. When it has all been tidied up I put bark chippings down on the pathway which goes around the tree. At the moment there are no chippings available to use so I am waiting for some to be dumped on the allotment site. Then it will be a race with our wheelbarrows as we and  all the other plot holders get their share of them.

Our other wildlife area is the pond. We built this a few years ago out of an old tin bath which was left on the allotment by the previous tenant. It was in good condition with no holes. We have had frog spawn each year which is always exciting. I give it a clean out every year in the spring to get rid of leaves and excess mud. 

This year I did the same, it was in a bit of a bad state with overgrown pond plants which I removed. Then I set to scooping out some of the excess mud and added more water as the water level was quite low. I soon realized that the pond was leaking because of a hole in the side where the metal had rusted. So we decided instead of getting rid of the tin bath we would leave it in place and put a pond liner in it. This was Richard's job last weekend. It wasn't as big a job as as I had thought and he completed it in one afternoon.

He needed to empty the bath completely of the stones and mud and to our delight he found frogs in the mud at the bottom and another one under one of the big stones around the edge. 

There must have been about four frogs and we think a toad. We kept them safe in a bucket while he finished off lining the pond and when the stones were back in place I gently popped them back into the pond. It must have been a bit of a shock to them, to be wakened up from their hibernation. We're hoping we haven't upset them too much and when the weather warms up will soon have  spawn back in the pond.

Mulching, pruning, and getting ready for Spring

Its been good to get back to working on the allotment after the rain and snowy weather we had early on in January. It was drier in February and we had sunshine, but it has been quite cold. We've been working at a slow steady pace, with about two or three visits to the plot a week for about two to three hours. We both struggle with pain in our joints and we now have to be more careful about how much we do in one session. Lots of tea breaks! Last year when I was first diagnosed with Rheumatoid arthritis I thought I would have to give up the allotment and we said we would give it a year to see how we got on. Well we did really well I'm pleased to say, so we'll carry on as long as we take it at a slower pace.  And with the latest shortages in tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers I think we're best to grow our own.

Over the last few weeks I've cleared all the dead plant material from the veg beds and weeded. Then I spread a manure mulch over the beds. There are some vegetables still growing, leeks and parsnips. I dug some of the parsnips up at the weekend and there are some really big ones. I brought a bagful home but there are still some in the ground. Spicy parsnip soup could be on the menu soon. I've cleaned both greenhouses out so they are ready now to be filled up with seedlings when I start those off.

The next job was to prune the fruit bushes. There are blackcurrants, redcurrants, gooseberries, blueberries and raspberries. I gave the apple tree a bit of a trim but I'm never sure if I'm doing it right. The fruit bushes and rhubarb then got a mulch of manure and a feed of blood fish and bone. I mulched the blueberries with the shreddings from the Christmas tree as they like an acidic soil We do this every year and they seem to like it.

I started off onion sets in cell modules. I'm growing two varieties, Sturon and Turbo. Red onions never do very well for me so I've decided not to bother with them this year. Shallots do well but I find them difficult to peel because of the arthritis in my hands, so I won't bother with those either.

The potatoes are chitting at home. I'm growing Rocket and Charlotte. I've also sowed broad beans in cardboard tubes and those are on the kitchen windowsill.

With regular visits to the plot I feel pleased that we are on top of the work. There are some bigger jobs which are on our to do list. Like repairing a section of fencing, mending the strawberry troughs, relining the pond and sorting out the leaf bin area. These will keep Richard busy for the next few weeks. My next job will be to start sowing seeds at home to grow on the kitchen windowsill. 

Through the Garden Gate --February 2023

February came with more sunshine, but quite cold at times.  I did  have to keep reminding myself it was only February, but I think a lot of gardeners like me are longing to get back to doing their gardens whenever there is some decent weather.

There are signs of new life all over the garden and little pops of colour as buds open up.  Gradually over the next few weeks more of this new growth will be bursting into flower. The snowdrops have continued to delight me and are still flowering away.  The pots of tete a tete and tulips from last year are showing buds so I brought them out of the corner where I store them over winter and put them out ready  to brighten up the patio.  I got a lovely surprise early on in February when I spotted these little irises in flower, later on in the month as they died down the tete a tete popped up.  

We wondered if we would get any frog spawn in the little pond we made last year but all I've seen so far is a dead frog! No new life there then.

I've been out in the garden, tidying the beds of dead plants, they look a bit empty now but soon they will fill out as plants come back from their winter rest.  

Last week we bought bark and soil improver. The bark has gone on the hosta bed in the front garden and more will go in the back garden on the woodland bed. It looks lovely now as the tete a tete and crocus are starting to flower. I bought some cyclamen coum plants for this area as they grow well in shade and under trees.  They should spread about more each year as they get established.  The soil improver I will use as a mulch for the other beds.  I've started spreading that in the back garden, not finished yet, it will take a few more bags of mulch to get around all the beds.

February is the time to cut the old growth from the grasses which die down in the winter. We have a few big, tall clumps in the back garden and I have been working on them.  They create a lot of mess when they are cut down.  There were grass stalks all over the place. I'm hoping that the birds will make use of  some of it when they start nest building. 

One really big grass we have is a Miscanthus Zebrinus. It's a really lovely grass and provided us with a lot of screening when we were on the patio, but it had grown too big and it was time to dig it up and divide it. It caused more mess with grass stalks all over the lawn which Holly enjoyed playing with. Now it's been split up I will plant a smaller section back in the bed it came from.

The garden is looking good after it's tidy up and I'm feeling happy that at the moment we are fairly on top of our spring garden jobs.  

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