Finally catching up...

Well this blog post is certainly long over due. In fact, everything I will mention took place about two weeks ago when I took a couple of days annual leave to catch up at the allotment. So when you come back to read tomorrow's post, pretend it's been a whole two weeks since this post and not 12 or so hours...

Anyway....

The Potatoes and Onions are finally in the ground!!

We might have slightly overdone it with our potatoes. We have 4 rows (5.5m long each!) of Desiree and 3 long rows of Charlotte and we still have some seed potatoes to spare. If I get some big pots I might just put them in there and see what happens. It's not like we are going to be short of them anyway... Well, I hope not after the back breaking amounts of work I put in to planting them..

Next along from the potatoes are two rows of Onions (Stuttgarter Giant) and then a row of Beetroot (Boltardy)!

After the onions there is currently a large gap which come the middle of May will be planted up with Cabbage, Kale, Pumpkins, Courgettes and Squash. After this currently empty space, closest to the patio area is the beans. 6 rows of broad beans and there is space for a further 2 rows of dwarf French beans. I have also dug out the trench and emptied one of the compost bin’s contents in to it and then filled it on top with some used compost from last year’s raised beds, the support frame has been erected for the runners, and finally the allotment looks like an allotment again and not just a wasteland!

Here's a full on shot of the once again allotment like allotment!

The next couple of jobs are to actually sow the runner beans, courgettes and pumpkins and also prepare the ground for the cucurbits by digging in some well rotted horse manure!! There is also the unappetizing job of weeding the strawberry bed at the top of the allotment. It will be done, but when... I am not sure!

More soon!!

Martin J

Gold! Gold! Gold! Even a GOLD Post Box!

Well Gold is definately this month's colour. With the unprecendeted number of olympic gold medals being won by Team Gb, and also the prospect of Golden Sunshine this week things are starting to look good again. We've also been digging up some Gold treasure down the allotment in the form of our maincrop potatoes. We took advantage of the mid-day sunshine to dig up a row of our main crop Maris Piper's. I was expecting them to be a good size for Jacket Potatoes and also for mashing but in reality the size varied greatly with small to medium potatoes and then the occasional whopper. We decided to only harvest the one row and have left the other 5 for next week!

We easily got 5-6kg off the small row. Our rows are only about 1/3 of the size of the allotment's width so it was a very good haul indeed.

The rain in recent weeks has ruined crops such as onions and shallots, but it seems to be doing the majority of the cucurbit family a world of good. We've had Golden Yellow courgettes to pick daily and the monstrous marrows keep coming too. Here's a picture of our marrow and courgette harvest from one day last week. This was a particularly bumper day but we are picking at least 3 courgettes per day...

The Pumpkin patch is also looking great too. We have at least 6 pumpkins which have set and are forming nicely. A couple of the hundredweight variety are already past an acceptable size for a jack o'lantern at halloween and seein as they have the best part of 2 months left to grow then we shall see what they are going to do. It could all be very exciting...



After 6 years of trying, this week brought me one of my greatest triumphs as a vegetable grower. I finally managed to grow, harvest and eat one of my own cabbages. I had told Amy that for years I have failed to get my cabbages to heart properly, they have always ended up with open leaves and not tight hearts. Well this year I changed my growing method slightly and I now have 2 rows of perfectly hearted cabbages and delicious they are too. I bet you think I can't keep up my gold theme now, well I kid you not but this variety of cabbage is called 'Golden Acre'..

I am very pleased with the final results. I had said that if they didn't grow properly this year then I might give up on brassicas next year. However, this delicacy has given me some hope at least. Sods law indicates that they will not heart properly next year, but I will try!

The allotment is abundent with growing produce and plenty of weeds too. The forecast is good for the rest of the week so I shall be going up to tidy everything up. As we harvest these cabbages it is a good reminder that it is time to sow some for spring time. I will be doing that in the next week or so, as I continue to plan for next years 'hungry gap' already.

On my way back from the allotment today, I popped by my town's new golden glory...



With 3 bags of produce in tow, I think they probably thought I was coming to sell it to passers by, but in reality I was only getting a picture for my loyal followers, who keep coming back to read my blog even when my posts are slightly infrequent.

The post box outside our post office has been painted Gold as a result of the success of local equestrian rider Nick Skelton who won a Gold medal in the team event at the London 2012 olympics.

Well done Nick and thanks to everyone else for reading.

I am way behind on blog reading but I hope your harvest are as good as ours.

Enjoy the sun,

Martin

Laying the foundations..

...or the slabs in our case!

Seeing as we are now back online, I am going to be writing several blog updates over the next week or so, focussing upon a different aspect of the allotment each time. After today's post there will be 4 more catch-up posts; veg beds, soft fruit area, navigation and sustainability.
We've had the allotment since the end of February, so almost 2 whole months now. Having the smallest garden in the world at home, and having to use Amy's Dad's house to home our beehive and chickens, we do not have a play area for ourselves. Seeing as we are two young adults, you might think the idea of a play area is quite odd, but what I really mean is somewhere where we can both sit out in the summer, drink chilled ginger beer and pick fresh produce from all around us and maybe accompany all of that with the odd barbeque here and there.

Being the main grower of the two of us, I really want to get Amy more engaged with things happening on the allotment, and to date I have to admit she has exceeded all expectations so far. When we got the plot the first thing she mentioned was a paved area to sit, and being the loveliest partner in the whole world (sickly I know!), I set out straight away to make her area, and I showcased the beginning of this side project in this post here.

If you forgot what it looked like, here it is..

Apart from substantial weed growth all around and the abysmal weather, a lot has changed since this picture. Those rotten bamboo canes in the old blue waterbutt have been thrown out, that rusty old metal bin has been moved to the 'wild area' and of course that particular greenhouse in the picture was stolen! The Rhubarb crowns have burst in to life at the edge of the second raised bed, and the whole 'freshly dug' bed in front of the paved area is now full of establishing onions, shallots and garlic. A third mini raised bed has taken up residence on the left hand side of the bed and is now full of plastic bottles we have grown...

...I meant lettuces......

We currently have little gem and lollo rosso in the raised beds but there are iceberg and more lollo rosso seedlings just emerging elsewhere. The other raised beds are full of....

....and other emerging seedlings including beetroot, swiss chard, perpetual spinach and a hell of a lot more raddish!

We had a taste of the very first raddish the other day. Amy always thought I didn't like raddish and that is because out of principle I refuse to eat shop bought raddish. You can not compare the taste of the shop bought stuff to the home grown crops which are so quick and easy to go. They indeed were delicious and most were perfectly formed!

Following on from the theft of the greenhouse, my grandparent's actually bought me 2 more for Easter which was very kind of them. These have been bolted to the shed and cemented to the ground and are therefore unmoveable, they have also been marked with our names and plot number! In a way the burgular did us a favour, because if we didn't have 2 greenhouses now I don't know what we would be doing! The two are rammed to the brim and we have so many seedlings that constantly need potting upwards and onwards. Here is a sneak peak....

We actually have about 30 courgette plants, it's a good job they are one of our favourite vegetables and we have a whole bed dedicated to them! Bring on the glut!

So anyway, in case you were actually wondering here is Amy's area/the potting area/the shed today..

Not bad hey with table and chairs too, we even have a parasol in the shed, but I think that is a bit optimistic in this drizzle!

I also spoke of the 'wild area' and this is something that happened by accident. We inherited an established rosemary bush and we planted a few rhubarb crowns nearby. This patch has burst in to life but was missing something. So the old rusty metal bin is now in the bed and the plan is to have a clematis grow around it in the summer, but then use it for holding bags of leaf mould in the winter. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work, but we shall see! Here it is...

I'm hoping all of the contrasting colours and leafy growth will look great in early summer.

Well that concludes today's mini tour and update. Check back over the next couple of days for a re-cap of the vegetable beds and soft fruit area!

Thanks for reading. It's now my turn to catch up on your blog too!

Martin

Just an hour..

Not long after I made yesterday's blog post I felt very tempted to go and do a bit of work at plot 114. I knew that I had to go up at some point to water all of the seedlings in the mini greenhouse. I decided to do an hour and a bit of solid revision for my exam on Saturday morning, and then I took myself up to the plot to do something nice.

My Grandparents had given me a bag of red onion sets on Tuesday so I thought that I would spend just an hour or so planting out my onions sets. I already had some sets myself for brown onions and the red onion sets I had previously bought had a low count of quality sets, so it was good that I had the new stock to replenish them.

I wasn't going to grow shallots either, but one of the other allotment holders who was there on Monday gave me a bag of shallots that he had left over after planting his. I now had plenty of sets so it was time to get them in the ground..

The onion bed is right next to the patioed area. I am trying a slightly different way of growing them that I thought of myself after reading various methods of growing onions. I planted the onion sets in drills that I simply made from standing on the ground either side of the set. I then sprinkled some growmore in the foot imprinted areas and watered to dissolve the granules. I am then going to top up the foot imprinted areas either side of the drill with multipurpose compost which hopefully will be a good feed for the onions and should make hoeing really, really easy. Only inhereting the allotment in late February we haven't been able to feed the soil as much as we have liked so we are definately playing catch up in that regard,

I have planted the garlic cloves in a drill right at the end of the bed nearest to the compost bin in the hope that there won't be too much of a garlicy scent near to the patio area.

It was nice being there for just an hour and actually being able to get something in the ground. I have spent many whole days (8+hours) on Plot 114 clearing weeds and preparing beds and then thinking I still have so much more work to do which can be a tiny bit de-motivating. So this was a short and sweet change to that pattern. I also managed to get another freebie from another allotment holder, this time in the form of a gooseberry bush! One of my favourite fruits!! I already have 2 other small bushes looking for a spot on the allotment, so I look forward to getting those in the ground at the weekend.

Anyway, seeing as I said there wasn't going to be an allotment update until Sunday night, I didn't do too well did I? Oh well. I had fun and I still found time to revise.

I definately won't be making a blog post now until Sunday. Amy and I are watching 'Oliver' at the Birmingham Hippodrome on Thursday night and then 'Disney on Ice' at the NIA on Friday. Then on Saturday I have the dreaded exam.

Have a good weekend and Happy Birthday Mum!

Martin