The girls arrive

Progress report……. and CHICKENS! :)

A few photos to show the update at the allotment,

 

As you can see the Squashes are all doing rather well – it’s been hot so we’ve been going down every other day to give them a good soaking, also our neighbour Denzel has been giving them a soaking for us whilst he is down there :) Nice guy! 

 

Our courgettes are also doing pretty well and we’ve harvested a couple of “middle finger length” zuchs to have in a Bolognese, and very nice too! In the top left of the photo on the right is the ridge cucumber – never grown one outside before so we’ll see how it goes!

Strawberries have some small green fruit on :)

 

 

 

 

The Sweet corn is coming along nicely and the pumpkin in between is also growing well, even a small flower emerging ;)

 

 

 

 

 

The brassicas are growing nicely and the netting will come off this week.

 

The Gladiolas are also almost ready to send up flowers, I’m looking forward to harvesting my own cut flowers! Just in the edge of the left photo is the Chard :)

The Rhubarb is now running a muck, so pleasing considering it nearly died off last year – but it’s very strong now :) There are also more flowing plants in there, but I can’t even remember what I planted, so we’ll have to see when they come out :)

Oh and another squash – thought I’d plant many to see how they faired :)

 

 

 

These are the beetroot seeds coming up – need wedding once they are a little larger – should be enough for a few batches of Natalia’s favourite chutney :)

 

 

 

And I am WELL pleased with the peas, never really grown them before and they are delicious!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

And this is the chicken coop that I’ve been building over the last couple of weeks when I’ve had time. Not allowed live-stock on the allotment (or sheds or greenhouses or poly-tunnels or fruit or veg:) )

I get my chickens today, a couple of Rhode Island Reds that my cousin has bred – very excited!!!!

Slow and steady wins the race?

Well the slow slog is starting to pay off – just  a quick post for now with some photo’s of the things I’ve planted and how they are doing!

 

 

 

My peas – the few I have so far, not quite climbing the wigwam yet. I’ve got to go and make a nice structure around the wigwam for them to grasp hold of.

 

 

 

These are the Gladioli that I got cheap at Lidl’s some time ago – they all seem to have come up nicely – there are a couple of other plants in there too – just can’t remember what they are!

 

 

This is an Braeburn apple and a Stella cherry tree (both Lidl specials) and they are doing just fine it seems – I’m hoping that severe pruning will force them to be close to dwarf as there was no info on the stock type – otherwise new trees will need to be bought.

 

 

 

2 more of the bargain trees – a Jonagold apple and a pear (can’t remember which one now)

 

 

 

 

 

This is my Red Cauliflower and Brussels Sprouts. At the end, behind the sloping not-yet-cut piece of wood are the new Asparagus that I have planted.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is my Red Cabbage, Savoy Cabbage and Kohl Rabi.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sweet corn and Pumpkin. May need the addition of some climbing beans…

 

 

 

 

 

More Gladioli – with a row of colourful Chard in the background.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Courgette of 2 types (Yellow and Green)

 

 

 

 

 

 

My Rhubarb which is doing SOOOO well – the year after putting it in we thought it was dead!

In the front are some more flower bulbs from Lidl.

 

 

 

 

 

Bargain strawberry plants from our garden centre. We weren’t going to bother with strawberries this year, but thought what the hey!

 

 

 

 

These are the raspberry canes that I found doted around the plot whilst I was clearing – I just moved them to this then clear bed to see what they would do – they are going great guns and all have lovely little green berries on! I LOVE raspberries!

 

 

 

 

So there you go. I’ve got some netting, twine and tennis balls on order from eBay so that I can put out some netting to stop the f’ing pigeons. Twine to get the peas growing UPwards. Tennis balls to put on top of canes to support the netting :)

I’ve also got some more strawberry plants being delivered to booster what I have now. AND I’ve ordered a cobnut tree and an almond tree, both on dwarfing stock! :) That’ll be nice!! One arrives at the end of June – the other in the autumn…

Seedlings etc…

OK, so I’ve not been down for a little while, I’ve got myself a new job and the preparations (at home) for me no longer working are taking ages – all those jobs that I promised I’d do!

I’ve not been sitting idle though, I’ve made up some plans for the plot and I’ve been doing a LOT of reading and research. I’ve  transplanted my seedlings from the seeds I planted a couple of weeks ago (tomato (3 kinds) and pepper) and I’ve planted some more seeds. I also bought a potato sack to grow potatoes in, not used one before but if I hadn’t bothered with the sack then I wouldn’t have planted out any spuds this year! And for £4.99 as an impulse buy I’m happy enough…

I’ve also planted out my aubergine seeds, leek seeds and onion seeds. I’ve got to go to the allotment tomorrow to plant out my shallot sets and the garlic that the missus bought to plant (might be a bit late for it – we’ll see)

I’ll update with photos from the plot tomorrow.

Fruit bushes in… Rhubarb doing well!

Popped down to the allotment yesterday afternoon, before the Rugby (Wow what a game, shame England weren’t playing like that six weeks ago!!). I managed to get hold of a number of fruit bushes from Lidl for next to nothing so I thought I’d plant them up. I had prepared an area for raspberry canes, but as Lidl only had one individual plant I thought I’d give that to Dad to plant at home. I was really looking for somewhere in the region of 10 plants to put up.

But, as the bed was ready, I thought I’d plant the 2 gooseberry, 2 redcurrant and 1 blackcurrant bushes there.  They seem to be at home. As you can see from the right of the picture I still have quite a lot of clearance to do up at the top half of the plot – and we won’t even discuss the bottom half just now, OK! :)

The fruit trees seem to be at home where they are, quite closely planted together, but this is by design, I am hoping to force these cheap trees to grow small – we’ll see how we go with that – it may be that next year, after they have been where they are for a little while, I may move them about a little bit – but we’ll see. I was concerned that they wouldn’t do anything as they were just ‘heeled’ in over the Christmas months as time didn’t allow me the trip. I’ll just keep a close eye on them…

 

Finally, this year, after being in the ground for 3 years the Rhubarb actually looks promising! The asparagus that was planted in the same “permanent” bed has, however, not faired as well and I have written this off as a crop. I’ve planted some gladioli in this bed now so that I can pick my wife some nice cut flowers a little later in the season. Very exciting to have the rhubarb up though – a little bit of Rhubarb and blackberry crumble later in the year perhaps :) And, of course, the childhood memories of rhubarb dipped in sugar just eaten raw!

I’ve got a day at home today, so I’ll tidy up the back-garden plot and fit the mini poly tunnel that was also a bargain from Lidl and plant out some seeds in trays to get the season going – I’m a little behind really.

Bread and Baking

It’s a really beautiful day! For some reason I awoke this morning at 5.30am naturally (honestly it was nothing to do with the amount of lager I’d drunk the day before whilst watching the rugby)

We have got nothing in the house at the moment - we are striving to empty the fridge, freezer and cupboards of all the things we have “stored there for later” – so I decided to make some bread. I made a yeast mix up with some Allisons dried yeast, and left it to go to work – but it seems this batch of yeast is no good, so it’s going to have to go out, it just didn’t foam up. Luckily I had some more dried yeast so I made a new batch up with that. This has been wholly successful and lovely light loaf has been consumed :)

Now, whilst I was waiting for the process to happen (rising, proofing etc) I got to reading and discovered many interesting website on leavened bread. This is something that is of interest, I like the idea of something living for me to keep in the fridge, dormant, and then bring back to life like Frankenstein! So now I’m making up a batch of leaven following a recipe from “River Cottage Handbook No.3 – Bread” which refers to it as Levain or Poolish.

So now I have a 1 litre clip-top Kilner jar with a mix of flour and water it it, sitting underneath my combi-boiler trying to get going – I’ll update you when I see how it’s going ;)

Just out of interest there is an interesting “community” of sourdough lovers (the name for any bread made for Leaven) here

Starting from the top

I went down to the allotment today, in the C5 (Hurrah! Finally got it back). I’ve only got a couple of pretty duff batteries so I can do one trip per battery (I should be able to go there and back on one really). Anyway it was great fun to get down there in an ecological manner (let’s just forget about the fact that I’m charging it from home using fossil fuels shall we! I’ll get to that a little later)

Anyway, I’ve decided to start from the top on the allotment (physically as well as metaphorically). A few weeks ago I finally planted out the fruit trees that I purchased from Lidl’s for a bargain £3 each. There’s a Jonagold, Cox’s Orange Pippin, Stella Cherry and Pear (I can’t remember the variety at the moment, it’s labelled so I’ll sort that out later!). Whilst planting these I also set about starting to mark the border with some very make-shift low fencing made from old pallets (they are a swine to take apart without ripping the wood though!!). This isn’t being done to define where my boundary is in a territorial manner but for me to be able to see where it is so I can ascertain just how much I’ve got to do. I need to be able to see boundaries so that I can plan just how much more I’ve got to do! I am also planning on losing the slope that my allotment has. At the moment the bottom edge of my plot is probably 2 or 3 feet below the top edge and, as a result of that, the rain causes most of my nutrients to end up on other people’s plots and leaves me with a VERY sandy loam.

Lidl , starting Saturday the 7th, have got fruit bushes for the bargain price of £1.45! They have Blueberry, Gooseberry, Redcurrant, Raspberry, Blackcurrant and Blackberry. Well I’m up for a bit of all of that action (excluding Blackberries which are more than prevalent enough behind my plot). I’ve started preparing an area at the top-left corner of my plot for some of the fruit bushes – probably some raspberry canes. I found some interesting square metal poles which have holes in at just the right height for cane support, just need to add wire and we should be good to go. I think that the area to the right of this, where currently there are some very sorry looking gooseberry bushes which were strangled out of existence by nettles, weed and bramble and are now dead will be a good place for the rest of the berry bushes – probably in a nice square formation.

I can work on the top area because the height is already correct. The lower edge of the allotment will require some retaining walls built out of old pallets, lots of nails and some more of the handy metal poles. I can then work on backfilling this area with organic matter and soil. Ultimately I plan on covering almost the entire plot in around 1 or 2 feet of manure (where the slope dictates) and leaving it covered in black plastic for around a year – in the meantime I’ll continue growing goods at home. The fruit bushes and trees should be quite happy up the top with just a light mulch (I hope)

Getting there…

Well I’ve been down again – and the weather is getting warmer. I’ve managed to clear the top half of the site, ready for my “master plan” re-design. I’m going to create a pallet-wood wall at the bottom end of the allotment and stop the rain from running away with all of the goodness in my soil.
The site is on a slope, nothing too major, but with the sandy soil that we have I need to retain as much as possible. I’m going to level it off nicely and then cover the majority in about 8-12 inches of manure and black plastic – then let the worms work it all in for me over the next year. I’ll leave the top 1/8th or so uncovered to deal with next year so that I can grow at least a little bit down at the allotment…

I’ve also managed to plant the 4 fruit trees in their permanent home – a couple of apple trees, a pear tree and a cherry tree – I’m going to have to prune them each year to keep their size down. But it’s an experiment isn’t it? :)

Once I’m comfortable with the fruit trees I’ll try some step-over cordons of apple and pear as fencing down the sides of the allotments – I think it’ll look nice :D

I’m going down this week to do some more work – I’ll try to remember the camera this time so I can take some snaps – my iPhone broke, so I can’t use that anymore!

Need to get down again!

I’ve been down recently – well in the last month or so. But I didn’t take any photo’s of what I’ve been doing.

I’ve been trying to get the back half of the site cleared ready for use this year, I’m going to try growing all of the Christmas presents for this years gifts – chutneys, pickles etc.

The cold weather makes clearing now very hard, as the ground is SOLID, but I managed to get plenty done a month ago (or so) and built a new compost area.

I’ll get some snaps and upload them.

Progress...

No photos for today, but managed to get down for a good 3 hours today. Roped my best friend, Chris, into this session :) I managed to weed to top half of the plot, where the spuds have gone mad, and earthed up around them. Chris weeded 5 out of 7 of the remaining beds that we have created on the first half of the plot, and a bloody good job of it he did too! We've covered that with a weed membraine and some logs to hold it down. These beds are having there crops prepped for them at home. I've sown:

6 Big MAX pumpkin seeds
Green Sprouting Calabrese
Chard - Perpetual Spinach
Cultivated Rocket
Boltardy Beetroot
Trocadero Improved Lettuce
Lollo Rossa Lettuce
Corn Salad Baval
Early Purple Sprouting Broccoli
Cucumber Long Green Ridge
Dwarf French Bean Sprite

I've ordered some plants from a couple of online nursery's:

Tomato Alicante
Tomato San Marzano
Herb Collection (Chives, Mint, Rosemary, Sage, Thyme and Sweet Marjoram)
Lettuce Little Gem
Sweet Pepper Redskin

The above are all from www.plantcollection.co.uk and were bought because I missed the sowing season for Tom's and the sweet peppers. I just chucked the rest in because I was buying ;)

Calabrese Marathon Plants
Broccoli (Sprouting) Bordeaux Plants
Brussels Sprout Brilliant Plants
Cabbage Peter Plants

These were all bought from marshalls as a set and were bought because I missed the ideal time for sowing out the brussels and my other half was really looking forward to brussels this christmas!


On top of that I've also already got Sweetcorn, Butternut Squash and Onward Pea's growing at home in preperation for a little "Three Sisters" preperation.



See, think you'll agree! A VERY productive day! :)

I'll grab some photos on Tuesday so that you can all see how we're getting on ;)

Damn! Been down again - FINALLY!

Finally - after more than 3 weeks I've made it back down to the allotment! EVERYTHING is growing :) You have no idea how happy I am about that, I was just starting to lose the faith, but it has been re-invigorated; even with all the weeding. I managed to fill an entire wheelbarrow full of weeds that were pulled out of just 4 of the beds (4ft x 4ft) - that is a lot of weed!
The above is the corner of the bed that has the parsnips in - I've not weeded it yet cause I wasn't 100% sure what the parsnips looked like - I know now, so back tomorrow after work to finish off!

I was pleasantly suprised to see that a few of the items I wasn't expecting up were in fact up! Below is a picture of the asparagus - which was a wonderful suprise under all the weeds!! Haven't eaten asparagus since I was a kid (and I didn't like it then) much less grown it - I'm hoping my taste buds have matured. Well, if I don't like it I'm sure it'll be snapped up!

Above is the Jerusalem Artichoke, I didn't really know what this was either, but a process of elimination let me work it out. I didn't plant this in rows, well not neat ones, I planted them in a rough grid - but the weeds were all around and hiding the plants really well! :D
I'm rather looking forward to seeing how these babies go - I've not eaten these before at all. Anyone else getting the idea that the allotment is my experimental playground!



Check out my nice neat rows of carrots! Sadly the red spring onions in the rows between really aren't having any fun :( I think I may have to put something else in there - maybe something else to stop the dreaded carrot fly... Or maybe, if it isn't too late, I can sow some more carrot...



Below is the one row in the bed of Parsnips that I know are Parsnips! The rest I wasn't so sure about in the failing light. I'll be down there tomorrow to sort out the other rows ;)

My final picture of success for the night is the bed with Onions, Shallots and Garlic in - they are doing really well. All of these plants are doing really well when you consider that they haven't had a drop of water or rain in 3-4 weeks! I suppose there is enough in the ground to keep em going for now - even though last time I was down there it was more like the Australian outback! The bed still needs a weeding, but because the soil in this one is less prepared and more sandy it hasn't let so much take route so deeply. That was the problem with the other beds - over preperation I suppose, the soil was really well prepared and fertilised - but it meant that the weeds were too! Still I'm on top of it now - hopefully it won't get any worse!

I've got rows of spuds in too - I forget the breeds - but I don't have photos yet - I'll grab them tomorrow and update. They are taking really well though, considering I planted them out rather late...

Got 4 beds...

Been down to the allotment all day today - plenty of coffee in the thermos to keep us going and some nice ham rolls ;)

By the end of todays work we had four 4x4 ft beds with sifted soil, added compost and manure in the ones that needed it and a nicely weed membrained, bark covered path all sorted.

We've measured out where the rest of our beds are going to go and we're pretty happy so far!

My sisters 2 came down to give us a hand - we even planted the eldest to see if he'd grow! :) No progress yet, but we are growing him organically, so no nasty quick feeds ;)

Since we knew we'd be out the WHOLE day - of near as damn it - we took to dogs out nice and early for a walk in the frosts - they were as happy as pigs in stuff :S That's Harry on the left and Duke on the right!

More next weekend on the progress at the lottie ;)

The rough plot plan

Here is the rough plot plan - it's not labelled with what goes where yet - just bed numbers as a rough plan. Gone with 4ft square beds, as the niece and nephew can help out easy then - and I can experiment with stuff ;)