Category: garden

Allotment, Sept 26

Wide angle of whole plot
This will become propagating zone at rear. Just sown some winter spinach ( it late, well see)
Grass cuttings today.
Quite a lot of this ancient pile of bramble and rosemary cuttings cleared.
And this plastic sheet retrieved from that pile, where it was serving no useful purpose

Clearing up in Sept

Slowly sorting through the huge pile of cherry prunings, bramble, and other woody stuff. To the right you can just see the cardboard I put over a bramble I dug out. Eventually, I’ll be able to remove that black plastic from underneath.
Removed the beans, which were in the foreground, before the netting. Netting is (semi-)protecting beet-leaf spinach and spring onion (both did, and doing, well). Beyond the netting, courgette has done reasonably (despite early munching by the muntjack). And beyond that, I’ve pulled back the polythene mulch to sort the mess under a little.
Removed the beans from left of the cosmos. Netting further back is protecting spinach and a japanese spring onion. A couple of rows of potatoes remain around where the fork is.
A toad has made his home in the compost bin.

Moving towards no-dig.

gardening woe

Did you notice that I’ve been unusually quiet about the allotment? That’d be because it’s been a disastrous year. After a promising start (I got the seedlings going early, got the potatoes in on time), things went downhill.

Our going away for two and a half weeks in July didn’t help. Nor did the awful weather: very slow to get warm and then insanely wet except for a week, during our absence, of scorching heat. When I came back at the end of July, the weeds were strangling the potatoes, tomatoes and courgettes. The tomato plants looked finished. The courgettes had run to marrows and the foliage was devastated by snail and slug attack. The potatoes had largely succumbed to blight, or something similar, and had mostly withered and browned.

I did some salvage work, mostly weeding, supporting and feeding the tomatoes, taking diseased leaves off the courgettes. The tomatoes have recovered somewhat, and the courgettes have continued to crop well, as did the cucumbers in the greenhouse (the peppers, though, have done less well and are much liked by the slug and snail population, the like of which we’ve not seen here in Cambridge previously). But the allotment has been a depressing site with waist-high weeds growing in the potato rows and fallow beds.

This weekend, however, we set to bringing the potatoes in and started to sort the plot out for next year. We decided it would be good to look at this time as an opportunity to tidy up and make the allotment a place we’d all be happy to come to work and play. Isa did fantasic work clearing up the front end around the water butts and then around the sheds. It’s going to look great.

The potatoes fared a bit better than expected. Many were, unsurprisingly, undersized, but there were fewer rotten and wormy ones than expected. I should try to weigh them at some point.

 

Sod all

Being the amount of  work I’ ve put in at the allotment thus far. This weekend was supposed to include much allotmenting but it kept getting put off. I got an hour in on Saturday, during which I turned over a few more rows and, back at home, planted a row of fennel and two rows of corriander (organic in the row nearer the greenhouse). Meanwhile, the seedlings are coming on. Got a lot of tomato, quite a lot of pepper, including Mavras, 5 or 6 cucumbers, loads of parsley, some chilli…
Sunday, the plan was to go early to Ikea, to sort out bits for the “new” kitchen then back by two to spend the rest of the day gardening. Well, that plan was half realised: we did get to Ikea early. But we got home at six.
Friday I had a day off. Natalie came up with Louis and Arlo. After lunch, we went over to Dave and Laylah’s. I foolishly wondered aloud about the possibility of building a studio (like Laylah and Dave’s) myself. (How hard could it be?!) We left Lola there as she was staying for a sleepover with Isla.
Sat, we went on the bikes to pick up Lola. After lunch, we went by bike to the little playground where I drew a T-junction on the basketball court so Lola could practice cycling. She’s only learned, in the last couple of weeks, the confidence to start off without help. So she’s now an independent cyclist.
Basta.

Digging in the dark

Up at 05:25 this morning and out to the allotment to dig over. I hope to make it a habit as last year; though I may possibly need to get to bed earlier. Pretty dark still at that time, though light by 06:15 when I went back for a shower.
It’s been a fantastic warm sunny week but a cold snap is forecast; I just overheard some say it’s going to snow over this weekend. All the more reason to get as much of allotment dug as possible before cold and wet arrives. At least it’s very easy to dig and only needs single digging.
The tomato seedlings are all coming on, as are the chillis; not seeing much action from the peppers yet, though. I also planted some cucumber and courgette and those are coming on nicely, as is a tray of flat-leaf parsley.
We’re all well, though both Lola and Neve have been on antibiotics recently: Lola for pneumonia (scary) and Neve for a urine infection (smelly). I got the UTI as well, though it seems to have gone without medicinal intervention.
Basta. More soon, I hope; be good to re-establish the blogging habit as well as the digging habit…

potting tomatoes and peppers

Potted tomato and pepper seeds, splitting pots between the greenhouse and the back porch to see whether can detect difference in germination time/seedling health… Labeled each pot carefully then watered, washing off all the ink. So had to reconstruct from memory and have doubtless got it wrong. Dick.
Anyway, varieties are:

  • Roma tomato (1 porch, 1 gh)
  • San Marzano tomato (1 porch, 1 gh)
  • Smadar tomato (1 porch, 1 gh)
  • Sweet Mixed Pepper (1 porch, 1 gh)
  • Mavras Pepper (1 porch)
  • Demon Red Pepper (1 gh)

Need to sow more of all remaining in a couple of weeks.

vegestate

This is the bed that Nonna dug. To the right, Boltardy beetroot; left of those, perpetual spinach. Further back, red cabbage seedlings; and a whole mass of what might be spring onion. Oh: and weeds. The perpetual spinach is great: it just keeps coming and it doesn’t seem to get any pests to speak of.

Curly kale. Ready to eat at the back, though I might wait a little longer. Two varieties here, one a dwarf.

Fennel and the dwarf kale where it was seeded. The fennel’s great; a lovely looking plant. I hope it stays as pest-free and healthy as it grows up.

The F1 Incas are doing well — the outside ones much better than those in the greenhouse. Lots of fruit, though all green as yet. I’m wondering whether I should harvest, even though they aren’t ripe.

French beans still coming strong, though a couple of the plants have developed quite a lot of yellow leaves. The Fiocco are doing well, too; just not sure when to harvest — Cesarina picks her Borlotti when the beans (inside the pods) have gone mottled. But I’m not sure these will mottle… I could wait until they are all dry, but presumably this will reduce the yield. Hmm, this and this are of interest.

Next year, must get the peppers and toms started earlier. The peppers are only just flowering now: I doubt we’ll get many fruit. And I’d like to try those crystal lemon cucumbers in the greenhouse.