25th September 2016 - One Year On

Well it's a full year since I swapped plots; I can't believe everything that has happened in a year.  I have worked so hard and I'm really happy with the results.  I was lucky to have started with a blank canvas and all the work Mr L did with the structural elements of the plot and then all the planning and planting I did have made it such a successful plot.  I told you last week about winning an award for my container garden and I'm already planning on what I can do next, particularly with the planting table I got from freegle.  I've also started to think about the things that have and haven't worked on the plot.  I've decided that I am going to move my flower bed to next to the shed.  I haven't really been able to appreciate the flowers because they were hidden behind the brassica's.  I would like to tidy it up as well when I replant.  I had never grown flowers before so Littlest L and I just put them all in where they fell.  My freesia's therefore haven't done so well, hopefully if they're properly positioned they'll do better.  Having said that, for the first time I was brave and cut some of the flowers for the house.  I chose them just based on what was ready so the colours don't exactly match but I don't care - they're lovely and the roses smell beautiful.  I'm hoping to still get more now that I've been brave enough to cut them but if not I'll be happy with these for this year. 


It really is a funny time of the year, there's still harvesting but the things that are growing don't need much work and the weeds seems to be starting to die off.  I took up all of the ground elder and wildflowers from next to my pond a couple of weeks ago and last week I sprayed a particularly rampant doc with Richard Jackson's weed killer.  I don't use lots of weedkiller but I do like this one and I was struggling to dig it out so it got sprayed.  This week I have planted about 40 English bluebell bulbs and sowed some wildflower seeds.  I wasn't sure if I could sow the seeds now because the packaging recommends sowing in the spring but my gut tells me that the wildflowers are sowing their own seeds now so I decided to do it anyway.  I have kept half of them back so that if they don't germinate I have more to sow in the springtime.

I took the decision today to remove all of the tomatoes in the polytunnel.  They had blight and it was starting to affect the fruit so it was time they went.  I had to harvest both ripe and green fruit and so I'm hoping that they green fruit will ripen on the windowsill but if they don't I will make some green tomato chutney.  I think the red tomatoes will need to be made into either a pasta sauce or tomato soup.  I do also need some to make a chilli jam although I can't decided whether to make a jam or a sweet chilli dipping sauce.  Mr L likes the dipping sauce but I'm not sure that I have enough chilli's yet.  I also need to dry and chop some chilli's - I use dried chilli's all the time and I prefer these to chilli powder so it would be great if I can make my own. 

I also decided to clear out my pepper plants which have been a big disappointment.  I only got 4 peppers from them and the rest had all been eaten by something (probably slugs).  I really want to think about what I can do better next year; I think I'll plant the peppers directly into the bed and I think I need to consider some better support for them to avoid them drooping down, which resulted in some of them breaking.  I have never had a good crop from any peppers that I've grown so I am determined to find a way to get a good crop of ripe, red peppers!  They are a vegetable that we use very regularly and so it is definitely worth my while to master the art of growing them!

My final thought for the weekend is regards to the changing season.  We have had some lovely weather in the last couple of weeks but I'm expecting that it will very soon turn cold.  I still have plenty to do so I'm hoping that even if it's chilly that the rain holds off. as it did last year.  Today I had a little bit of rain, but luckily I was working in the polytunnel.  I did however come out at one point and found a full rainbow over my plot.  I was particularly taken with how the light seemed to shine on my little plot and how the sunflowers were so bright against the sky.

So, until next time I hope you all have rainbows over your endeavours, whatever they may be!

18th September 2016 - Best Container Garden!

Winning container garden

This week we had the allotment awards at Bradford City Hall (which, by the way is an absolutely beautiful building) and I won the best container garden for my fairy garden.  They liked that it was something different and that it had a fun factor to it.  I had also entered some of my photos into the photo competition and I had entered best plot.  My photos were shown in the run down of those that were entered and there were 27 entrants in the best plot and mine was named in the top 5 so I was super pleased with that too.  I've put my certificate up in the shed and hopefully it will be the first of many!

In the last few weeks I've been busy making jam and this week I also made a tomato sauce for pasta.  It was a very basic recipe, just some onions, garlic, herbs and the tomatoes.  The garlic wasn't from the plot but the onions and tomatoes were and I made 2 jars so will be looking forwards to making some chilli or spaghetti bolognese with those this week.  I have now bought some oranges because I've got the bug and I want to have a go at making marmalade, I also picked some more apples today because I want to make ginger marmalade.  Interestingly you make an apple jelly and then add some preserved ginger to it so I need to preserve some ginger and then make the apple jelly.  I'm really looking forward to having a go with it and hopefully I'll have some orange and some ginger marmalade to give to people at Christmas (orange and ginger together might be nice too!!)

Talking about picking apples, today I had a fledgling robin following me around and whilst I was picking the apples it was perched at my head height less than an arms length from me.  I was chatting away to him and he was chirping back at me.  It was really lovely to have him trust that I wasn't going to hurt him.  He'd also followed me around earlier while I was weeding the brassica bed - I suspect he was hoping that I'd dig up some worms but unfortunately I didn't.  I did offer him a couple of caterpillars though which he was very happy with!  I decided to take the netting off the brassica bed because they were being munched by something and it was just hard to get to them to check.  I know there are still cabbage whites around but at least now I can check more easily and therefore it's likely I'll check more regularly.  I was very pleased when I had a look at the brassica's.  The sprouts are really looking nice and whilst the leaves do look like they've been munched by something the sprouts look like they're forming well so I really do need to keep a close eye on them.  I'm not sure how the purple sprouting broccoli is going to do though; one of them did bolt a couple of weeks ago so I'm hoping they others don't follow suit.  I also seem to have some lovely looking swede in there and a couple of nice leeks although the smaller ones that were hidden under the foliage of the broccoli I've pulled up as 'baby leeks' and I'll use those because they were never going to get any bigger!

Sad news this week though is that my Christmas spuds have blight :-(  It was always a risk to put them in and leave them outside at this time of the year but I was keeping everything crossed.  I really should have bought some blight resistant ones and I didn't.  I'm going to have to scrap them but I'll use the compost on one of the beds that I had potatoes in this year so that it becomes part of the rotation.  It's also worth commenting that people seem to be confused about what to do with blighted plant material.  The roots, tubers and fruits should be burnt or disposed of without putting them on your compost.  The leaves and stalks can be composted because blight spores can only survive on live plant material and as soon as it's cut the spores die.  For those doubters amongst you, I had never heard of burning blighted plant material before I got an allotment and joined some allotment groups on facebook and so I've always composted anything with blight and yes, sometimes I do get blight but other times I don't.  I've grown tomatoes in my homemade compost for years, mostly when they're in the greenhouse I don't get blight because I keep the doors closed during blight season but occasionally I've had it when it's been very warm, prompting me to open the doors, but also very humid as it often is in Yorkshire!!

On a brighter note I found 3 actual melons on my plant today.  They're still small and it's very possible that they won't get much bigger now as the weather starts to turn but it's an interesting development in terms of learning for next year.  I'm not intending to grow tomatoes in the polytunnel next year as I don't want to have them in pots in there, there isn't really room now I have staging on the right side.  That means I could melons into the bed and make sure that the doors are kept closed most of the time; that should keep the temperature hot enough for the melons to grow and if I also grow chilli's and/or peppers in there I think they'll like the warmer temperatures too.  

We're now nearly at the end of September and my Autumn Gold raspberries are fruiting nicely.  I need to keep harvesting them to keep them fruiting.  Last week I spent some time tidying them.  I tied up a lot of the canes that I thought had actually gone bushy rather than grown up (they hadn't it was just they were all tangled up).  I also prune off any that were very very new growth because it's too late in the season for them to produce fruit.  Just as a reminder for anyone who isn't sure; summer fruiting raspberries fruit on last years new growth but autumn fruiting fruit on this years new growth so in January I will cut them all back right to the ground and they'll grow again from scratch.  I also spent quite a lot of time weeding out all of the couch grass that had worked it's way through the hops.  I used the empty and covered bed to put it all to dry before I burnt it all today.  

I am really happy with what I've achieved this year; for me gardening is a super way to relax and to exercise.  I started this time last year with a blank canvas and when I look at what I have now I am actually really impressed with the hard work both me and Mr L have put into it.  Mr L has done all of the construction for me.  All of the beds (including carrying most of the topsoil up the hill), the compost bins, the polytunnel and the shed and then I've done all of the design, planting, weeding, feeding and general gardening jobs; between us we've created a space that I view as my haven - the place I can go to unwind and relax but also provide healthy food for my kids.  What more could a person ever need?

4th September 2016 - Crop Rotations

I've now harvested both beds of potatoes and the onions so I'm starting to think about my crop rotation.  I know that brassica's ideally go into the bed where the legumes have been but I haven't really grown many this season so I've put kale and cauliflower into one of the potato beds.  

I will plant my onion sets and garlic in the next couple of weeks into my second potato bed and then in the spring I'll plant only one bed of potatoes into the onion bed.  In the meantime therefore I'm going to get a good layer of manure and compost onto that bed and cover it ready for spring.  I've also decided that the 3 sisters weren't really successful for me and so I'm going to have just a bed of peas and beans (where I currently have the sweetcorn and pumpkins but didn't really manage to grow any peas) and then I'll have a bed of sweetcorn and pumpkins next to the flower bed.  

I have already started to collect the insides of toilet rolls to plant my peas, sweetcorn and sweetpeas.  I've seen some negative comments about using toilet rolls but it has been my experience that they are very useful if treated correctly.  Peas, sweetpeas and sweetcorn do not like their roots disturbing so if you don't have a deep root trainer the toilet rolls work perfectly well.  Snip about an inch up around the bottom in 5 places and then fold the bottoms in.  Fill with compost and put them into a gravel tray with a thick layer of newspaper (or some capillary matting) and keep the paper very wet but not sitting in water.  That way the cardboard becomes very damp and keeps the compost damp enough for the seedlings. Before you put the cardboard tubes into the ground you should water them really well, so that the cardboard is very wet.  This will then help the cardboard to breakdown faster when under ground - remember that cardboard does not just disappear but don't be put off - the roots grow through the cardboard and the roots are not disturbed when planting.  It's also a free resources so everyone wins!

I'm also preparing myself to grow more from seed this year.  I have a plug plant tray and a number of seed trays that I'm going to use and I'm determined to try and not buy as many plug plants next year (if any at all).  I have both a polytunnel and greenhouse so I should certainly be able to grow from seed and I'm going to challenge myself to do that this year.  

I finished today by harvesting the ripe tomatoes out of the polytunnel, I was also given 1.5kg of plums and I picked 2.5kg of apples from a plot that is about to become vacant (after asking permission from the current plot holder), I also managed to pick 1.3kg of blackberries.  I then realised that I don't have enough jars to make jam so I've asked all of my friends to save them for me.  I'm going to make apple sauce and I'll make some apple pies as well as including some in the blackberry jam (the kids really enjoyed blackberry and apple jam).  I was also considering drying some of the tomatoes and bottling them in olive oil, but again I am devoid of appropriate jars which is very frustrating!  

I think all in all, I've had a great first season on this plot.  It's only my second season growing on an allotment and I really think I've had a significant amount of success - even with my limited knowledge.  I feel as though I can only continue to learn and grow and hopefully that will be reflected in my harvests.