28th May 2018 - Planting Out

This week has been Chelsea Flower Show and for those of you who know me you'll know that for me that means planting out.  This week is a reminder for me that the frost risk has finally passed for Yorkshire and I'm safe to put out all of my seedlings.  This year I've been so tempted to put things out earlier because of the weather but I've resisted because even though the weather has been good you just never know.  What I have been doing though is keeping the less tender plants closer to the doors and kept both of the doors open.

I have done a mixed brassica bed with cauliflower, swede and savoy cabbage (6 of each).  I use enviromesh over this bed to keep them safe from the cabbage whites but it's important to remember that even with the protection you have to still regularly check them because somehow the little critters manage to get in sometimes.  I've actually seen butterflies laying eggs on netting and then when the caterpillars hatch they crawl through the holes so if you have netting that's bigger than enviromesh look out for little yellow eggs on your netting and make sure you squash it before it hatches.  

I also planted more peas and some more pumpkins out as well.  I have tried to do some succession planting of the peas and I might still put more in to continue that.  I'm not doing any beans this year because nobody except me likes them and I honestly can't grow enough peas for my husband!  I have also used some of the space in between the peas to put some of my dwarf sunspot sunflowers.  Littlest L planted lots of sunflowers when she came to visit the other day and they've all germinated so I actually have loads of sunflowers to find space for! 

I also planted out my potatoes this weekend.  I know that lots of people put them out sooner and again, I probably could have got away with it this year, but if the foliage comes through and then you have a late frost you can easily lose them.  For me, because I can't be up at the plot every day and for the last two weeks I've been working away it's just not worth the risk.  This year my potatoes are in one of the smaller beds (10' long instead of 13') and I decided to only do 1 row in the middle of the bed instead of the 2 rows that I normally do.  I had 6 seed potatoes left over and so I've put 3 each in bags that are filled with just manure so that will be interesting to see how they get on.

I didn't get around to planting the carrots and parsnips but I'll probably do that either during the week or next weekend.  I've bought some seed tapes for both so it will be interesting to try them out and hopefully make it a bit easier for weeding in between rows than I had last year.  They seed tapes also have some weed suppressant membrane as part of them so again it will be interesting to see how they work.

That was all on Sunday because Littlest L was playing in a tournament on Saturday with York City and so I didn't get a lot of time up there on Saturday.  

Today was all about 86a and getting the rest of it covered.  It does still look a mess because there's bits of wood and membrane and a shed waiting to be constructed laid on it but at least it looks like someone is doing something with it now instead of the overgrown mess it's been for a few years.  The area under the hedge was overgrown with nettles and I can't tell you how many times I managed to get stung getting them out and into the compost bin. The worst bit about nettle stings is definitely when you get into the shower later in the day!!  

As you can see in the top picture there were lots of pretty difficult weeds including teasels which I'm hoping the membrane will kill off although the membrane I bought isn't as good quality as I used to get (not on purpose) so I'm a bit bothered that they might push through.  I'll have to keep an eye on them and maybe put a thicker membrane on top if it becomes a problem.

My next job on this plot will be to measure and start to plan.  I think I'm going to put the shed against the fence closest to 85a but put it in the middle; my thought process is that it might create some shade, which I don't have any of in 85a so that I have somewhere to sit out of the sun occasionally.  I've also acquired, from my allotment neighbour, some big old tree roots that I've put against the opposite fence with the intention of creating a stumpery - watch this space for more information on that.

My final note for this week is that a few weeks ago I thought that the vine in my polytunnel had died over the winter.  The stem was completely brown and the leaves had all curled up.  I was considering pulling it up but my neighbour told me to wait and now it not only has leafed up but I actually have my first mini bunches of grapes on it.  I know that I'll need to thin them out and then when the bunches develop I'll need to get my little snips out and reduce the size of the bunch because apparently by doing that you get bigger grapes.  

Next week is the plant swap at our site so I have lots of seedlings to pot on ready to give to other growers on site.  It's always a popular event and if you don't have somethings similar I would suggest that you talk to everyone around you to see if they'd like to do the same.  It's such a good way to share the extra seedlings that most people inevitably end up with.

I hope you all have a lovely week and that the sun continues to shine.
Until next time - happy gardening x

20th May 2018 - Royal Wedding, Football and a bit of the allotment!

Well this weekend has been super busy but not so much with the allotment.  Yesterday was the Royal Wedding and there was no way I was going to miss it but the weather was amazing and I really didn't want to be sat in the house all day so I decided to go up to the allotment, take my Kindle and watch it there!  I didn't watch it all the way through but I saw Megan arrive at the church, and some of the vows (I watched the rest of it on catch-up when I got home later).

Once I'd watched the main part of the wedding I needed to get on with covering 86a.  I had to move the shed that was leaning against the hedge and I also had to move all of the bricks that we'd found.  My neighbour was able strim the plot for me so that I can keep on top of it.  I still didn't manage to get it all covered but there is much more than half of it down now; in order to finish it I have some big stumps that need moving (I'm going to make a stumpery with them but I'll talk about that another time).  I want to move them outside of the plot for a short time but I'm worried about them going missing so I want to be careful about where I put them.  I haven't taken any pictures because to be honest it doesn't look much different to last week; except there's more membrane and less grass!!

On 85a I didn't do a great deal this weekend.  I had some bits and pieces that needed potting on and I've got loads and loads of seedlings that need to be split in time for the plant swap in a couple of weeks, but I haven't been able to do that yet either!  Unfortunately because of the heat and because I was working away this week some of the seedlings in the polytunnel have suffered.  Some of the sunflowers really had a battering by the sun and I may have lost some of them.  Thankfully the millions of sunflowers that Littlest L put in a couple of weeks ago seem to be germinating so hopefully I'll still have some more to plant out.

Today Littlest L had her football cup final.  It is the first time that the team have made it to the final but on this occasion they lost 2-1.  The achievement of getting there and the occasion was just a bit too much this time but they just keep getting better and stronger and I'm sure they'll win another time.

Because of the cup final I didn't get to the plot until 4.30pm today and rather than trying to get more membrane down I decided that I'd clear out my shed (which has been desperately needed for a while). 

As I started bringing things out of the shed I heard quite a loud cheeping noise and when I looked there was a small parakeet on top of the arbour.  I decided to go into the shed to fill up the bird feeders for him and while I was bent over getting into the bird seed I felt a draft against the back of my neck.  When I stood up the parakeet was in the shed!  He then hopped around and cheeped at me for around 45 mins while I filled all the bird feeders.  I also put some kibbled peanuts onto a tray for the parakeet and he hopped across to eat them.  He was so close to me that I could almost touch him (although he kept just far away that I couldn't).  

It felt like such a privilege to have him hopping around me and watching me work.  Eventually because I needed to clear the things from the table I lifted the tray and moved it to the door when he then flew out and onto the bird feeder.  I added a mix of sunflower hearts and kibbled peanuts to the tray that he was sat on while I carried on clearing out the shed.  When I sat down for a drink he hopped up to the top of the shed above me and immediately went to sleep!  He stayed with me for the entire time that I was there (approx 3 hours).  I was very worried leaving him because the Rooks and Magpies would give him a hard time if he stayed there on his own, not to mention that a bird of prey would pick him off the roof easily.  I was hoping that when the adult parakeets came in to roost that he'd go and join them and be safe.  

I'm hoping to get back up to the plot tomorrow after work and move the stumps so that I can do more of the membrane.  Then I'm away again until Thursday so I hope that I'll be able to get back up on Thursday night or Friday.  Ultimately I have got to get the rest of the plot covered.  Without that I'm going to be constantly battling the weeds until I can get the beds in place.  

I hope you all have a lovely week, until next time - happy gardening x

Update on the bird.  I have been told that he's a love bird, not a parakeet (which I'd assumed given that we have loads of them around us) and that he's unlikely to survive in the wild :'(  I've put a notice out to the other allotment holders but nobody has seen him for a week or so.  I'm hoping someone has caught him and he's safe but given that we have rooks and jays all around us I suspect he's been killed by one of them, which is really sad!  I'll keep you posted if anyone lets me know anything x

13th May 2018 - Weed Membrane, Pea Planting

After last week when we cleared 86a this week I had to level the 2 big beds that were in the middle of the plot.  They had been raised beds with sides and when we removed the sides the weeds were so thick that the compost just stayed where it was.  I tried to use the spade to effectively slide it off but it took me half an hour to remove 2 buckets of compost so I brought my long handled cultivator to break it up, which then enabled me to rake it across and level the whole thing out.  

As you know I am a no-dig gardener and so it felt a bit weird using the cultivator to break up the compost but it really was unavoidable.  I did pull some couch grass roots out as I raked it across but I didn't bother to go through even inch of it because I then immediately set to work covering it with the weed membrane that I had taken up last week.  Unfortunately because of how tatty a lot of the membrane is there will be some that I can't use but I've done quite a lot so far and I'm really happy to have covered the majority of the area that I had to break up.  

I suspect that by the time I get back to it next weekend I'll need to strim the top half (green bits) again but by then I'm hoping that I'll have another full role of weed membrane so that I can get it finished.  I'm also considering removing the pallet fence because I want to make sure that I get the membrane right under the fence as much as I can; my plan is to replace it with a chicken wire fence to match the rest of it but it is likely to mean that there'll be no fence for a week or so (Littlest L has her cup final match on Sunday so I don't think I'll get up the the plot much on that day).  I really need to be clear about what I'm going to do on Saturday and not overstretching myself or I won't achieve anything!

On 85a I wanted to get some peas planted and I needed to get some supports in for the 2 tomato plants that I have in the terracotta pots.  As I mentioned I am testing a self watering pot but I also have the 2 terracotta pots in a bucket of water which will mean that the compost will pull in water as it's needed and hopefully the tomatoes will never dry out (a big problem I have with not being able to get to the plot as regularly as I'd like).  So far they seem to be working well, the compost felt nicely damp even after no water being added to it for a week.  In addition to the watering tests I've decided to also test some different ways of supporting the plants.

The self watering pot has support included which is a stake up the middle with a halo at intervals from the bottom to the top which should stop the plant from falling over, I'm going to use a soft tie to secure the plant loosely to the middle stake.  In the picture are the 2 other methods of support that I'm trying.  On the left is a traditional 3 stake wigwam; I've fastened it at the top with the plastic wrap that the bamboo was held together with when I bought it (a little bit of recycling there lol).  On the right is a single bamboo stake with an extending string that you attach with a little hook to the bottom of your plant and then wrap it around the plant securing it by pushing the top into the bamboo.  This holds the plant securely against the stake but you do have to be careful that you don't damage the stem with the string.

I have tried 2 different methods of supporting my peas this time.  I want to try and grow lots of peas this year because they are something that we all like, unlike the beans that I grew last year!  It's difficult to see what I've done but I've fashioned 3 rows with chicken wire and bamboo for the peas to grow up.  I planted lots of peas together in there and I'll thin them out as I need to.  Next to it is a more traditional wigwam, which I've planted 2 peas at the bottom of each stick with the intention to removing the weakest as they germinate.  I will put a pumpkin in the middle of it which means that there will be no wasted space.  I will be interesting to see how they get on (whether the mice get to them before they grow) and which method gives the biggest yield.  I am a dope though, I intended to plant the taller peas on these two structures and after planting them I realised that I'd mixed them up and the ones I planted are quite small so I don't think they'll need this much growing space!  I am bothered that I've not protected the seedlings from the birds and it's very possible that the plants on the outside of the chicken wire and in the wigwam will be picked out by the birds, they won't be able to get into the middle of the chicken wire because it's quite close together so hopefully I'll still get peas even if the pests get some too!

The other job I need to get done soon is planting out my potatoes and sow my root veg.  I've decided I'm only going to do 1 row of potatoes this time to see if I get a better result in terms of size of the potatoes.  I'm primarily planning to grow carrots and do some more swede because that was very successful last year.  

I hope that you all have a great week, until next time - happy gardening :-)

7th May 2018 - 86a Update

Today was all about 86a, on 26th November last year I told you that Mr L had been given the plot next to mine but for various reasons we've not been able to get moving with it.  Today I wanted to try and get down to a blank canvas so that I could start planning properly.  Mr L is my 'handy man' and so I needed him to help me with all the heavy jobs.

The plan was to remove all of the beds, as you can (kind of) see in the "before" picture there were 4 really big beds; 2 of them had new compost put into them a couple of years ago but weren't covered and the other 2 were covered but didn't really have any compost in them!  There's also membrane on other areas of the plot but it needs to be everywhere to be effective.

Mr L got cracking on taking up all the scaffold boards and, because I'd not done anything with it since strimming in November, he had to strim it all again.  He had to do the beds again because the new seasons weeds had taken a hold, and then he moved on to the areas around the fences where most of the brambles are and where they were starting to shoot up again.

The 2 beds that had the additional compost in stayed in the shape of the beds because the roots of the weeds were holding it all together.  I'm going to have to try and break that all up to spread it across the rest of the plot so that there isn't a step.  I'll use some of it to fill the holes that have been left from the trees that were pulled out.  I tried to break it up with the spade but it was just too hard.  I'm going to take my multi prong cultivator up and have a go with that.  Ideally I'd like to break it up enough to just spread it evenly around the plot and then I can cover it with membrane.


You can just see at the back of the plot in this final picture that I've started to put some membrane down.  My neighbour behind has membrane down on her plot as well so I made sure that it overlapped as much as I could.  It was difficult around the fence posts and there were some areas that couch grass had really taken a hold and grown into the fence that I couldn't avoid so I'll have to keep on top of that but hopefully it will be much easier to manage.  I also cut it long so that I could tuck it under the fence at the right side of the plot.  

The hedges, that you can see in the first pic were really overgrown so we trimmed them back and down, external hedges can't be more than 6' high so we brought it down to that level. 

We had inspections for the allotment this week and so of course I had everything wrong with this plot that could possibly be wrong!  It's just one of those things that we had been planning to get work done on the plot this weekend but at least we'll be able to show a clear progression in the coming weeks and certainly in time for the next inspection in 6 months time.

I will be using www.growveg.co.uk to plan the new plot, as I did with my original plot.  It has a free 12 month trial but the subscription is reasonably priced and as well as tracking your plans each year, reminding you where you planted things in previous years so you can maintain your rotation, you also get regular newsletters and additional support.  They've also recently added a garden journal which gives you the opportunity to track when you're planting things as well as detailing watering, tending and harvesting.  You can add photos and make notes (which you never know, might end up being a blog for me to read in future!!)

I will need to go back up to site during the week to try and get more of the plot covered with membrane before it all starts growing back again.  I'm not going to keep doing different posts for the two plots but this time I thought that as I was planning to do a full day just working on the new one that it made sense.

I hope you've all had a lovely bank holiday weekend and been able to enjoy the sunshine.  Until next time - Happy Gardening x

6th May 2018 - Bank Holiday Weekend (incl. pic from WNGD)

I installed a new fountain in my pond this weekend, the solar fountain gave up the ghost at the end of last year so I've had to put in a different one.  It's important to have some running water in the pond because it helps to keep it clean.  I had to put the pump into a mesh bag because as I was putting it in one of the tiny tadpoles was sucked up through the pump!

I do love the sound of running water though and especially when it's hot outside (and it's been really hot this weekend).  The pump comes on at 12.15pm every day and runs for 4 hours.  It doesn't need the sun to work so I don't need to worry about it not charging if it's not sunny but I think I will take it inside when it's very cold.  

I've also been working on a new flower bed this weekend.  I cleared the old strawberry bed because frankly I hardly got any strawberries thanks to the squirrels and it was simply a pain try and protect them all the time!  Last week I bought some plants from the Harrogate Flower Show and I've sown some seeds in the polytunnel so I got 2 more obelisk with the intention to put the jasmine and honeysuckle on one each and then some sweet peas in the middle.  In the end I put the jasmine and honeysuckle onto one obelisk and so I might put a clematis on the other with sweet peas still in the middle.  I'll have to think about it.  

I have made a point of making sure that I have labelled all of the plants so that as things die back I'll know where they are when I'm planting spring bulbs.  I've planted the Phlox (Clouds of Perfume) right on the corner of the bed and I'm hoping that as it grows I'll get the scent every time I brush past.

I have sown some tomatoes but as usual I have done them a bit later than other people seem to have (partly because I don't have room in the house to keep them on a windowsill and I don't have a heated greenhouse).  My friend therefore gave me 3 very well established, and super healthy plants.  You'll see in the picture one of them is in a red pot, which is a self watering pot with built in support.  The other two are in terracotta pots; which are inside big plastic pots.  The purpose of that is to try and ensure that the tomatoes don't dry out; especially as I struggle to get up to the plot in the week and there's a possibility that they'll be unhappy with me if I don't do something!

I did also buy some tumbling toms that I wanted to try in a hanging basket.  I have 6 of them so I put 4 around the sides and 2 in the top.  I used sphagnum moss to fill the in-between spaces because I thought that it would not only stop the compost falling out but help to retain moisture in the basket.  

I'll just take a moment to tell you all what I do with my compost to prepare it for plants; it's literally like a recipe!!

 - 3 parts multi purpose compost

 - 1 part horti grit (or vermiculite)

 - 1 scoop Richard Jackson's Root Booster

 - 3 scoops Richard Jackson's Easy Feed

 - 1 scoop water retaining granules

As you know, I do like Richard Jackson's products, the root booster gives all of my plants a great start and the easy feed is an all season feed so even though I do use flower power if I forget, my plants will still get fed.  The grit is good for drainage and the water retaining granules help to ensure that my plants aren't dried out in the week when I'm not able to get there.  Aside from that I've added capillary matting to all of my trays in the polytunnel to again try and keep the seedlings watered (albeit that's hard when the weather has been so warm!!)

Finally I couldn't let this blog go by without mentioning that yesterday was Global Naked Gardening Day.  Check out #nakedgardeningday on Instagram.  I did take part (look away now if you're easily offended!!) strangely enough there was hardly anyone up at the allotment yesterday, I don't know if the heat kept people away but it did mean that I could be very cheeky and take a quick pic in my polytunnel.  I know its not everyone's cup of tea and I saw on Facebook that some people were unhappy about photos being posted but what I love about the day is that it celebrates people - no matter how they look or what they're preferences are.  Gardening is something that anyone can enjoy regardless of skin colour, gender, sexual orientation, age etc. etc. etc. and I don't know why but getting your kit off seems to demonstrate that :-D

You will notice that I'm posting this on Sunday when there's another day left of the weekend.  Mr L and I are planning to make a start on the new plot tomorrow so I'm going to do a specific post about that - watch this space.

Until next time then, happy gardening xx