11th June - Figs, Flowers and Cabbages

As you know, I scooped up all the leftover plants after the plant swap last week and this week I took them along to the school.  Each child has 6 weeks of gardening lessons as part of the creative curriculum with means that they rotate through different skills on a Friday afternoon.  Coincidentally Littlest L is on the gardening rotation so she was delighted to see me turn up with loads of plants.  I took a small group and showed them how to weed a bed and then we planted various plants into the space.  They decided that they wanted to plant some of the brassicas, some beetroot and some chillies!  It was a very odd combination and we talked about why the chillies might not be happy without any cover but they still wanted to plant them and then told their teacher that they would need to construct some kind of cover for them - that might be interesting!  The allotment society also had some plastic chairs and garden toys that I have taken to give to the early years group at school so I'll be delivering those later in the week.  

Back to my plot and I am not ashamed to say that I was pretty giddy to find 2 of my figs ripening nicely.  I put the fig back outside just a couple of weeks ago after moving it into the polytunnel over the winter.  I didn't remove any of the fruit that were bigger than my thumbnail before winter and I didn't remove any of the fruit to reduce my crop.  It has been pointed out that I might have bigger fruit if I do that but I'm just excited to have lots of fruit so it will be interesting to see how they progress now that I'm starting to take a crop from it. 

You might remember I showed you my cauliflower last week, it had started to form a head but still had loads of leaves.  This week it's head appears to be fully formed and there are hardly any leaves.  I know that I'm supposed to cover the head to stop it from going pink but I struggled to do that because the leaves were so small.  I can't remember what variety of cauliflower they are but my neighbour suggested they might be a mini one, in which case that one might be ready to harvest when the others haven't even begun to form a head yet!  Sticking with brassicas the savoy cabbage experiment in the polytunnel have gone absolutely mental.  They are starting to heart up now but they are absolutely massive.  The bed is 3 feet wide and the cabbages are spilling out over the edge or being pressed up against the poly.  I think if they had the room they've be 3 feet across each!  The 6 cabbage that I have in there are taking up more than half of the whole bed, which is 10 feet long!


I watched with interest when Monty Don said that you could plant normal garden canna lilies in the pond, even if they're not pond varieties and so this week I was in Aldi and saw some nice ones that were very cheap and so I thought I'd experiment.  I took the plant out of its pot and removed as much of the compost as I could before replanting it into a pond pot with aquatic soil.  I have no idea if it will work but I thought it was an interesting experiment for less than £5 and it adds a little bit of colour to the pond.  I've currently put it in one of the corners furthest away from the shed but I might move it depending on how my aquatic canna performs.


I planted some more cornflowers into the flower bed and a small clump into the bee table, my plan for those is that they will self seed into the bed and I should see plenty of cornflowers growing next year.  I was also delighted to find my first peony flowering when I arrived today.  The only disappointment was that it was only a single flower rather than a few.  I was hoping to get a bit of a bunch for cutting and bringing home but instead I've decided to just enjoy it on the plot.  The variety is Shirley Temple and they are a beautiful pure white and smell amazing.  I've also got the beginnings of flowers coming into bloom on the bee table, I didn't know what was in the mix but it looks like there will be some poppies, which I'm happy with (and hoping they will also self seed).  The fox gloves are also resplendent and putting up a number of spikes with loads of flowers.  I've never grown one before so it will be interesting to see how they work.  I've been told that you don't remove any of the spent spikes or seed heads and just let them self seed everywhere.  I have one of them in a pot so I'm not going to let that self seed because I'll end up with fox gloves on my paths!  I'm going to experiment with removing the spikes and see if it encourages the plant to put up more spikes.  Ideally I'll keep it flowering for longer if I do that.  I've been told that they don't put up multiple spikes but mine already have so I'm a bit confused - it will be interesting to see why happens in any event :-)

This time of year is so lovely on the plot.  Most of the hard work is done and so I can spend some time enjoying it as well as pottering about weeding or planting some pots up.  I hope you all have time to enjoy your gardens too - until next time; Happy Gardening!

4th June - Plant swap & garden at home

This week it was the first plant swap for the allotment society.  The aim is that people who are growing from seed and have extras can swap them for something they haven't grown.  The society have previously had BBQ's and events but this was the first plant swap and the first event organised by the new committee.  It was a really successful, plenty of people came and brought plants to swap; we had a lovely BBQ and it was an opportunity for people to meet, get to know each other and have a chat.   

 I spent most of the day on Saturday preparing for or working at the plant swap so really didn't get to my plot at all.  At the end of the swap however, all of the leftover plants were gathered together and I will be taking them to the local primary school who have just recently set up their own garden.

On my own plot I was very pleased to find my very first cauliflower starting to form, it's only tiny still but as I have never managed to grow one before I was absolutely delighted.  The other 5 aren't yet showing any signs of a head but all of the brassicas are growing well and so fingers crossed for a good crop.  On the brassicas I also have 6 savoy cabbage in the polytunnel and they have gone mad!  Hopefully they will start to form heads soon but if they mirror the size of the leaves so far then they will be very big!

The polytunnel is still chock full with various things ready to plant out.  I have loads of peas but actually I've run out of room so I might pass those on to the school as well.  My beetroot are still a little bit small to plant out but all of them have germinated so I'm happy about that.  Weirdly I was careful to only put one seed into each cell and in most cases 2 beetroot seedlings have come up so I've thinned them out before I plant them.  I therefore think that the seeds must have the potential for 2 plants in each one.  I also wanted to give you a quick update on my living wreath; the flowers are really blooming now and I'm really pleased with how it has turned out.  I have worked out that the easiest way to water it is to put it in a bucket full of water so that the bottom of it is sitting in the water.  When I was watering it from above I felt as though most of the water just ran off and that the wreath wasn't really getting the water it needed.  Since I changed the way it's watered it has definitely improved.  The only thing I need to think about is how I'm going to get my flower power into it because the bucket is pretty deep and I think it would be too much to add the flower power to.

Finally, I am embarrassed to say that my garden at home was pretty awful, full of pots that haven't been properly watered and therefore the plants have died in them.  That's partly because my watering system had failed after the storms in the winter when the feeder tube was pulled away from the pots and I hadn't realised.  I have therefore emptied all of the pots, including the guttering that I've used as living fence.  I have added strawberries to the living fence instead of bedding plants and I've fixed the watering system to ensure that they are properly watered throughout the rest of the summer.  I have fixed the feeder tube properly to the fence so that hopefully if there are further storms it won't be pulled away again.  I've also  ensured that the automatic watering system reaches the Acer in the corner which currently looks very sad because again it hasn't been watered properly.  I'm hoping that regular watering (and leaving it in a sheltered corner) will bring it back.  As you can see I've also moved the water fountain into the middle of the mini patio area and that really looks nice now too.  The fountain is a Bernini Florentina all weather rechargeable water fountain that I got from QVC (item number 506 454), it was around £70 and I have been really impressed with it.  The battery lives in a little space at the back of the pedestal, and I leave the charger in there too so it doesn't get lost, I haven't used it at all over the winter and I recharged it today and it worked really well this evening.

I have brought home 4 tomato plants and 2 cucumber plants that I'm going to put into the greenhouse at home, I decided not to plant them in the polytunnel because the only person who eats cucumber is Littlest L and she likes to just go and pick them when they're ready.  Part of the reason we ended up with cucumbers that were too big was because in a week between going to the plot they went from not being ready to being too big; so having them at home means she can pick them when they're ready.  I wanted the tomatoes at home because I like to go pick them and immediately eat them which is always easier when it's at home so I will be sorting those out this week.

I think that's all for this week so I will leave you for now, I hope you all have a wonderful week gardening.

29th May 2017 - Vandals and Helpers

Last week I showed you my watering system in the polytunnel, the sprinkler has an inlet and an outlet but because of the distance it has to be from the tap the outlet didn't work and so I installed a junction in the hosepipe on the fence which allows me to add a hosepipe and water the beds whilst still running the sprinkler in the polytunnel.  The outlets each have their own flow control valve and so I can turn them off if I only want to run the sprinkler or the hosepipe.  The pressure isn't great at the site but I'm happy with the result.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01DKGO0IS/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1  

This week has been a really difficult one, the site has been struck by arsonists twice in the week.  A greenhouse of one of the tenants who's had a plot for over 40 years was burnt to the ground and just a couple of days later another plot had their shed burnt down too.  I was at the plot until nearly 10pm on one of the nights that there was a fire and so it's clear that whoever is responsible came after dark.  One of the things that does come from these horrible deeds is how people come together and offer to help.  We are a community and we will pull together.  We have reported it to the police but unless the people are caught red handed I'm not sure what they will be able to do about it.  Thankfully the bad weather has kept them away for the last few nights and hopefully they'll have got bored and moved on.  

This weekend I had a helper for a short time; littlest L decided that she wanted to come and help me (I think that I'd promised to take her to McDonald's on the way might have helped her make her decision lol).  She spent the couple of hours that she was there clearing the pond of duckweed. She tried to count the tadpoles, saw the newt and generally had a good time.  She did actually also help a little bit by pulling up the weeds on the boundary fence and watering the pots.  I loved watching the bees on the chive flowers, not least because you can see the water from the pond behind the plant. 

I also planted out some of my peas, I wanted to make sure that I had some succession planting this year and more importantly that I manage to get some peas home!  I planted some larger plants out a couple of weeks ago and then I've also planted some direct and some in the polytunnel.  The plan is that I will have peas throughout the summer.  I also have beans in the bottom third of the bed and I'm planning to put some pumpkins in between the rows.

Next week will be the first (hopefully of many) plant swap for Northcliffe Allotment Society.  All members have been invited to bring along any excess seedlings to swap with others; we'll have a BBQ and I'm really hoping that everyone gets into the spirit of things and bring things along to swap.  I've got strawberry plants and cornflowers to swap and I'm looking forward to seeing everyone; we just need to keep our fingers crossed for good weather!

The week has been difficult because of the mindlessness of someone who thinks it's funny to destroy other people's property; it has made me worried about coming to my plot - the place that I come to, to get away from the stresses and strains of every day life. I am determined though to keep working and keep positive.  

Allotment Tour May 2017

20th May 2017 - All beds planted & polytunnel watering

Well here we are at that end of May and so I've finished planting out.  I know that I say I wait until after the Chelsea Flower Show but that would be next week and I won't be able to go to the allotment on Saturday so I decided to get it done this weekend instead.  I have had the polytunnel door open for a couple of weeks to harden the plants off.  The melons have been under cloches to keep them warm but everything else could be grown inside or out.

My first job was to earth up the potatoes; in the same way that I tend to wait to plant out until much later than most people, I also tend to plant my potatoes later as well to avoid them getting touched by any late frosts.  As such the leaves have only just started to show and therefore my plants have missed the main risk of frost.  I use a draw hoe and stand on one side of the bed drawing the soil towards me from the middle and the opposite edge of the bed before doing the same down the other side - thus creating the mounds over my potato plants.


I then planted my brassica bed.  I already have savoy cabbage in the polytunnel and so the outside bed has cauliflower, swede and sprouts.  I got my veggiemesh straight on so hopefully that will keep the cabbage whites off of my crops; having said that I did notice that there were a couple of small holes so I will probably invest in a new net before the butterflies are properly out.  The last bed I planted was the onions.  I had 101 onion sets which I'd put into cells and all but one of them had germinated.  I planted 16 rows of 6 with one row of 4; in hindsight I could had done 20 rows of 5 but it left me some space to plant a few garlic.  I know lots of people will say that it's too warm to plant garlic now but the packet said to plant Feb-May and it is still officially May so hopefully it will germinate.

In the polytunnel I sowed some beetroot and some more peas, I have peas planted out and I've planted some directly outside but I've also sowed some in the polytunnel too; I am really hoping that this year I'll grow enough peas to actually get some home!!  Mr L also loves pickled beetroot so I'm hoping to grow enough to pickle (I'll need to learn how first).  

My final job of the weekend was to set up the watering system for the polytunnel.  It is forecast to be warm next week and while I can't be there and I'm not allowed to set up a timed watering system I wanted something that I could set running while I was doing other jobs.  I bought a water station from QVC (reduced from  £27.50 to £15.66) which I have rigged to the crop bar in my polytunnel.  I need to get a longer hose so that I can run it up the side but for my first switch on it watered nearly all of my polytunnel really well.  It does need some slight adjustments because I want it to water more towards the top to get all of the cabbages but I'm thrilled to have it working and hopefully it will really help me to keep the polytunnel watered.  Setting it like this was my neighbour Colin's brilliant idea!  I should also say that the other side of water station has an outlet for another hose and so my plan is to run another permanent hose out of the other side and then while the polytunnel is being watered I can be watering the rest of the plot.

http://www.qvcuk.com/Pure-Rain-Handheld-Gun-&-Water-Station-Combo-Pack.product.506368.html?upsh=1

Overall and despite the horrible weather I had a very productive weekend; I spent a while with my neighbour hiding from the rain in her shed with a coffee and a lovely catchup/chat.  I hope you all had a good gardening weekend so, until next time, happy gardening!

Strawberry Bed

14th May 2017 - Beds prepared and start of planting out

I did get a bit more time at the plot this weekend but Littlest L had a football match at lunchtime on Sunday so that meant I didn't get to the plot until half past 3 (her team won 8-1 and she scored 5 goals!!)  I had to meet a new tenant who is taking on a particularly overgrown plot; she was so excited and hopefully she and her partner will get on top of it as it's next to one of the nicest plots on site.  It is one of the nicest parts of my job being the site rep when someone takes on a plot that has been neglected and turns it around.  

Back to my plot though, this week I wanted to focus on getting my beds ready for planting out.  I worked out that each section of the beds need one 50l bag of manure so these beds need 4 bags and the slightly smaller ones need 3 bags.  I don't manure the bed that my root crops will be in but that means I need 18 bags of manure for my beds.  I am therefore sourcing some manure to put into one of my compost bays for future use because buying that amount every year will soon become an expensive do!  Although for me it was a bit early some of my peas and beans were so big they really needed to go out.  I've had my polytunnel door open for a couple of weeks so they've been hardened off and I'm hoping that we don't get another frost in the next couple of weeks.  A couple of weeks ago we chopped down a hazel tree and I grabbed a few of the branches that I have then used as posts to hold the strings my peas and beans will grow up.  This is a new experiment for me so we'll see how it goes.  

As you know, my pond is for wildlife, I don't have fish in there and last week I showed you a photo of a newt that has found its way into the pond.  This week I had a damsel fly on one of the water forget-me-not leaves.  I'm still hoping to see a dragonfly but this was almost as exciting!  I've also got myself another fountain for the pond; this one doesn't store any charge so the sun has to be directly on the panel but the fountain is much stronger than the one with the stored charge.  I have put it into the corner next to the iris and it makes a really lovely sound; the downside of course being that it's very stop/start.

The last thing I did this week was make a self watering pot.  I intended to film doing it but it was so late by the time I got around to it that I actually forgot about it.  If it works; I will do another and film that one.  In order to make one you put a tray inside a pot that it slightly bigger so that it doesn't make it all the way to the bottom of the pot.  You then put 2 holes in the tray.  One is big enough for the pipe that you water through and the other you place a small plant pot into.  A small hole is drilled into the main pot so that when you pour the water into the tube you can tell when it's full because water leaks out of the hole in the side.  

The small pot has a number of holes drilled into the sides so that as much water can get into it as possible.  You then fill the little pot with compost (pack as much in as you can); I also used some strips of capillary matting that I put into the little pot under the compost and pulled up through the compost into the main pot.  The water soaks into the compost in the little pot which then transfers through the rest of the compost.  The capillary matting strips will also help with that water transfer. 

I planted the pot with one of my "Winky Blue" aquilegia and surrounded by white pansies.  When the aquilegia gets a bit bigger I'm hoping that will be a really lovely display.  After planting I did give the plants a really good soaking from above but it isn't my intention to put any more water into the compost; I will only water through the tube and see how the plants get on.  I've chosen these particular plants because I have 3 other aquilegia so if it does fail it won't be the end of the world. You do need to remember that the pot has no drainage to speak of so if you water from above as well you may drown the plants.  Having said that when I did soak them, some water did drain out of the little hole in the side so the water was able to make its way out through the soaker pot in the bottom.

I do feel like my plot is coming together ready for the growing season now and hopefully I'll be putting more of my crops out next week (I know it's a few days before the Chelsea Flower Show instead of after but fingers crossed it will be ok) so until next week - happy gardening everyone :-)