29th August 2016 - harvesting

Well here we are again, at the end of a Bank Holiday Weekend wishing that we'd won the lottery so we could spend all of our days at the allotment (or is that just me?!)  This was also the last weekend before my boys went back to school, Littlest L has another week off much to her delight and her brothers disgust!  So Saturday was spent shopping for school shoes and trainers and the last bits and pieces that absolutely HAD to be bought.  The whole time we were shopping the sun was shining and it was warm.  As soon as we got in the car to come home the heavens opened and so there was no allotmenteering for me :-(

Sunday however was a much more productive day.  I decided a couple of weeks ago that I was going to clear the area next to the pond ready for sowing a mini wildflower meadow as well as planting bulbs and a couple of shrubs.  I have decided that next year I'm not going to allow it to grow completely wild because it did end up looking quite messy albeit that it was good cover for anything coming out of the pond.  I easily cleared the right side of the area because the mole had been doing it's work there and as a result the weeds just pulled up really easily and I could get my fork into the ground to remove some of the roots.  I planted my hydrangea next to the wood pile because I decided that will still give good cover in that area and it will look nice close to the shed.  I should also note that I didn't clear the ground elder from in and around the wood pile as I didn't want to disturb anything hiding in there.  The left side of the pond however was a nightmare.  The ground is so hard I can hardly get my fork into it, never mind trying to dig out all of the roots.  I had already pulled up all of the leaves before I realised so I can't even spray with my Richard Jackson's Weed Killer (which as you know I use sparingly).  I will therefore need to think about how I'm going to deal with that moving forwards.  On the plus side I did discover a few plants that I put in last winter that appear to have survived being covered over so hopefully I'll have a little bit of colour while I'm sorting it all out.

I also managed to harvest my onions on Sunday evening.  I was really pleased with the crop and they're currently drying in the polytunnel.  I watched a YouTube video from 'GrowVeg' about how to harvest and store onions. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=py2kPbSsgmA 

As suggested I will leave them for a week and once the skins are dried and flaky I'll have a go at hanging them.  I've never done it before so I'm hoping it will turn out ok.  I've got a mixture of sizes but I like to roast onions sometimes so the small ones I'll just throw straight into the mixed veg drawer for roasting and the rest I'll hang for use over the winter.  I need to sort out my pantry, which is currently used to store mostly shoes, to make sure there's a space for hanging veg for storage.  At the moment there is a sack of potatoes on the floor but I'd prefer for them to be hung up
Today I've spent the afternoon harvesting the last of my potatoes, they were King Edwards but the harvest wasn't nearly as good as the Maris Pipers.  I found that they had more slug/wire worm damage and they produced less even though they had significantly more leaf growth.  After harvesting I weeded the bed really well (helped along by digging up the spuds and removing loads of roots from the weeds that were in there, covered the whole lot with a thick mulch of the free manure/leaf mould mixed with my garden compost and planted in the kale my neighbour got me as well as the golden beetroot and red little gem lettuces I bought from the garden centre the other day, with a voucher my friend gave me.  I remembered to net them to keep the pigeon's off so hopefully I'll still get a harvest from them this year. 

I also managed to harvest some more blackberries so I made another batch of jam tonight and I'll keep harvesting them as I see them.  Hopefully we'll be able to avoid buying any more jam for the rest of the year (unlikely with the amount my children go through but it's a nice thought!)  I think all in all it was a very successful bank holiday weekend and I'm thrilled to be able to start actually eating some of the produce I've grown.

Until next week - happy gardening!

21st August 2016 - Jam Making

After a week off work today was at last a busy one down on the plot.  I arrived at 11 to meet a new tenant who has taken one half of a very overgrown plot.  It frustrates me that we have plots that people haven't worked and whilst the council are actually quite good and on top of people they still have to go through two inspections before they are evicted which means that someone can have their plot un-worked for a full season before they are evicted.  The poor lady taking the plot has to now clear waist high weeds; although on the plus side she has got a shed on there :-)

I was absolutely determined to get the wires up on my fence and the cherry tree fanned against it.  I got some galvanised wire which included 10 vine eye screws from Amazon.  I put 3 on each side with 2 fence posts in-between.  I screwed the vine eyes in only half way and drilled holes through the 2 fence posts to feed the wires through.  

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B017E1KHQY/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Once I got the wires onto the vine eye screws I then tightened the screws to tension the wires; which worked really well.  As you can see I then fanned the tree against the fence and pruned off 2 branches that were left sticking out into the path.  

On either side of the cherry tree I've also added the two grape vines I've had in the polytunnel for a few weeks.  I wasn't sure what I was going to do with them but my neighbour has hers outside and I thought I'd give it a try.  I will prune them but I wanted to give them a week to bed in before I do it.

So, going back to the title of today's blog.  I picked around 450g of blackberries from my plot and from the paths around the allotment.  I realised that wasn't really enough to make anything with so I asked my lovely neighbour if I could scrump some apples from her.  I have never in my life made jam before but I thought I would give it a go (eek!) I bought 2 lemons (because my lemon tree is teeny tiny and has no fruit on it yet) because I read that blackberries don't have any pectin in them and so you should use lemon juice. I put the peeled and cored apples (450g after prep) the blackberries and the juice of the 2 lemons into a pan and simmered it together for about 10 mins.  Then I added 900g sugar (normal granulated, not jam sugar) and raised it to a rolling boil for another 10 mins.  In the meantime I chilled 2 plates in the freezer and washed 2 jam jars before putting them in the oven at 150oC to sterilise.  After 10 mins I put 1 teaspoon of the jam onto one of the chilled plates but it didn't wrinkle so I boiled it for another 3 mins and then did the wrinkle test again and it worked - I was sooooo excited.  I left the jam to cool for about half an hour before ladling it into the 2 jam jars AND IT SET!!!! 


The kids then had the little bit that was left on their toast and told me that it's nicer than the bought stuff.  Middle L told me I should sell it on eBay lol

I am ridiculously proud of myself, I know that most allotment people make jams and chutneys all the time but I have never done it before and I have read about how difficult it is to get jam to set.  I thought the lemons might work but I didn't really expect it to so yes, I'm ridiculously proud!

I'm away with work all week this week so I won't get to the plot at all during the week.  My lovely neighbour is going to pop up and water in the polytunnel for me but otherwise it will have to take care of itself.  Hopefully all will be well. Until next week then - happy gardening everyone :-)

20th August 2016 - Potatoes!

Well after an eventful week I got up to the plot today with the intention of lifting my potatoes.  I wasn't sure if I would manage to do both beds but I was worried that my bed of Maris Pipers wouldn't give me a good crop because the plants themselves had been a little pathetic.  I do a little bit of prep before lifting potatoes - I cut the plants off right to soil level and weed the whole bed.  Then I put my fork in (hoping to not hit any potatoes) and lift the whole plant out - give it a shake and pick up the potatoes.  I often have to fork the area again to catch any that dropped off as it was being lifted but I find that's the best way to try to ensure that no potatoes are left to grow next season!

Anyway, I needn't have worried.  This picture is from one half of one bed (the Maris Piper bed) and I've ended up with a sack full of potatoes from that one bed.  I haven't weighed them because I can't find my travel scale but I'm really happy with them.  There's a mixture of sizes and whilst some have holes in them from slugs or another critter I'm not worried about cutting around the holes.  I saw only 2 that had scab and none of them were squishy (which is a sure sign of blight).  Just a note on blight, while I'm on it...

Lots of people worry about blight and what to do with their plants if they have them.  I've seen loads of pictures of perfectly healthy plants being destroyed because the leaves have yellowed and then people saying they've burned them because they don't dare compost them.    

Blight starts with small, dark spots on leaves (usually around the edges) which often have a light green halo around them.  In warm, wet weather you may see a fine white downy growth which can release thousands of spores every day.  The spores can also be washed down the stem into the tubers, if the tubers are infected they have brown or purple marks on the skim and reddish/brown markings in the flesh.  Tubers might be firm when lifted but will rot during storage.  If your plants get blight you should cut off all of the foliage and put it in the compost.  You can compost leaves and stems because the spores can only live on live matter.  Once you have cut the stems the plant is no longer live and therefore can be composted.  You cannot however compost the tubers because they remain live and can grown new, blight infected, plants.  

If your potato plants have flowered and the flowers have died off, you're seeing green tomato like pods on your plants and your leaves are going yellow your plants are dying off at the end of the season just like they're supposed to.  In that case the potatoes are ready to be harvested, you don't need to destroy your hard work.  

I mentioned in my last post that I'd got a planting table from freegle.  I am still not sure what I'm going to do with it (Littlest L wants to make it into a bee table) but whilst I'm deciding I have lined it with weed membrane and put the pots onto it.  I do like the idea of a table of plants that attract bees and I might combine that with a fairy garden just because they make me smile and the idea of a bee fairy garden is appealing to me.  I don't know yet what plants I'm going to put in there, but given that we're nearly at the end of August I've got plenty of time to think about it before I need to plant it up so in the mean time I'm probably just going to keep my pots in there.  I like that they're raised off of the ground and away from the slugs (and it's a good place to put my drink!)

I've also decided that next year I will do more with the 'wildlife' area next to the pond.  I've got a couple of shrubs I'm going to plant there and my neighbour is giving me some yellow rattle seeds which should help to reduce the grass and let me grow more of the wildflower seeds.  On the plus side the moles have been working in that area and so hopefully it will be a bit easier to dig and plant into.

Tomorrow is the last day of my holiday and I'm hoping for good weather.  I really want to get the wires in place on the fence so that I can fan my cherry tree against it - watch this space!

17th August 2016 - what a week!

So I am away from work this week and I thought I would be able to get the final bag of wood chips to do my paths, I wanted to see how successful I've been with the netting against the squirrel and I wanted to lift my potatoes.  It was biggest L's birthday on Tuesday and Mr L had decided to go biking on Monday so I thought I'd pop up to the plot on Monday afternoon with Littlest L to have a quick potter about, check on the corn and deliver my new planting table that I got from Freegle.

I'd just picked up the table and was putting it into my car when I got a call from Mr L who said that he'd come off of his bike and could I come and take him to the hospital for an x-ray.  "I think I've sprained it" he says.  I drove home and took one look at it and absolutely knew that he'd broken it, it was pretty horrible and so off we go to A&E where we spent the next 8 hours with him being x-rayed and pushed around the hospital.  We eventually ended up in resuscitation where they needed to manipulate his broken wrist before getting it into a cast to help reduce the pain.  They said he will have to have an operation and the wrist specialist said it's pulverised.  They kept him in overnight and the next day (Biggest L's birthday) they wanted to do a CT test.  They kept him in all day and didn't do the CT, he had to go back on Friday for the CT and they didn't do the operation, he has to go back on Monday for the operation.  

The main point is that Mr L will be ok, he will have his operation and he'll be fine - he'll not be able to bend his wrist properly and he'll definitely not be riding his bike any time soon.

So, it's now late on Wednesday night and I haven't been to my plot at all; I haven't checked if my netting stopped the squirrel, for all I know it's completely shredded.  I haven't watered anything on my plot, all of my tomatoes might be dead and dried out.  I haven't finished the bark chippings,

Tomorrow is Thursday, it's the penultimate working day of my week off and tomorrow I will go to the plot.  GP Gills opens at 9.30am and I will be going to get my chippings.  I will have to do it on my own because Mr L can't help and the Little L's won't help so I'll go and get my own bark chippings and I'll transport them up the hill and I'll finish my paths.  I'm also going to see about drilling holes through my fence posts for the wire that I'm gong to train my cherry tree onto.

Let's all keep our fingers crossed that the weather is good ;-)

14th August 2016 - Swapping blog sites

I'm unfortunately having to swap blog sites because my old site suddenly wants to charge me quite a lot of money to blog with them.  I have copied all of the posts in relation to my current plot but I've lost all of the blogs from my old plot.  I do like, however, that on this blog page I can put more than one photo into the blog :-)

Moving on though, I can't believe how long it's been since I last blogged - it's been busy at work and on the plot!  I had the final round of judging last Friday but unfortunately I didn't know they were coming and I was super busy at work so some of my pots looked a bit wilted when I got up there yesterday.  I also had the b*&#%^d squirrel eating my sweetcorn so there were 4 stripped cobs on my plants which were not only heartbreaking after working so hard to get them growing but also looked horrible for the judges to see!  I also wasn't able to finish the woodchips on the paths because GP Gills had been closed for 2 weeks - so that's a bit frustrating!

Anyway, onward and upwards.  I have been and created a net cover so I'm hoping that will stop the squirrel from eating the rest of the corn.  I've also planted 2 potato bags with my winter potatoes which hopefully will be ready for Christmas.  I decided to put them in bags to protect them from the frost and I've also put them right by the polytunnel door so I can easily drag them inside once we get closer to frosty weather!

I also used my little BBQ for the first time today, I bought it from The Range for just £6 in their sale and thought it was a bargain!  Mostly it will just be me so there's no need for a big BBQ, the only downside is that it's really close to the ground so I have to bend over it, which feels a bit dangerous to me (being super clumsy!)

I took a Slimming World burger and sausage and had salad from the garden with it - how lovely is that?  You cannot get any fresher than straight off of the plant and onto your plate.  The tomatoes are soooo tasty too; you literally cannot buy tomatoes that taste like home-grown ones.

Now that judging is finished I'm going to lift my potatoes, the King Edwards plants looked great so I'm hoping for good things but the Maris Piper's never really seemed to take off.  My neighbour thinks that there'll be loads of tubers and all the work has been done underground but I'm reserving judgement.  I'll be super disappointed though to not get a good crop after managing to avoid blight.  I have noticed a few dug up spuds, which I think is the handy work of the b*&#%^d squirrel again!

On the plus side I'm off work all week and although it's Big L's birthday on Tuesday and Mr L is planning to go mountain biking tomorrow and next weekend I will get to finally finish my paths and spend some time just relaxing at the plot.  I'm also starting to plan what I'm going to grow over the winter in the polytunnel (which is very exciting) and start thinking about my rotations for next season.  I am considering moving the flower bed to next to the shed so that I can see them better and then the three beds at the top and the two at the bottom will be the rotation beds.  I may still make one of those bottom beds into an asparagus bed but I haven't made a final decision on that yet.

23rd July 2016 - Full points :-)

Last week was first round of judging, I got up early on Saturday morning to get up to the plot and collect another load of chips to try and get my paths completed but unfortunately G.P. Gill's were doing some work on their woodchip store and so the woodchips weren't as good as they normally are and I only got one load.

It did, however, give me change to weed and get the last lot of hops onto the fruit bed so that bed looked lovely.  I also weeded all of the remaining beds and down the back fence (where they come over from next door).  The ladies who visited my plot got to the gate and said "wow!" which is always a good start.  They walked in and one of them said she felt relaxed already.  I showed them around and they awarded me full points, saying that it was almost as though I'd read the criteria... 

I will have a second round of judging from the professional judges so all of the little bits I wasn't quite happy with I will have to get resolved.  That means that this weekend I'm still carting woodchip up the hill and I'll need at least 1 more bag to finish it next week and I need to keep on top of the weeding to make sure that it doesn't go mad with the nice weather.

I also want to get some seeds in the polytunnel for planting after the potatoes have finished.  The potatoes are actually ready to harvest but I don't want to have 2 empty beds when they come come back to do the second judging so they'll have to stay in the ground for now.

This week I got 2 more loads of woodchips and so now I only have 3 of the north/south paths that need covering and it will be done.  Hopefully that will just be 1 more load although I'll probably still get 2 and perhaps use it for mulching in the strawberry and/or sweetcorn bed.   Talking of the sweetcorn bed, as you know I tried out a variation of the 3 sisters but it hasn't been hugely successful in terms of peas.  The sweetcorn are looking good (except for the ones that the birds have munched) and the pumpkins look fantastic.  I have 3 good sized pumpkins already and at least 1 more that looks promising.  I've used some of the leftover strawberry mats to rest the fruit onto.  They are impregnated with copper, which will hopefully keep the slugs away and they will mean that the pumpkins aren't sitting directly on the ground.

The sun was so hot again today that I left at lunchtime with the intention to go back this afternoon to water everything (especially in the polytunnel) and trim the lower leaves from the tomatoes to help them ripen.  There's no way I could have done that at lunchtime because the polytunnel was sooooooo hot it was unbearable to be in there.  In the mean time I've come back to the house; Mr L is cutting the tiny patch of grass that we have and I've tackled the weeds in the drive and at the front of the fence.  I don't understand why we seem to get loads of weeds on the path in front of our house when nobody else does but we do and so I need to keep on top of that.  

The other things I need to add to my to-do list for this weekend is to net my strawberry bed, which surprisingly given when I planted them in have started to flower, and I want to get some wires in to start training my cherry tree against the back fence.

10th July 2016 - Judging!

It's the time of year when all of the allotment competitions are going on.  I've entered for best plot and one of my containers for best container.  I am quite competitive and I've therefore been working hard to try and get my paths finished before judging.  I haven't quite managed it but hopefully with just another couple of bags it will be done.  As you can see I've covered the entrance and the path to the end of the plot.  I've done the first side path on the right and part of the path at the top adjacent to the fence.  I made a decision to put 4 slabs in the middle of the entrace which I can then use for a BBQ or fire pit or even to move my burning bin if I want to.  

I think I've mentioned before that I get my wood chips from G.P.Gill in Shipley, they are a tree surgeon who give away the wood chips for free - you just need to go and collect them.  From talking to other gardeners it seems that loads of tree surgeons do the same so it's a great free resource to look into if you're looking for a mulch or path covering.  People do sometimes talk about not using chippings as a mulch because it draws the nitrogen out of the soil.  I've done a little bit of research and that only happens very slightly if you dig the chippings into the soil and it's really not enough to worry about.  There are huge benefits of mulching the ground that far outweigh any worries about losing nitrogen.  It's also worth making sure that you are getting chips and not shredded wood.  You want smaller chips which will break down over time but that will also hold in moisture and keep your roots cool on hot days.  One of the downsides I've experienced from using mulch (of any description) is that they can be a home for our slimy friends.  Slugs like cool and moist places and of course mulch provides that habitat.  I'm not going to get into slug control today (I might do on another blog) but there are loads of different ways to keep slugs under control and I think even the problem of slugs do not outweigh the benefits of mulching.

I have a few pots left over from when I was doing the summer pots and hanging baskets in the garden and they had been left on the table outside my shed.  Today I decided that I would try and make my compost bins a bit more interesting.  The gaps between the bins are perfectly sized for some of my plant pots and so I've essentially ended up with 3 rows of 3 pots on each upright to make the compost bins look a little bit nicer.  I wouldn't normally bother but they are on your right immediately as you enter the plot and it seems silly to not put the pots there if they're just sitting about waiting for me to decide what to do with them!

I also got some more spent hops for my fruit bed.  The hops I put on last week aren't keeping the weeds down and so I went for some more and my plan is to pull out what has worked its way through before putting a thicker mulch on.  I'm not sure that it was the best idea to mulch without a weed membrane but if it doesn't work I'll have learnt a lesson!  The hops will keep the moisture in the soil so it will still do a job even if I need to still weed I'm not going to complain.  Someone pointed out that spent hops can be particularly attractive to slugs - I haven't experienced that so far but I'm keeping an eye on it.  

I was very excited to find some red tomatoes in the greenhouse and whilst the polytunnel ones haven't caught up yet I have green tomatoes in there and I've also got teeny tiny cucumbers, peppers and chillis so that's exciting.  I also have flowers on my melons so it will be interesting to see if any of them develop into fruit.

Next week I'm hoping to finish the paths completely, which means that I'll need to tidy up the very last bit of overgrowth behind the strawberry bed.  I've offered the last of the slabs to my neighbour so hopefully she'll have taken those (and if not I'll stick them in the wheelbarrow and bob them down to her) and I need to move the green bin that has been left on the plot.  The area behind my compost bins is very overgrown with nettles and comfrey, which I've left for the bees.  I'm not going to cover ground but I think I'm going to leave it all for now and then once it dies back in the autumn I'll tidy the area  and then let it continue to grow in exactly the same way each year - ultimately using them as fertiliser.  Once that's all done I will be able to potter about doing just a bit of weeding here and there and watering as needed.  How nice will it be to be able to just enjoy the fruits of my labour?!

Until next week then, I hope you have a lovely week and happy days spent in the garden.