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.  

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 ;-)