My How You've Grown!

I was busy messing about with other things this weekend, but went down to the Hill this evening for a couple of hours in order to:

earth up the potatoes

plant out some pot sown lettuce

sow a row of CARROTS (early nantes 5) & of PARSNIPS (hollow crown)

I do find that if I don't have a List, I lurch from from half-done job to half-done job, & don't really achieve anything very much.

The weeds have certainly enjoyed the rain showers that we've been having for the past week, as have the peas, which are romping up the wigwams with the first batch now in flower - only a few weeks until I'm eating fresh peas from the pod - yum!

The potatoes are certainly ready for earthing up - & are a bit big, really - but it means that I'll only have this job to do once rather than twice. I hauled out a some big annual weeds whilst I was about it - some poppies & thistly type long-tap rooted weeds.

Of course, once I had the weeding bucket out, I couldn't help but hand weed the onion bed, & the paths as I went, & the other roots bed where at last I can see a few parsnips - patchy germination, though - & carrots coming through.

Because I could only see the very occassional parsnip seedling out of four rows the other day, I had a panic purchase of extra seeds from Aldi (35p, 275 seeds), as I think I might only be eating about three parsnips this winter.

I sowed two rows of these (with a marker row of radish), & then the carrots, and turned to the misc beds to plant out half a dozen LETTUCE (stoke), & a dozen LETTUCE (dazzle). The four lettuce I planted out mid April have come on in leaps and bounds, and I will have one out the ground very soon to eat.

Before I came home, I had a wander down to the bottom to see what everyone else is up to. Quite a few plotholders are putting their tender plants out now - I saw sweetcorn, courgette & squash plants on various plots. And I do hope that returning -allotmenteer-Chris at 2A posts some pics of her clematis on her blog - they are beautiful!

Now, Where Was I...?

Despite not blogging for a week or two (or three), I have not been idle*, & since last blogging I have achieved the following at the Hill:

• Put up the bean 'V' - i.e. ran two pieces of stout fencing wire down the length of the bed between the two end T pieces, one to each extremity of the 'T'.

Once taut, I inserted twenty 8' canes along the centre line angled towards the wire on alternate sides, & tied the canes to the wire.

• Weeded all the beds, inc. digging over the two misc beds B ready for planting up.

• Prepped the asparagus bed & planted out the crowns - this was a real faff, & the crowns themselves like horrible squids with long roots for tenticles.

The roots were much longer than the planting guide seemed to think they would be, so rather than spreading the roots out evenly on a mound of soil in the bottom of a pathalogically weed free foot-deep trench, they were a bit spiralled round. Picky beggars - all that, & I can't even eat the spears for 3 years.

• Weeded the strawberry bed which lives under a cage normally, & so tends to get ignored.

Flowers are on the strawberry plants - a report in the paper this week says how prolofic the soft fruit will be due to the unseasonal warmth of April. Didn't say how the fruit was going to swell, given the unseasonal dryness of April, but there you go.

• Planted out the last batch of peas & strung the wigwam round & round.

• Pulled lots of rhubarb to make crumbles, for mum, godmother (who is stopping with mum), neighbours, & enough to get a batch of rhubarb wine going.

At home:

• Sowed seeds for all of the 'tender' crops - dwarf & climbing beans, courgette/squash/cucumber, another batch of leeks, sweetcorn & spring onions; as well as the final batch of peas.

• Planted out the tomato plants into their buckets, & lined these up against the sunny south dwarf wall in the courtyard.

One of the plants came to a sticky end almost immediately when the washing basket careered off its handy spot on the wall and landed on two of the buckets, with only one survivor.

I planted up a spare in it's stead, and put a long cane in each bucket to tie the plants to - it might look a bit daft now, when the plants are tiny, but they will soon grow & need support - as well as protecion from flying washing baskets.

• Planted up a spare recycling bag with the competition potatoes in a layer of grow bag compost - I was late going up to the store shed to pay my £2 for the grow bag & seed potatoes and so the spuds only had a few days on the windowsill to chit.

I wanted to get them planted up, though, as the official weigh day is that of the Show (14th August), which is only 14wks away. Mind you, I can hardly do worse than last year's efforts.

Phew! That brings us pretty much up to date, & yesterday evening I went to the Hill to see how everything is getting on (which is very well, thank you - particularly the weeds which have gone crackers now that we've FINALLY had a good soaking of rain over last weekend) & planted out half of the dwarf french beans.

I can see 'weeding' being top of the List for this weekend...

*Not strictly true - I am just back from having been particularly idle in a horizontal-lying-on-the-beach type way for a week or so.

Wordless Wed. - Expectation

Wordless Wednesday 13 April 2011

Wordless Wednesday 6 April 2011

Persevering with Peas & Nice Neighbours!

I started this weekend’s allotment List on Saturday, & went back this evening to finish off.

On Saturday, I started off by planting the last of the POTATOES (pink fir apple) which I bought in Wilko the other day – they haven’t chatted for more than a week, but they’ll just have to get on with it.

By the potato beds, the front of the plot is starting to look really good - the wallflowers which I bought at the King's Heath Gardeners' Show last September have just started to flower and are really bushy & sturdy.

I also wanted to do some planting out & sowing, but first I had to attend to the pea wigwam where I’d planted out the PEAS (Robinson) last week – they have not grasped (literally!) the principal of climbing, as yet, & were doing some forlorn waving about mostly on the ground – no good at all – so I hunkered down to ground level & started to tie up the plants to the string to give them a start.

What a fiddly, backbreaking job. Half way through Rhubarb Brian came over to see what I was up to. “Tying the bloody peas to the bloody string”, I scowled.

“Well it’s looking good” he grinned, & looking over my shoulder to the gap by the shed said, “I see you’ve moved your compost heap – what’s going there instead?”

I stood up, pushed the loose rail back towards the shed roof from where it hangs & I told him that I’d thought to put the competition pumpkin there, “although I must nail this back to the shed roof first before it falls off completely!”

He went on his way, & I finished my fiddly tying up job & called it a day.

Back to the Hill tonight with renewed vigour & I discover that I have a new Worst Job in the World which is spiralling the string round the wigwams ready for planting out the peas.

Rhubarb Brian stopped by again, to make sure that I was happy with the shed repair. Seeing me looking blank, he pointed at the now solidly attached roof rail on the shed. “Blimey, did you do that? I didn’t see it – thank you so much!” I beamed “That’s brilliant!” I must remember to drop a bottle of parsnip wine to him at the weekend as a thank you.

With the middle two wigwams strings attached, I planted out the PEAS (kent blue) & sweetpeas – they do look rather good, & hopefully plants will appreciate my extra efforts with the string hoops closer together & get climbing. Then I popped the BROAD BEANS in along the edge of the bed.

As the light was fading I whacked in a couple of rows of PARSNIP (hollow crown), RADISH (rainbow mixed) & CARROT (early nantes 5), & came home with a sense of satisfaction that not only had I done all the jobs on the List, but that there is only one more bloody wigwam to string up…

First Planting Out of the Year

Given that it had been such gorgeous weather for most of last week, it was a considerable disappointment how chilly it was on Saturday morning. No matter, I knew that if I dug the rest of the compost bin (bin 2) out onto the pea bed, I'd soon warm up.

It didn't take long to do that, so I went for broke & turned the adjacent newer bin (bin 1) into the now empty one (carefully moving Mr Toad to his new quarters) - a horrible, hard job - but at least it is full & ready to 'cook' now. Then I shuffled round the pallets to make a fresh bin (bin 3).

I've moved it along one from it's original spot - I had a brainwave & thought that the site of bin 1 would make a fabulous spot for the competition pumpkin - the ground will be rich, & it should stop the plant from getting quite so bloody triffid like in the 'misc.' bed.

The last 'heavy' job was to dig over the pea bed, & get out the leeks - these have not been a resounding success - planted too late, I suspect, but I did get a couple of dozen 'baby leeks' which have tasked very nice indeed.

To let my back recuperate a bit, I planted out the main crop POTATOES (maris piper & king edwards - easy peasy, make hole with fat stick, drop spud in, cover over. I realised that I have room for just one more row between the second earlies & the main crops, so I bought a small pack of 'pink fir apple' from Wilko this week, which are now chitting on the windowsill.

With the pea bed all ready, I put the four wigwams up - there was a certain amount of trial & error with putting six 8' canes in the ground fixed together at the top end with a plastic saucer with six holes in. Carl, next door but one, kindly helped with the first one, but I worked out that if I attached the saucer to the canes first, then put the canes in the soil, that works quite well, although it wasn't easy any way round.

I planted out the BROAD BEANS (violetta) along the edge of the bed, then wrapped string round and round the first wigwam and planted out the first batch of PEAS (robinson).

I would have put the string round the other three wigwams, ready, but I was now cold & achy after nearly four hours at the Hill & no lunch, so I pulled a few rhubarb stalks, & went home for a welcome cup of tea & a hot bath.