What I Did Today Archive 2008

[gojiberry]

Although overcast today it has stayed fine and the lottie is dry enough to get out and do a bit of digging. Im in between at the moment as I have done some digging but have to have regular breaks. Want to get the rest of the bed dug today and get the rest of the cabbages and broccoli in. Have planted out the last of the dwarf beans out if I can find the space I may sow a few more. Sown another row of beetroot and a row of spring onions.

Ian

gojilottieupdated 16/05/08

[Snadger]

Cold and rainy day today so decided to put the wood burner on, have about 10 cups of coffee and tidy the main greenhouse out. Managed to get things shifted around ready for the growing season ahead. Used paintstripper on another three glass panels to get off the white gloss a previous tenant had applied to the glass for shading purposes. Had all the windows and door open as the fumes were terrible. That done, and greenhouse vented I planted up some Roma tomatoes and Jalapeno peppers in the raised bed inside. Used a hot poker to burn holes in the containers I will be using for my other peppers. Only have about 4 foot space for my toms and then a shelf with peppers taking up the upper 3 foot. Should be ok as Roma don't need side shooting and are bushy rather than tall toms.
Planted some leeks before I came away. Sowed PSB and Autumn cabbage. Ate another ripe strawberry for desert!

[Flummery]

Went down the lottie with my heritage Negritos beans - 9 out of the 10 I got from the Hertiage Seed Library made it through. Watered them, took some rhubarb to a friend and took the 1 lb 11 oz of Lady Chrystl I emptied out of the second greenhouse tub to my Ma and Sister (because we're having tea there today.) Remind me to do more next year!

[piskieinboots]

Planted out the last of my main crop spuds - Golden Wonder
>>had cup of tea
Planted a row of sunflowers along the fence, these will be no more than 5' high
>>had cup of tea
Planted out Pumpkins, courgettes and sprouts
Finished flask of tea

[Snadger]

Finished planting my Mammoth leeks. Planted my Kelsae onions.Planted more Gladioli in between shallots and broad beans. Swapped some tomato plants for a scotch bonnet chillie. Chopped a lot of timber and used it to heat my greenhouse and boil my kettle. Emptied out a tub of Winston tatties hoping to emulate flums success, to find i only had five useable taters!
Weeded three beds and pathways. Sowed four rows of Swedes to go with the plants I set away earlier indoors. Prepared a bed for more tatties and gladdies.
Hoed' up 3 rows of tatties which had broken the surface in case we have another frost as we did last night!

Watered everything that needed it and I'm now back home with a well earned cheeky little red!

[Newbie]

Inlaws came round for an hour & wanted to go the the garden centre up the road - "oh well, if you insist says me!" MIL insisted on buying me 2 lovely hanging baskets - don't ask me what the plants are called but the are now up on their hanging things looking lovely. Once they went i earthed up my seven tubs of potatoes, re potted a variety of other flowers and sowed a row of turnips & beetroot in the veg bed. Then re-sowed some climbing & dwarf french beans, sweetcorn & courgettes in modules to fill in the gaps of the failures from a few weeks ago - had a terrible germinate rate with the lot. Greenhouse gets delivered tomorrow - woo hoo!

[Kimbo]

I earthed up my potatoes in bags, repotted a couple of leggy tomato plants, mowed the grass. Strimmed the jungle at the back of the garden, shut up the greenhouses early and had a very large cup of coffee and half a packet of biscuits. Just received telephone call from my sister with frost warning, legged it out to find my fleece to cover the peas and broadies, dragged the apple, pear and plum tree in containers into the greenhouse along with the gooseberries and tayberry in pots - hopefully they will be ok, dont want a disaster like last year when my new cherry tree got frosted and died. Now going to have another large cup of coffee and the other half of the biscuits.

[yoanbob]

I did this

today I did this, with the tesco flower buckets the Dobbys blagged for us.

[Mrs Dobby]

Git to the plot for 1030am, rotovated the new plot's greenhouse, then applied chicken poo pellets, growmore, bloodfishandbone, and then a generous dressing of 2 1/2 yr old well rotted pony poo from the front compost bed on the new plot! After giving it a good turnover I then planted 8 toms, 2 chillies, 4 peppers, 4 french marigolds and a marketmore cucumber in there, so hopefully it will do as well as the greenhouse on our older plot is doing!

Did a bit of hoeing, then it was time for the Allotment Societies AGM, so went down and joined in. It was a good meeting, with quite a few good ideas coming forth, and it was also decided that we form an allotment committee, which I found myself nominated to become a part of! (Thankfully I was able to persuade them to include me as a non executive committee member as I work full time, but I do have a feeling they have already earmarked me for fund raising duties! I did offer to do anything website related, but as most of the committee are not terribly computer literate, they declined for the moment!)

After that we had a BBQ, with plenty of red wine, so not a lot more work was done, but an enjoyable afternoon (if a little chilly in the wind!)

Mr D made it to the plot for 520pm, and we then had to wait for his workmate to arrive for his set of keys (he's taking over our half plot and is ok for us to keep our onions and spuds in it until they are ready to harvest, so we're going to split the harvest with him!)

I'm back to work tomorrow, but Mr D is going to the plot til 3pm when he has to leave to get ready to go to work, he's hoping to finish clearing another of the beds on the new plot and finish planting out the onions from seed, and perhaps dig another bed ready for planting later in the week!

[Bazza]

Impatience got the better of me today and I had to dig up one potato plant to see what i had got. Picked the biggest plant, "Rocket first early" with two pretty mauve flowers fully out. Got five small spuds, largest about the size of a golf ball, smallest a marble. Note to self, " must leave for 12 weeks in the ground, not ready at 9 weeks"

[middlefield]

Finally planted-out the last of the main crop potatoes (note to self: when buying in December remember not to mix ambition with capability and that devoting a third of an allotment to potatoes alone is not that great).

Other than that, I got all the pea supports in, planted out the celeriac and tidied-up and weeded between all the plants. My major panic is now where to put everything thats still waiting to go in, bearing in mind that I've used the area I had mentally set-aside for brassica's with the spuds.

[pigletwillie]

On the way home from work this morning I collected my trailer which had a ton of vintage manure in it and filled a 1 metre square compost bin with it to make a hot bed for outdoor cucumbers.

Time for bed now.

[purrfik]

This weekend I've finally finished digging out the last of my veg beds in my new garden. My son took the turf up for me but I think that he had the easier of the jobs...
I dug out about a foot deep and put it on a tarp.........the soil is clay based but with a large amount of flints in it and by the looks (and feels) of it, loads of ballast. I also found remants of a bonfire about 8" down with numerous amounts of glass and iron. But I perservered and then filled it in with cardboard, paper, old turfs, the contents of my compost bins and some horsey poo that a neighbour gave me before covering with the soil again.
Still have to get a lot of the flints out but got the biggest ones out.... trying to get a fork through the soil when you come up against 8" bits of flints isn't fun

[Winged one]

On Saturday, we bought a new BBQ (old one has finally died! and we gave in for the convenience of gas for the time being). While we didn't have much of our own to cook, we did use our own garlic in the marinade on the ribs and our own cabbage in the coleslaw. And I persuaded OH to try some of the salad leaves alongside (niche mixed) - he thought they were kinda boring, but I guess beside the meat they might have been. I've been enjoying them for lunches all week though.

OH went up to the plot yesterday morning and dug over almost all of the remaining space. He also came home with half yesterday's harvest - 2 cauliflowers, a cabbage and a bundle of rhubarb.

Yesterday afternoon - after lunch the plan changed from ME going up to us ALL going up (the toddler hadn't been in a while and wanted to come too). So we went back up and I planted 15 super roma tom plants, and 6 others (2 sub arctic, 1 rio grande, 1 gardener's delight, and 2 surprises!!) into the ground OH had dug over (lovely soil there!!), with a trap of marigolds spread around and between the toms. I also planted 2 summer squashes (sunburst) where the caulis and cabbage harvest had left 2 gaps (space getting tight) and some peas I had germinated at home onto the end of the tomato patch. The cabbages, brocolli, sprouts and leeks (for summer baby harvest) we had planted a couple of weeks ago are flourishing, as are all the onions and the potatoes. We will need to start harvesting the autumn sown onions on the next visit I reckon (running out of last year's harvest at home). The broad beans and overwintered peas have their first pods showing, but won't be ready for eating for another couple of weeks.

The second half of the harvest was then undertaken - a huge haul of PSB, 2 heads of White sprouting brocolli, 3 small heads of overwintered lettuce and a handfull of parsley. Then we hurried home before getting too burnt (hadn't bothered with suncream cos it was so cloudy and cold, sun splitting stones once we were on plot). It was also the first meeting this year with next plot neighbour which was nice.

Home for dinner (chicken stuffed with cream cheese and parma ham wrapped around, roasted spuds and huge portions of steamed PSB), with plans to use the rest of the harvest during the week (cauli with pork chops tomorrow, cabbage with bacon and parsley sauce on wed, probably a stir fry on thurs with lots of PSB) and the lettuce in my lunches at work.

While I sorted dinner, OH and the toddler cleaned up the ornamental part of teh back garden - planting out a tray of stock, night scented stock and a blue flower (name escapes me always, but cottage garden-y) around the place, weeding and tidying edge of brick circle around clothes line, and generally getting mucky!!

After dinner and the toddler's bedtime, I went out into the garden and planted: 3 San Marzano, 3 Rio Grande, 3 Harlequin, 2 Sub Arctic and 1 more Gardener's Delight into the garden, as well as a module of either corn salad or land cress (lost label, and never grew either before, but tis one or t'other). Watered the rest of the plants and brought in a pot of basil to start using in the kitchen. Had a nice bowl of our own rhubarb with some custard, then had a well deserved hot shower to clean up and relax.

The end result of all that is that my stock of plants on the patio and minigreenhouse has diminished hugely (much to OH's relief), so am only left with:
10 summer brocolli
10 summer cabbages (both need to find space for homes)
10 Brussels sprouts and 20 purple sprouting brocolli - space kept for these, but they need another couple weeks growing first
3 LARGE pots of leeks - they are going into the space currently occupied by the spuds
4 coffee cups of climbing french beans - need to sow more but also harvest brassicas for planting space
2 tumbling tom tomatoes - might do another hanging basket for those
1 yellow courgette - possibly for the garden but OH snaffled the space I thought I had for it!!
30 beetroot bolthardy - will squeeze these in on the plot when a little bigger
15 cos lettuces - need another few weeks before planting out too, will plant other mixed lettuce in other half of tray during this week
module of iceberg lettuce - maybe 10 plants, need to find space somewhere
2 large pots of salad leaves - 1 being eaten, the other hopefully ready in about 2-3 weeks
6 pots of basil
6 pepper "big Banana" -for the patio and needing potting on.
4 pumpkins - 2 Dill's Atlantic Giant haven't yet germinated, 2 Spooktacular have seed leaves out
2 butternut squash - 1 has seed leaves just visible, nothing in other pot yet
1 pot of spring onions
Parsnips in loo rolls - doing nothing yet

Ooops, I thought it wasn't much til I wrote it all down

[hamsterqueen]

finished digging over the last 2 of the new beds and shuffled along creating paths between them so I don;t have to stand too much on the soil. Dug in lots of compost . Raked one bed smooth enough to put tomato plants in and put up supports ready for the non bush ones. Pruned the huge rosemary bush and cut back the lower leaves on the bay. The garden is beginning to look far more civilised.

Potatoes in bags are just showing their heads above compost for the second time and my salad seeds are sprouting

Not sure how many of the seeds will survive in teh 2nd raised bed though as teh fox cubs currently residing under my shed have chosen that place to bury their ill-gotten gains, lilke stolen dog toys and gloves!

Went to bed aching like mad and slept really well. A good day's work