What I Did Today Archive 2008

[sewer rat]

This week
Lifted all remaining Lady Christl, Charlotte and King Edward potatoes,sorted and bagged them all. Still got Red Dukes to lift - got 24 x 25kg bags in store at the moment
Planted Pak Choi, Charita Lettuce, Amorina Lettuce, Spinach and Raddichio in tunnel.
Started stripping staging from tunnel to give me another bed 4' x 50' for next spring.
Bought all the pipe and connectors, taps etc to connect myself to the mains water supply - am fed up waiting on Scottish Water (been waiting for the go ahead since Feb 2007 and am fed up using watering can for 2 hrs a day) - I've hired a digger and will lay the pipes on Monday and Tuesday)
Made up & delivered 43 boxes - containing some or all of the following - Lady Christl potatoes, Sturon Onions, Early Nantes Carrots, Witkiem Manita Broad beans, Ambassador / Defender / Taxi courgettes, Salad Rocket, Mizuna leaves, Milan turnips, Pepinex 69 cucumber, Hurst Greenshaft peas, White Lisbon Spring Onions, Redbor Kale, Derby Day cabbage, All Year Round Cauiliflower, Moneta Beetroot.
Transplanted some herbs into polystrene fish boxes to overwinter in the polytunnel.
Stripped out some of my cucumber plants which were suffering as a result of the red spider mite infestation - but about 20 plants have received a stay of execution as they have started to fruit again.
Stripped last two rowa of Broad beans as they were going over - brought home and they are now in the freezer, and the final sowings (three double rows of 25m are now ready for picking.
Pickled 30 jars of beetroot and 10 jars of shallots.
Weeding.

[zazen999]

Dug over the last potato bed [well, OH did].
Admired my handiwork with the guttering.
Took up more blighted toms.
Harvested and shelled more pinto beans [hurrah]. Harvested more french beans, just need to chop and freeze them now.
Dug up a deep parsnip; very gnarled but we're now having roast dinner tomorrow night.
Pulled a few carrots to go with the parsnip.

Even though I said I wouldn't, I've bought 150 onion sets.

Weeded.

[Winged one]

Over the weekend, I got to the plot for an hour and a half, which meant a quick harvest and a bit of weeding. Dug a half row of Anyas (about 1.8 rows left) and brought most home (but dropped off 1 dinner's worth to my grandparents en route home). I also managed to get a reasonable handful of french beans, a large tub of brocolli sprouts (including the first sprouts of the winter PSB!!), a missed onion, 6 tiny radishes, 8 tiny carrots (wanted to lift them before the root fly attacked them all - lost about half the tiny row), and the last of the summer lettuces (a good large tub which should last me the week).

I managed to clear the dwarf french bean patch (flowering so should get beans next visit), and the leeks patch. The winter leeks are getting to a usable size already. The brussels sprouts are already ready to eat and the PSB is coming good too (the ones that aren't getting eaten by caterpillars - so a bit of squishing went on as well!!). And I put one more cardboard box over the front portion, so the front bed is completely covered now.

At home, OH planted the snowdrops and 2 giant allium bulbs - but he couldn't plant the anemones (cos he "didn't know what they'd look like" - when I showed him a picture, he thought they were "very GIRLY"!! Grrr). We cleared up the front and back gardens a bit, as the weather was nice on Saturday - mowing, sweeping and that kind of thing. Just as well as it was lashing again yesterday! I put the last of my multipurpose compost into the potato bags (may buy a small bag of MPC to put some more into the larger bag in a couple of weeks). And I managed to plait up 90 onions for the shed - only about the same again to go (hopefully they will dry soon and not rot away on me).

Spent a lot of yesterday in the kitchen - one batch of spaghetti bolognaise (enough for 4 family dinners and 2 toddler dinners - 2 lots of meat, with 4 carrots, 3 sticks celery, a small tub of brocolli shoots and a courgette all chopped finely in the food processor), a plain tomato sauce (2 dinner's worth), tomatoes and onions for OH (he was making chilli later) - and then finished off by baking a batch of chocolate chip cookies with the toddler. Well, we made a whole batch of dough, but only baked half as we were short on time and put the other half in the fridge for later this week. I left 3 cookies behind for OH and he had them with cocoa after a hot shower (he got caught in the rain) which made him feel lovely and wintery. (I did have to go back into the kitchen to make dinner later - the toddler had some plain mussels and prawns while waiting for her mushrooms to fry into the tomato sauce and pasta, and OH and I had a seafood risotto later with our mussels and prawns).

[FionaH]

Planted 8 donated psb plants, have already been chewed by cabbage white so will wait and see

[Two_Sheds]

I dug out bramble roots (really hard) and bindweed (less hard) from 2 areas, and planted the bare ground up with - you guessed it - limnanthes, as ground cover/green manure.

Also, I planted some daffodils and crocuses in front of my new shed.

[sewer rat]

Well, my digger didn't arrive til 3pm yesterday so it was hell for leather today to stay on schedule but I dug the track and laid 245m of pipe today. Tomorrow I will hand dig under the tunnel frame, connect the taps to the two outlets and switch the water on to check all the joints before I back-fill the tracks.
Then, after a wait of 19 months, I will finally be able to use a hose to water my tunnel, use the different irrigation systems already installed in the tunnel, and use my vegetable washing rack properly.
HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY

[zazen999]

Planted out the first non-moon garlic on the trial.

Picked 4 toms from the garden.

Burnt loads of roots that have been 'drying' out over the summer, ash to go onto the very large compost heap made of allsorts from the lottie.

Picked more french beans and shelly beans, chopped/shelled and into freezer.

Chatted to neighbour.

[FionaH]

Planted shallots in troughs. Dug over a new bed. Not good for tendonitis but hey.

[zazen999]

Dug over the old pea bed, and de weeded [still remnants of couch grass and bindweed].

Repositioned onions that i dropped when sowing onions earlier in the year.

Planted out Garlic Chives, and a few stray onion seedlings from pots in the garage.

Harvested loads of tomatoes, hopefully before the blight got them all. Made loads of passata.

Courgettes - 10 yesterday [after I told the OH that the courgettes would be over soon - hmm].

Carrots, Peppers, chillis, onions; all straight into the fridge for cooking this week.

Just harvested the seed from an exploding cucumber - I tied muslin around them to try and save the seeds and it worked...2 salvaged from non-muslin but 11 from the muslin one. Will be offered for swop later in year when they have all exploded.

[Snadger]

OH wanted me to fix the car so I had a cursory look, cleaned the crud off the starter motor, wiggled the connections and turned the ignition key! Whoopee it started, so I gave a cock and bull story about "trying it again in the morning when the engine was cold"...........jumped on the bike and zipped off to the allotment to take advantage of the sunny warm weather!

Sorted the chooks, only 6 eggs today which my allotment neighbour asked me for, sorted broody, gave her some water in a small dish where she was sitting and she drank it all so filled up the dish again and left it with her in the nest!
Dismembered a shed that was at the side of the run and rebuilt it in another position where my compost heap had been. The reason for this was twofold, A) to let more light into the run for the chooks and B)to use this as another chook house once I build a run around it.
Sat in the sunlight with a cup of coffee for half an hour watching the chooks sunbathing in there new found sun trap before pedalling the 5 mile or so home feeling knackered!

[Newbie]

Emptied 2 compost bins & 2 bags of soil improver onto our new flower bed that is yet to be planted up as the soil is the most shocking heavy clay, plan is to leave it for a couple of months for the worms to do the digging for me! Planted up 2 big pots with evergreen shrubby things & placed them either side of the front door and that was about it!

[Flummery]

Yesterday I picked loads of borlotti beans - still got half to shell out! I also collected several dozen achochas - I love these and they have enjoyed the wet summer it seems. I picked the drying beans on the Ruth Bible wigwam to finish drying indoors. Good thing I did - it's raining now. Also picked Birds Egg beans - still need shelling - and 4 'space ships' - patty pan squashes. Good haul altogether.

[SarzWix]

Went to lottie on way back from school run. Ran out of gas in the stove, shivered around looking at what needed doing, decided it could all wait, and came home to get warm
Meat & potato pie for tea today, feel the need for stodge

[Winged one]

Over a couple of evenings last week, I managed to pull up the mangetout vines in the garden that had died off, a tomato plant that hasn't flowered yet (gives the peas and spring onions near it a better chance), and managed to have a surprise picnic of a fresh ripe red tomato and a fresh full peapod each for OH, the toddler and myself one evening too!!

I also managed to get to the garden shop and buy my garlic bulbs for planting - after this year's distinctly poor crop, I am not taking any chances next year and buyigng fresh seed.

Unfortunately, I ended up helping an uncle move house on Saturday (10 hours non stop!! - oh my muscles are screaming today.....). Not only did I forget to take away a bundle of emptied out cardboard boxes (after stacking tehm neatly for em to bring away and all!!), I also forgot my good kitchen scissors (knew I'd need a blade of some sort and couldn't find my garden knife), and an aunt never sent over 3 of my ice blocks from the old freezer!! I should get some boxes in a couple of weeks though and my scissors back (ice blocks may be gone though).

This week's plan is, given the chances of reasonable weather, to take a day off on wednsday and spend it on the plot. Harvesting, throwing compost dalek contents over old beds and covering with cardboard, and tidying up. I'm not going to sow broadies, peas or plant garlic for another few weeks yet.

[zazen999]

Lovingly looked at the seeds for the next year: how did I accumulate all that???

Dug over another cleaned out bed.

Planted out 150 onions sets, and 50 garlic cloves.

Harvested more beans, courgettes and tomatoes on non-blighted plants.

Moved some pointy cabbage, put 11 in their final place and the rest in a corner until I'm ready for them.

Sowed green manure on one bed, with a strip of Limanthes.