Penellype's Allotment

[Penellype]

Look what I've got for lunch!



This is the first harvest from the hotbed - T&M crispy lettuce leaves blend and spinach Amazon thinnings. I'm very, very impressed with this - there is probably as much edible spinach here as I have had so far from 2 overwintered buckets at home (I picked 4 small leaves the other day), and there is (so far) absolutely no damage.

All that work carrying trugs of horse muck has definitely paid dividends. I might even do 2 hotbeds next year!

[Penellype]

As well as harvesting the baby leaves, I sowed some seeds in one of the raised beds. 2 rows of parsnips, 3 of carrots (3 varieties) and 1 of turnips. This bed will have a net over it once the current protective fleece is removed. The parsnip seed was opened last year so it may not germinate, but there is time to use fresh seed later if these fail.

I also noticed that the shelf with the peas on in the tunnel was leaning quite a bit, so I lifted the matting and levelled the soil underneath. This resulted in uncovering several large slugs and quite a large amount of couch and horsetail roots - better out than in! At least for now the shelf is more level, although as the soil underneath is soft that may not last.

[Penellype]

Yesterday morning was chilly but absolutely gorgeous, so having dealt with work as quickly as possible I made the most of it. The plan was to start weeding the tunnel while the ground was dry enough to work with.

At the moment there is weed suppressant down each side, leaving about a 4ft gap in the middle, and the whole of this area is covered with tiny weed seedlings. Lurking underneath is a tangle of horsetail, convolvulus, couch grass and blackthorn/hawthorn roots. I decided to tackle this starting at the shed end, which is lowest and therefore wettest when it rains.

After 2 sessions of this about an hour each, with a break in the middle I had dug half of the bare area and had a nearly full 40 litre trug of roots. These may have to go to the tip at some point as I have run out of space in my root bin! I've probably only scratched the surface as far as removing the horsetail goes, but at least I feel like I have made some good progress.

[Penellype]

Lots of rain over night so once again the plot is a squelchy, muddy mess.

Went to Wickes and bought 2 more dustbins, one of which I filled with water straight away, making room for the next lot of rain in the water butts (which were overflowing). I haven't yet decided where to put the 2nd one so it is living in the shed at the moment.

I tidied the shed a bit so that I could fit the dustbin in, and picked up a load of nails, screws etc from the floor. Various miscellaneous pieces of wood are now in the wood shed. It could do with a proper clean really, but I can at least find everything now.

Checked the potatoes under the cloches and bubble wrap and found that 2 of the buckets of Nicola are showing shoots and one of the Maris Bard is about to do the same. These have beaten the earlier planted ones at home, probably because they get more sun, and in the case of the Nicola the horse manure provides some over night heat.

Also chopped up a bit of the huge pile of leylandii prunings - this is a low priority job, but I intend to tackle it whenever I can't get on with other things.

[Penellype]

Today was cold, damp and distinctly uninviting. Apart from tipping the water from various bin lids etc into the water butts and picking up a jar of slugs for the chickens, nothing got done at the allotment at all today.

Tomorrow is family day and it is forecast to rain all day on Monday so I am unlikely to get anything done before Tuesday now

[Penellype]

Complete washout yesterday with well over an inch of rain. I didn't even attempt to go to the allotment.

Today was better but obviously the ground was very wet with standing water in places. I collected half a dustbin full from my bin lids and wheelbarrow, and filled the dustbin from the water butts, which were again overflowing. I'm now out of storage space so it can stop raining now (please)! An idea of how much rain we had yesterday came from the tray of peas. This was covered with a propagator lid with 2 small vents in, but the pots of peas were about an inch deep in water.

While I was scooping water out of the big water butt with the watering can I scraped my knuckle on the edge of the water butt - nothing worth mentioning except that it resulted in a fairly bloody mess and I had to walk home to wash it and get a plaster. That made me think that it might be a good idea to bring a bottle of clean water and a basic first aid kit to the plot - I'm used to being near to facilities with running water etc. I will eventually get together everything that I could possibly need down there...

There wasn't a great deal else I could do. I collected a few snails and took the trug full of roots to the tip (along with various stuff for recycling from home) and chopped a bit more of the leylandii. Then it started to rain again, and we had some very heavy showers which will not have helped to dry the place out at all. Some of the fleece covering the raised beds is growing some interesting yellow mould, probably because it is constantly wet.

[Penellype]

Managed to find a brief window in the deluges and planted the Sarpo Axona potatoes in buckets under the plastic tunnel. Also removed some weeds from some of the other buckets of potatoes - the compost they are planted in is from the dalek on the plot and is clearly full of weed seeds. By the time I had done that and baled out the peas again it had started raining yet again so I picked some salad leaves from the hotbed for lunch and went home.

The plot now has standing water in places and I am not going to be able to do much with it until the water level goes down - if it ever stops raining.

[Penellype]

Yesterday was a gorgeous day, and as usual on a Thursday, I was stuck in a meeting. I did nip down to the plot first thing to open the hotbed and potato covers as I thought everything might cook if I left them closed in the sun. Went back to shut them in the evening and noticed that the standing water had gone.

Today was less sunny, but dry and with a breeze which helped to dry up the puddles somewhat. I managed to find quite a few useful jobs to do.

First job was to take down 3 pea stakes and a roll of netting for the pea bed. I put these up ready for the meteor peas which should start growing fast now that the weather has warmed up a bit. A few weeds had grown under the fleece, which were removed. I put the fleece back on to keep the cat away.

Next I took the fleece off the onion bed. The onions are now a couple of inches tall and the tops were starting to get bent by the weight of the fleece. Hopefully the onions are now big enough to deter the cat - if it digs them up I will have to think again. The leeks at the end of this bed have germinated and i protected the seedlings with several pointy sticks.

Then I checked and watered the hotbed and potatoes. All of the Nicola are now up, as are the Maris Bard and the Lady C under the cloche in the tunnel. The Desiree haven't made an appearance yet - they were planted rather later. Found a horsetail shoot growing in the hotbed - this has managed to grow up through a thick layer of cardboard and over a foot of horse manure. Doesn't bode well for the other raised beds which are nowhere near as deep. I removed as much of it as I could.

Chopped up a bit more of the pile of leylandii - if I do a little each time maybe it will go down a bit. I also trimmed the long grass at the edges of the paths - the bits that haven't been walked on are growing quite strongly now.

Had a go at digging a bit more of the middle part of the tunnel. It was really still too wet underneath, but I did manage to do some and removed quite a lot of horsetail and bindweed roots.

Another couple of dry days would be great. Unfortunately it is going to rain hard again tomorrow and probably rain on Sunday and maybe on Monday, probably on Tuesday and possibly on Wednesday. Ah well, the dry spell was nice while it lasted.

[Penellype]

Yesterday was not as wet as expected, with most of the rain further to the west than the forecasts had shown. We even had a few brief glimpses of sunshine and it was quite warm and muggy. I took the opportunity to leave the cover of the hotbed open all day for some ventilation.

The ground is drying up a bit and I did some more digging in the tunnel, removing horsetail roots from the area where the buckets of potatoes and cloche are. I was only just in time - the horsetail was starting to grow through the holes in the buckets. I also removed loads of annual weed seedlings from the compost in the buckets - this is clearly going to be an ongoing job until the leaves get big enough to smother them.

Added a "tool clip" to the door arrangement on the tunnel to secure it a bit better as I have found it flapping open a couple of times recently.

Chopped up a bit more leylandii.

[nickdub]

This story should be subtitled "A Tale of Perseverance" - its a bit like a Victorian homily inspiring us all to strive harder.

BTW do you have the leylandii shipped in specially so you can have something satisfying to chop, or do you grow it yourself ? :-)

[lottie dolly]

Re the horsetail,it will find a way up through almost anything,i have put my potted blueberry's on a slab,it also better for drainage i find,your doing brilliant Pen.

[Penellype]

This story should be subtitled "A Tale of Perseverance" - its a bit like a Victorian homily inspiring us all to strive harder.

BTW do you have the leylandii shipped in specially so you can have something satisfying to chop, or do you grow it yourself ? :-)

I think the leylandii grows quite happily without any interference from me. Stopping it growing too big is much more difficult!

The large pile of leylandii is the result of me trimming/cutting back the hedges earlier in the year. There are actually 2 piles, one of smallish (upto 2ft) fairly soft pieces and one of large branches. As it is at the moment it won't fit in the car to go to the tip, and sheer bloody mindedness tells me that if I shred it it will at least make a mulch for either the paths or the blueberry, or eventually rot down into compost. When I get fed up of shredding it I will probably take the rest to the tip.

There is also an element of having a mindless and somewhat destructive job to do, which sort of fits with venting the frustration from a lot of nothing happening that should be happening at work (digging up horsetail does much the same job)!

[nickdub]

I know exactly what you mean about chopping being an anti-frustration medicine - I used to enjoy log-splitting for the same reason.

I had quite a large pile of leylandii prunings a few years ago and stuffed them all in a builder's 1 ton bag. This year I've been putting the residue down as a mulch round my raspberries.

[Penellype]

I'm intending to do similar - I will put the chopped stuff in one of the dalek composters and probably forget about it for a year or 2. I've got a new compost bin coming probably tomorrow which will free up the black dalek (currently about full).

[muck lover]

In a few years you will have great stuff. It just shows how gardeners need to take a long term view. Fairly shows up those ‘instant makeover ‘ shows for what they are.....entertainment but not really about gardening.