Penellype's Allotment

[Penellype]

Up early this morning and dug some more horsetail out of the tunnel before the sun came out. Planted some yellow beetroot that I grew in plugs at home - these have gone where the carrots were that were eaten by slugs, so I'm hoping the beetroot will fare rather better as they are bigger.

Went to the garden centre and got another bag of ericaceous compost and some plants for the front garden. Back to the allotment later to pot up the blueberry and pick some spinach for tea and to freeze. Even though it is bolting the spinach is still producing some very decent sized leaves and I picked a carrier bag full without making much impression on the plants.

No watering today (apart from the newly planted plants) as it is forecast to rain heavily tomorrow.

[Penellype]

Friday was a write-off although I did manage a quick visit in the evening to collect about 1/2 a dustbin full of water from my various upturned lids, wheelbarrow etc. I also picked up all the slugs and snails I could find.

Yesterday I went down early expecting more slugs and snails to be enjoying the damp, but found surprisingly few. I'm not daft enough to think that I have somehow managed to catch them all, I've probably just weeded out the ones that don't know how to hide. While I was there I pulled the horsetail out of the cauliflower bed which is one of the worst infested. The cauliflowers (Maybach) are showing no sign of flowering - maybe they are Junebach this year. The turnips in the same bed are now the size of marbles. I'm hoping the debris netting cover is fine enough to keep off the cabbage root fly, which is always a problem with turnips at home.

As it was still cloudy I went back at lunchtime and finished digging the horsetail out from the road end of the tunnel, apart from under the roll of matting where I saw Mr Toad before. Loads of little weeds are beginning to show at the shed end, so I may attack them with a hoe soon. I brought home another carrier bag full of spinach leaves for the freezer.

In the evening I went back an pulled out more horsetail from the edges of the plot and then mowed the grass paths. The mower is not good at cutting the flowering stalks or up against the edges so I need to go round with the edging shears and nip them off, but at least I have got part of the job done.

[Penellype]

Much sunnier today, so at lunchtime I trimmed the long bits of grass round the edges that were in the shade and pulled out a load of horsetail. I then tidied the wood shed so that I could fit some more bits in that I am no longer using for now. I also cut back some branches of the ash tree that is growing in the hedge, as it kept hitting me in the face. The hedges could all do with a quick trim of soft shoots before the whole thing gets out of hand.

After tea I went back to do some watering and hoed the shed end of the tunnel to remove annual weed seedlings. There were a couple of bits of horsetail showing, which I dug out. The whole thing took me about 10 minutes, and hopefully this will be how it is from now on. The road end will need further digging as some of it has only been dug once.

I then spent some time pulling horsetail out from under the roadside hedge before attempting to dig bits out of the bed next to the rhubarb. Once again I found that the evening sun made it very hard to see the horsetail roots here and I soon gave up - I will have to do it at a different time of day. I want to get this dug over again as I'm going to plant tomatoes and courgettes in it soon.

By the time I had watered everything (it has been very warm and quite windy today so things were already looking dry) I had used up all of the water I collected on Friday. That didn't last long, and we currently have negligible rain forecast here for the foreseeable future.

The crops are growing better - there are pods forming on the early peas, the raspberries are flowering and fruits are swelling on the strawberries. I have at least a dozen gooseberries (total crop from past 2 years combined was 3) and the blackcurrant has loads of fruit. The spinach is bolting but still edible and the beetroot is growing at an amazing rate in the hotbed. There are a few carrots too, which I thought had got buried under the lettuce and spinach in the hotbed - from the tops they look about finger thick. One of the plants in the bucket of Lady C potatoes is going a bit yellow and looking as though it might be ready to harvest. I will have a look tomorrow - that could be one bucket less to water...

[Penellype]

Not too hot and sunny this morning so I got a chance to trim the roadside hedge and dig the horsetail out of the bed next to the rhubarb again. I then moved the plastic tunnel that was over the potatoes onto this bed ready for the tomatoes. Picked some lettuce, beetroot and rhubarb for lunch.

This afternoon I took 4 tomato plants and 3 runner bean plants to the plot. The beans were planted near the bean frame after I'd pulled out all the visible horsetail. The tomatoes went under the plastic tunnel, planted deep so that they take a while to get too tall. There are 2 varieties, both of which are supposed to be resistant to blight - 2 Crimson Crush, which I grew at home last year, and 2 Oh Happy Day, which is a new variety supposedly more resistant to blight than Mountain Magic (which I am not particularly keen on).

I went back in the evening to shut the cover over the tomatoes and water everything, and noticed that the bluebells near the tunnel had finished flowering so I deadheaded them and also pulled a load of horsetail out of the rhubarb bed (there is loads more, but I was out of time).

[Penellype]

Yesterday's main job was to take the full trugs of horsetail to the tip so that I had some space for more. That done, I pulled the horsetail out of the 4 beds nearest the leylandii hedge (potatoes, parsnips, leeks and onions).

One of the things I did when I made the raised beds was to do things slightly differently in each of the 4 beds next to the grass path, to see what happened. The bean bed was simply hoed, and the cardboard and raised bed put down on top of the weeds. The pea bed wasn't even hoed, the cardboard was put on top of the weeds as they were. The horsetail in these 2 beds is horrific, coming up everywhere. The onion bed was dug over but none of the weeds were removed. This also has loads of horsetail, but possibly slightly less than the other 2 beds. The leek bed was dug over and as much horsetail as possible was removed. There is still some horsetail, but noticeably much less than in any of the other beds. I suppose this was predictable, really. In all of the beds the other weeds were completely suppressed - I have had to remove one dandelion, 2 raspberry suckers and a couple of sprouted acorns that came in the leaf mould, plus a very few seedlings of annual weeds that probably came with the used compost I topped the beds with, and that's all.

The other job I really wanted to get done yesterday was trimming the west side hedge. This is much harder than the roadside one as it is a mixture of different trees and shrubs as well as the hawthorn and blackthorn. It also contains a number of nettles. I got it done, but it took most of the afternoon. Some of the elder branches had about 3ft of new growth to cut back. 2 trug fulls of chopped trimmings went into the compost bin - having an empty trug available was important which is why I wanted to get this done now, before the trugs get filled with yet more horsetail.

So, mostly a "maintenance" day yesterday.

Today I wanted to get on with something more like "progress" and I had my eye on digging more of the path between the raised beds and tunnel. I'd hoped to finish up to the edge of the cauliflower bed (a total of about 4ft of path), but it was soon clear that this was not going to happen. The soil has been walked on and compressed for the last 5 months and is really hard. It takes all my weight on the fork to push it into the soil and quite an effort to lever the soil out, then I have to start carefully breaking it up without chopping the roots into tiny pieces. It can't be done quickly, and by the time I had got half way up the cauliflower bed it was lunchtime and I had had quite enough. I'd half filled a trug with roots.

This afternoon I wanted to harvest the bucket of Lady C potatoes. One of the plants had gone very yellow and was clearly not going to do anything other than die back, and new potatoes for tea seemed a great idea. The compost was very dry when I turned the bucket out, which could be why the foliage was dying (although it hadn't wilted). I harvested 0.8kg of reasonably sized new potatoes:



This is not as good as comparable buckets at home this time last year, which yielded about 1kg, but last year the potatoes were planted nearly a month earlier.

I'd taken the white beetroot with me intending to plant them, but having dug a few bits of horsetail out of the tunnel I decided to leave them in their modules on the shelf for a bit longer. I picked a bag of spinach and went home for tea.

This evening I went back to water and pulled the horsetail out of the bean bed, then sowed a half row of florence fennel, which I have been meaning to do for a while. If this survives the slugs I will sow some more. The birds have been ferreting in the pea and bean beds today, presumably after the worms. I need to get some black cotton to deter them. In the meantime I covered the newly sown seeds with fleece to stop them from being dug up.

[Penellype]

No gardening time yesterday, but when I went down to water the plants, 2 of the runner beans were on their sides, having clearly been dug up by birds looking for worms. An emergency shopping trip was necessary to get some cotton, which I put round the beans and also some of the peas which were also being targeted.

Today was hot and sticky. I went down to the plot early and did about an hour digging horsetail roots. The cotton seems to have done its job and the beans were still in place.

Later I went back and dug part of the tunnel again to remove any horsetail roots I could find before planting some white beetroot that I'd grown in modules. Then I brought home a carrier bag full of spinach to freeze, and some lettuce and a beetroot the size of a tennis ball for lunch .

When I went back to water everything I pulled some horsetail out of the raised beds again. Then I took some photos of the plot as it is exactly 5 months since I got it. This is what it looks like now:

From the plot entrance



Inside the tunnel



From the shed end



The same area from the road end



The bottom end



(To be continued...)

[Penellype]

The bean bed



Runner bean Stardust, purple sugar snap peas Sugar Magnolia. The fleece is there to keep the cat off - there are recently sown fennel seeds under it this side.

The pea bed



Peas Meteor at the back, about ready, Douce Provence, 2 rows in front, also nearly ready. On the right are Hurst Greenshaft, not looking very happy. The area under the fleece will be planted with late peas (Geisha).

The onion bed



Onion Sturon, not growing very well. I don't think they like having their roots disturbed every other day when remove the horsetail. On the left are 2 rows of summer leeks, which have all but disappeared.

The leek bed



There are 2 rows of leeks on the left, but again these are very small. I was going to plant more leeks in this bed, but there seems little point as they are doing so badly. I will therefore plant the rest of the leeks in the tunnel. This bed is the one that has had some of the horsetail dug out already, so I will take the opportunity to clear the rest of it when I have finished digging the path next to the tunnel.

The raspberry bed

[Penellype]

The potato bed



Sarpo Axona nearest, Nicola and one bucket of Desiree (left) behind.

The parsnip bed



2 rows of small parsnip seedlings (Hollow Crown) and 2 rows of rather bigger yellow beetroot. I've left plenty of space in between as I know how big these parsnip plants can get!

The cauliflower bed



4 cauliflower Maybach and some turnip Oasis. The 2 cauliflower plants at home are starting to form cauliflowers. Hopefully these won't be far behind, and the 2 turnips on the right are about ready to eat.

The hotbed



Spinach Amazon continues to defy belief. The leaves are smaller now but are fine to eat if the central vein is removed and are still bigger than anything I can grow at home. It is still growing much faster than I can pick it - the photo was taken after I harvested a carrier bag full of leaves today. Between the 2 rows of spinach I have finished harvesting the lettuces. There are a few surviving carrots, although whether the carrot flies have got at them remains to be seen. The beetroot (Boltardy and Boldor) is growing very fast too and there is a row of lettuces between them which is rapidly disappearing under the beetroot leaves.

The tomato bed



2 of each of Crimson Crush (back) and Oh Happy Days (front), both of which are supposed to be blight resistant. The space on the right is waiting for courgettes.

[Penellype]

The strawberries



Loads of plants with fruit forming, but nothing ripe yet. Like everything else these are infested with horsetail, so I am experimenting with growing 4 plants in a MFB. If this works I may end up with a row of them which might solve the horsetail issue but create a different problem with watering.

The shed end of the tunnel



Cabbage Duncan at the far end and kohlrabi very hard to see on the right. The white bed with copper round is carrots, which have survived so far (touch wood). This side of the carrot bed is the beetroot I planted today. Behind the post is the blackcurrant bush (Ben Sarek) and the Maris Bard potatoes are in the foreground.

The road end of the tunnel



Another view of the potatoes with the blueberry Pink Lemonade and Gooseberry Captivator in pots behind. The area out of picture to the left is bare at the moment and will be planted with winter brassicas.

The path next to the tunnel



You can just about see that I have cleared as far as the far side of the cauliflower bed, with just the bit next to the path this side of the hotbed, the end of the hotbed and the bit next to the strawberries to do.

Pleased with progress so far

[Penellype]

Looks fantastic Pen, you must be really pleased to have achieved that in five months

I must admit I thought it was 6 until I realized I was counting June!

[Penellype]

One photo I forgot to add last night:

The road end



Eventually I will remove the big geranium plant at the end of the tunnel (which is a snail breeding ground) and probably keep the pink blueberry there so it is easy to move into the tunnel when the fruit ripen. The "wildlife corner" is at the far end of the grass path behind the folding chair - a tangle of nettles, brambles, thorn hedge and horsetail that is never going to be easy to clear.

[Penellype]

Yesterday was just about a complete washout. It was forecast to start raining at about 11am but was already doing so by 9. It was forecast to stop by 6 but by then it was only just getting going and we had some torrential rain which only stopped as it started to get dark. I managed a quick visit at lunchtime to empty the water into the bins and grab any slugs and snails I could find, but that was it.

This morning I went down first thing and collected up the water and slugs and snails and found that the rain had flattened some of the spinach, which was lying on top of the carrots in the hotbed. I didn't have time to do anything with it at that point as I had to go and muck out the horses and needed to spend the morning doing my friend's garden.

After lunch I went back and cut back all of the spinach that had been flattened, filling a large bag with edible leaves. There is loads more, but at least I can see my carrots again. I'd taken down 3 french bean plants which I planted in the bean bed, surrounding them with black cotton threaded between sticks to keep the birds off.

While I was removing slugs and snails from the tunnel I'd noticed a bit of horsetail poking up at the shed end, which I had hoped was mostly clear by now. I spent some time pulling bits out of some of the raised beds, then went to dig the few bits in the tunnel. It soon became clear that there was much more than I'd thought and I started digging it properly. Disappointingly there was horsetail in almost every forkful of soil. It was far too humid for digging and by the time I had dug about 1/4 of the tunnel I was hot, exhausted and in a foul mood. I'd intended to finish this quickly then walk round the plot tidying it and cut the grass, but there was no chance of that.

My mood was much improved when I looked at the cauliflower bed and noticed that I could see white in the middles of 2 of the 4 plants (the ones at home also have small cauliflowers forming). I'm not sure how long to leave these before I harvest them - they are currently about golf ball size. I picked some peas for tea and went home to freeze the spinach and catch up with the garden at home.

[1Bee]

Incredible progress, Penellype! Just stunning.

For your own sanity, I wonder if you're going to have to find a way to accept that you're probably not going to get rid of the horsetail permanently? You'll have knocked it back significantly, though, and will see the benefits this time next year!

[Penellype]

Incredible progress, Penellype! Just stunning.

For your own sanity, I wonder if you're going to have to find a way to accept that you're probably not going to get rid of the horsetail permanently? You'll have knocked it back significantly, though, and will see the benefits this time next year!

I know that it is very hard to eradicate horsetail, what completely knocked me sideways was the sheer amount of it that I had missed on 3 previous diggings of that end of the tunnel. I'd sifted each forkful through the tines of the fork and raked it about to find all the bits, and yet I am still digging up whole pieces a foot or more long. I was expecting little pieces to be left behind, but not great long strings of it!

[geepee]

In my younger day, as an inspiring 'Farmer' I bought land that I thought was 'Cheap' only to find that it was 'Infested' with 'Horsetail'
I took advice from the then ADAS and was told to plough deep ie 35/40 cm ,Add Lime to bring Ph up to min 7.5,Hoe any emerging shoots during the next growing crop.
Plough deep again the next Autumn and keep a check on Ph ,P, and K levels.
Within 2 years I had NO mare tail presence.
As a Gardener now,I realise that we can not Plough, But please dont think and put all your effort into diggng 6'' (15 cm ) deep is enough..""" total waste of time and energy, merely givng the horsetail roots left ungerground more energy to emerge...!!
My belief is .....the 'No Dig ' approach has led to deep rooted weeds such as maretail, couch, etc , not to mention grass weeds, an excellent opportunity to prevail.
Moral of this is if you have Horsetail, Couch etc.......Dig deep( minimum 2 x spade depths ) or invest in a 'Deep digging spade'.( you only have to dig once , irrespect of the depth)
Better than continuos digging to no avail.

Soil test and ensure your Ph.P.& K levels are sufficient to a depth of 30-50 cm, not just the top 5cm.
Perseverence with this will pay dividends Im sure .
Gp