Penellype's Allotment

[Penellype]

A word of caution, it does slow down at this time of year, so it's not definite, but it is an encouraging sign.

Is there anyway you can cover more of it? One thing I have found is that although it spreads, it does like to keep poking it's head above ground. if you give it a big enough barrier (of eg plastic sheet covering), it really slows down it's advance. If you can put "firebreaks" across the plot, you might be able to get it in proper retreat in one or two locations. If it does try to come up under covers, it grows huge amounts in a spiral trying to get up, so it really wears it out.

Also, when you pull it out, it has a weakpoint at about ground level, if you can pull it off below that, it helps slow it down.

I did have it covered in the tunnel before I started digging and planting, and it did slow it down a bit, but that was early in the year. Where I have covered it with a double layer of heavy duty weed matting it has still managed to grow through it. The really difficult bits are the grass paths, 2 of which are next to serious infestations of the stuff which I can do very little about - one under the hawthorn hedge and the other in the neighbouring plot.

At the moment there is no sign of slowing down at all (rather the reverse). All I can do with the planted areas is keep pulling as much of it out as I can reach. The plan going forward is that as each crop is harvested I remove the contents of the raised beds and dig down into the soil to remove as much root as possible. Wherever I can I will extend the digging under the paths, although this is rather awkward as the weed matting goes under the edges of the raised beds. I probably won't know how successful I have been until next spring or summer.

[Penellype]

Small, thin shoots suggests a weakened mother plant to me, Pene...

Possibly, but while some of them come up attached to obvious small pieces of thicker root, others don't appear to have a mother plant at all.

[Penellype]

Not much time yesterday as I had to wait in for some of the day as my new fridge was being delivered (replacing the one destroyed by lightning). I went down early and lifted all of the onions and put them on the shelf to dry. The intention is to move the whole shelf into the shed if rain is forecast, although if I can actually get it in there remains to be seen!

I also pulled all of the horsetail I could find out of the (almost) empty onion bed (there are 3 small summer leeks in there which I intend to use soon)and a couple of the other raised beds and dug some bits of horsetail up from the tunnel.

Back in the evening as always to water.

[Penellype]

This morning I took my camera down, mainly to photograph the beetroot and onions for a couple of the other threads. I took a few other photos too.

Some of the Red Alert tomatoes are just starting to turn red:



The onions on their rack on the empty half of the pea bed:



Behind them the Nectargold french beans are going completely berserk - I can't even begin to keep up with eating them.

The cucumber plants in the tunnel are completely swamping the summer leeks:



The brassicas on the left of the photo are Romanesco. I have no idea how big these will get, but they are already huge and starting to block the pathway. As yet there is no sign of any flower shoots.

I started weeding, both annual weeds and horsetail, but it was very hot and humid. While I was trying to pull some of the horsetail out from under the hawthorn hedge I stabbed my thumb on a blackthorn, which really hurt. That's the problem under there - there are huge amounts of thorny hedge trimmings hidden by a blanket of horsetail foliage, and just waiting to stab you. I gave up, harvested a beetroot and went home.

Not happy that I had made very little progress today, I went back mid afternoon to see what I could get done. I wanted to harvest the raspberries in any case, and I had forgotten to take a tub for them with me in the morning.

At the front of the 3rd photo above is a pink geranium and a pile of weed matting. This is where I found Mr Toad a while ago, and I have been using him as an excuse not to deal with this awkward corner. However it was growing increasing quantities of couch grass, horsetail and bindweed and I decided I would start on that today. I would cut down and then dig out the geranium, take the weed matting out of the way and store it in the wood shed, and that would clear the way for me to dig out the perennial weeds over the next few days. I expected Mr Toad to have vacated his house some time ago, probably shortly after I disturbed him.

I cut down the geranium and then carefully unfolded the weed matting, expecting it to be full of slugs and snails. There were a couple, and plenty of woodlice... and one small dark brown toad. I carefully moved the roll of matting just far enough across to allow me to access the weeds, and dug out as much as I could. I then replaced matting complete with toad in the corner of the tunnel. He can stay there as long as he likes as I have no plans to grow anything in that corner this year. At least I have got rid of the bulk of the weeds and stopped the geranium from seeding itself everywhere. I harvested the raspberries and went home for tea.

This evening, despite a forecast for a dry night, there were some fairly threatening looking clouds and the radar showed the odd light shower, admittedly rather further west. When I went down to water everything I decided to put the onions in the shed to keep them dry. The shelf unit wouldn't fit in, but I balanced one of the shelves on top on a trug and put some of the onions on it. The driest ones went into a bag to take home with me and the rest went into a trug and will need to be taken out and put back on the shelves first thing tomorrow. The ones I took home are now drying in the garage, and there is room for a few more which I will bring home tomorrow.

[Penellype]

Yesterday morning I decided to clear up the rhubarb bed, as one plant in particular (the early one) had a lot of dead leaves. I removed these and quite a lot of the horsetail in amongst, as well as a fair number of snails, before I ran out of time. I collected up all the onions to put to dry in the garage at home, safe from any rain, harvested a beetroot and went home.

Back in the afternoon, and as it wasn't particularly hot I decided to dig the path alongside the tunnel again, where some horsetail was just starting to poke through the soil. Even though this has been walked on regularly, it wasn't too hard to dig and I managed to do the whole path in one session. I was tired at the end of it but at least I didn't have to stop for fear of collapsing from overheating!

Harvested a courgette (one of the smallest ones) for tea - this one will do me 2 meals. I've left the bigger ones on the plants in the hope of slowing them down a bit - they are enormous. I don't really like these courgettes very much and I think apart from for soup they are going to get rather ignored.

We didn't get any rain (apart from about 6 spots of drizzle), so it was watering again in the evening.

[Penellype]

Busy yesterday, so apart from a quick trip to the allotment first thing to harvest some beans and beetroot and an equally quick stop off to water in the evening, nothing got done. Rain had been forecast, but the showers missed this area.

Today I wanted to cut the grass, and with a dry morning forecast I was confident I could do it before the showers arrived later in the day. However, light showers were already making their presence felt over breakfast. Clearly it was one of those days when the radar is a much better indication of the likely weather than the forecast.

I did a few jobs around the house and then went down to the plot mid morning and decided the grass was going to get cut, wet or not, as it was getting a bit long in places. I did that, pulling out horsetail as I went, and then trimmed the edge alongside the raised beds to stop the grass from invading them.

I could see that the clouds were gathering again so I harvested the 3 small leeks that survived in the onion bed (which is now empty), a turnip and the remaining carrots from the tunnel (5 smallish ones) as I was not sure if I would be able to get back this afternoon, and went home.

After lunch there was a window between the showers (which had still been light, and more of a nuisance than of any use), and I could see from the radar that a heavier one was heading this way but that I probably had about 90 minutes of dry before it arrived. I therefore went back to the plot with a plan to dig the horsetail and a large dandelion out of the part of the tunnel where the carrots had been (this is why I harvested them). This area is next to the water bin in the bottom corner of the tunnel and I have been using the water from there so I could move it and dig out grass and horsetail from around it.

Plenty of couch and horsetail roots came out and I got the area dug and the bin replaced in just over an hour. I could see the rain clouds approaching and these ones looked really threatening, probably thundery. I reckon I can detect thunder before it arrives - I become very unsettled and edgy. It was definitely time to get going, but I wanted to pick the ripe raspberries for the freezer, and they are better picked dry, so I did so. I then set off home at maximum speed.

I arrived at the house exactly 85 minutes after I left it, and 5 minutes before the rain arrived. And I was right, the afternoon showers did have some thunder in them, although thankfully nothing like a fortnight ago. Friday seems to be thunder day at the moment! I spent the rest of the afternoon at home where I could retreat indoors when necessary.

Another dry slot at around 6pm tempted me back to see if there was any water to collect, but there was really very little, so I watered everything in pots and raised beds. I took with me a balconniere planter to plant some lettuces in. it has copper tape round it so hopefully will be less vulnerable to slugs than the raised beds, especially as I intend to keep it on the shelf. I'd already filled it with compost - some I bought a couple of weeks ago. This was Westland MPC, which I usually use, and I found a bag cheap so I bought it thinking it would be better than the grow bags I have been using for seeds. I was disappointed with the last lot I had, in different sized bags and from a completely different place, and I thought it would be interesting to see if that was a one-off. It wasn't. The compost in this bag was also grey, very fibrous and smelt musty. It was also very dry and light. When I tried transplanting some lettuce seedlings into pots of it at home I found it had the consistency of old fashioned loft insulation and was incredibly difficult to wet. I therefore decided I would use some of it up by filling the balconniere trough with it and taking it to the allotment, rather than using the compost that I've been growing potatoes in (which is full of weed seeds and possibly slug eggs). I won't be buying Westland MPC again!

Planting things always takes longer than you think to do, and I very nearly got very wet. This time we had a real downpour for a few minutes while I was seeing to the horses. Later the showers cleared to leave a beautiful evening, so I walked down to the plot again and collected all the water - about half a bucketful this time.

[Penellype]

Today I wanted to make a start on digging the onion bed. Well aware that tomorrow is going to be wet, I went down early and spent a good 90 minutes removing the rotted horse manure and compost filling (carefully so I didn't scrape up any horsetail with it) and putting it in my new compost bin for storage. I then lifted the wooden edge and put it on top of the one round the pea bed.

That done, I pulled out the pegs (with some difficulty) that were holding down the weed matting and peeled it back as far as I could. The central path is a bit of a pain as the matting runs under all 10 of the raised beds, so I will just have to do the best I can with it, and maybe lift it when more of the beds are empty over winter. I then started digging out the horsetail. This is going to be a long job. The paths are very compacted, but the actual raised bed area was not bad at all. I dug about 1/3 of the area then went home for coffee as it was about time to go to the stables and do my friend's garden for a bit.

I was back in the afternoon and dug most of the rest of the bed area. There will be plenty of horsetail left, so this is only a start. I really should have spent some time weeding the tunnel, but I didn't have the energy.

I did remove several male flowers from the (supposedly all female) La Diva cucumbers in the tunnel, and I also harvested the first Red Alert tomato and a good handful of Terrain peas.

As it is clearly going to rain later, I didn't do any watering at the plot this evening.

[Penellype]

Spot the (not) deliberate mistake in yesterday's post - I have 8 raised beds, not 10!

After quite a bit of over night rain there was a dry slot this morning so I went down and collected the water from the bin lids and trays, plus a few slugs and snails that had come out of hiding. I noticed that the new raspberry canes were starting to flop sideways now that they are wet and needed tying in. When I used to do casual work at a fruit farm I remember doing raspberries, but I'm sure they didn't tie the canes in until they cut down the old fruiting wood. I might be wrong though - its a good 20 years ago. Anyway, mine are still fruiting but some of the new canes are about 6ft tall, so I tied the biggest ones to the wires to stop them from falling over. I got quite wet in the process, so I will try to do the rest when it hasn't just rained!

I went back at lunchtime and tried to weed in the tunnel, but everything was very wet and I decided to leave it until things have dried off a bit. I dug some more horsetail out of the onion bed instead.

There was a heavy shower around tea time, so when it had finished I went back down and collected another useful amount of water. The grass path at the bottom is getting quite soggy now, but at least I shouldn't need to water there for a day or 2.

[Penellype]

Thunderstorms forecast today so I went down to the plot as early as I could to get some digging and weeding done. I dug the shed end of the tunnel and the clear path between the plants on the east side, removing any horsetail and large weeds. I then pulled out as many of the weeds as I could between the winter leeks and mulched these with some of the leftovers from the first raised bed that I dug. This is a mixture of rotted horse manure, leaf mould and used compost and contains very few weed seeds. I'm hoping it will suppress the annual weeds as these are rapidly becoming something of a problem. I realize that the horsetail will just grow straight through it, but I would have to pull that out anyway. The intention is to mulch all of the winter brassicas with similar mulch as I get them weeded.

By 10.30 the sun had come out and it was very hot and humid. I was also concerned about the size of the clouds building up and didn't want to get caught out in a thunderstorm, so I grabbed a beetroot and some peas and went home. The day became increasingly showery and thundery, and I kept nipping out into the garden to collect rain water between the showers, and I also went down to the plot to do the same at about 2.30 when there was a biggish gap between showers. I was pleased to find a really useful amount of water had collected and I tipped it into the bins and water butt. I pulled a turnip for tea on my way out.

There was quite a nasty storm around 3.30, at which point I had a man round fixing my back door, which needed adjusting, so at least I had a distraction. I would have gone back to the plot to collect the water again, but I could see from the radar that it was by no means finished yet. A small blue area over Easingwold turned into a larger yellow area moving south, and then turned into this:



My house is somewhere inside the blue circle. It lashed down with rain for about half an hour. My drive, which slopes slightly towards the road, was completely under water - I've never seen this before. The road has a dip between my house and the main road, with a drain at the bottom. This was completely flooded. There was no way I could get the car out to go to the stables or the plot.

I waited about an hour, during which time the drive returned to normal. I still wouldn't risk the car, but decided to put my wellies on and go and look at the plot. I wish I'd thought to take my camera.

All of the allotments were under water. Mine slopes from west to east, so the tunnel was almost on dry land and the rhubarb and tomatoes were clear of it. The rest was flooded, upto about 4 inches in places (nearly to the top of the raised beds). The area where I had been digging yesterday (where the onions were) was a lake.

I took a deep breath and waded in. It was ok as long as I kept to the trodden paths. When I tried to walk on the path alongside the tunnel, which I dug recently, I sank nearly to the top of my wellies, and had to heave myself clear using the side of the potato bed - I didn't try that again. There was a river running past the shed, clearly draining the garden to the west.

I emptied all the bin lids and containers into the bins, then used my bucket to scoop up water (it was just surface water - there was no sign of any sewage in it) and filled all of the bins and water butts. No more need for carrying water in the car for some time!

Positives from this (apart from the water supply):
The shed, although at the wet end of the plot, was dry inside (as far as I could tell - I couldn't see the back).
The raspberries, which I had the sense to plant on a ridge, were above water level.
I'd taken the onions indoors, not left them out to dry on the ground.
Raised beds are definitely the way to go on this plot!
I now have a very good idea of what the worst case scenario looks like in terms of flooding - it would be most unusual to be worse than this (there are gardens flooded along the main road that I have never seen flooded before).
At least it was rain, not hail, which would have done much more damage.

I suspect the flood water may go down fairly quickly once the garden to the west drains. I will just have to wait and see what it looks like tomorrow, and hope that we have seen the last of the rain for a day or 2 so things can dry out.

Reports say that rain was falling at a rate of over 100mm/hour for some time in my village and there are several photos and videos circulating of flooding very near where I am. No surprise that my poor allotment couldn't cope. http://www.yorkpress.co.uk/news/1641...rrential-rain/ - Ascot Road is very near the allotment.

[Penellype]

Went down to the plot first thing this morning to see how things were shaping up. Most of the water has drained away, as I thought it would, but there are areas which are still flooded and everywhere is very soggy, I took my camera with me this time.



The onion bed that I dug on Sunday and the end of the brassica bed near the grass are still flooded. The wooden stake which was holding down the net over the onions, and which was lying alongside the brassica bed, has floated across the grass path. There are lots of dead worms in the water



The same flooded bed and path from the other side. You can clearly see that the high water mark on the raised bed (which slopes slightly left to right) is above the join in the layers at the lower end. This bed was flooded above the level of the filling yesterday evening.



This is where I sank nearly to the top of my wellies. This is still pretty much liquid mud.



The "river bed" between the shed and tunnel. You can't see from this picture, but the level difference between the bottom and the shed floor is probably less than an inch. I intend to dig out the grass near the end of the tunnel at some point and I am going to have to suppress any tidy minded ideas of levelling this off nicely and creating a "decent" path. Had I already done this, I'm certain my shed would have been flooded. The blue bucket, which catches drips from the eaves of the shed, was overflowing.



The water level was nearly, but not quite up to the top of the ridge the raspberries are planted on. This is where I was scooping up bucketfuls of water for the water butts. It has dried out remarkably well, although it is still very soggy to walk on.

[Penellype]

The tunnel seems to have escaped the worst of the flooding, although everything is very soggy.



The leeks I mulched yesterday still have their mulch (I was wondering if it might have floated away). The path alongside them was very soft indeed last night when I walked down to take off the lid of the bin to fill it. You can clearly see the difference between the area that I dug and then stood on yesterday to weed and mulch the leeks and the area beyond near the beetroot where I dug and didn't walk.



The lettuces look happy in their balconniere trough. The mesh tunnel probably stopped them getting flattened by the force of the rain. The ones behind are still in their modules, growing a little more so they are big enough to cope with slugs when I plant them out at my friend's, probably at the weekend.

[Snadger]

You are an inspiration to us all Penellype. Keep up the good work.

[Penellype]

You are an inspiration to us all Penellype. Keep up the good work.

Thanks Snadger

[Penellype]

The difficulty today was finding something useful to do without causing damage to the soggy parts of the plot. One job I could easily do was take the horsetail roots to the tip. Combined with the weekly shop (the shops are on the way to the tip) that took up a fair chunk of the morning. I brought the trugs back and harvested a courgette, a leek and a kohlrabi and went home to make some soup.

The road end of the plot was reasonably dry as it is higher than the rest, so this afternoon I decided I would tackle the horsetail under the hedge. There is a huge amount of this so there was no way I could do the job in one go. I worked my way along the plot side of the hedge, starting at the easy end, near the entrance. The grass path is full of the stuff as well, and all I could do was snap it off, so it will soon grow back again. I got rid of some brambles along the way.

Once I'd got as far as the tunnel things got a lot harder. This part of the hedge has some of the orange mesh that you sometimes see around roadworks, and there is no clear reason why it is there. The hedge is thick enough at this point, and all the mesh is doing is making it extremely difficult to remove horsetail, brambles and a large patch of nettles. There are 2 pieces of mesh, the one nearer the corner clearly doing a job of blocking a hole in the hedge, but I decided to remove the first one. This was easier said than done. Growing through it was a potentially painful mixture of hawthorn, blackthorn, brambles and nettles, all entangled with horsetail upto about 2ft high. Somehow I managed to disentangle about 3/4 of the piece of mesh without getting prickled or stung, before I ran out of time. I picked a few raspberries before going home.

No watering tonight!

[geepee]

^^^^^^^^^^
Wonder Woman once again..!!
What you have achieved and the conditions you have suffered,Endured and Overcome since taking it on are immense.
Your progress and results since January can only be Admired, keep your chin up Pen, your a star.
Gp