Penellype's Allotment

[Penellype]

Thanks geepee - sometimes it does seem that the weather is doing its best to be difficult, but there have been some compensations. I've had much less trouble with annual weeds and the grass has not needed cutting nearly as much as it would have if we had had the usual amount of rain. And at least now I don't need to worry about bringing down cans of water to fill up the bins for when the roadworks get in the way.

[Penellype]

Today's job was to get more of that horsetail out from under the roadside hedge. I went down mid morning and had a look at it, but decided that the weeds in the tunnel were a better option - the road end was now dry enough to try digging. I dug all of the bit near the door that wasn't actually growing anything, and trimmed back the cucumber plants which were again sprawling everywhere. While I was doing this I found quite a big cucumber, which I took home for lunch along with some peas and tomatoes. The Red Alert tomatoes are ripening, but they are doing so very patchily, so that a tomato will have areas that are red and ones that are still green. It doesn't look like greenback as it is not all at the stalk end. I've brought them home to see if they will ripen properly.

I went back in the afternoon and tackled the road side of the hedge, as it is easier to reach underneath from that side. I filled 2 big trugs with horsetail tops and got all of that side finished except the bit behind the bus shelter, which I am not at all sure I can get at. I also pulled horsetail out of the pea and bean beds. It looks like I will be making another trip to the tip on Friday.

Before I went home I brushed up the soil that the water had deposited on the weed matting from the places where it had dried, as it is going to rain tonight. The bits that were still wet were very slippery and I had to be careful where I was putting my feet, so once it all dries out I will remove the rest of the mud. I also harvested a turnip, some beans, a courgette and a marrow, plus a summer leek. These are strange things - they are really quite tall, but not very fat (they look like that on the seed packet). They are a variety called Bulgaarse Reuzen Lincoln which I have not grown before, and they are not frost hardy so they need to be eaten in summer/autumn.

[Penellype]

No gardening yesterday (usual busy Thursday).

Today I had 3 full trugs of horsetail tops that I pulled out from under the hedge, which I wanted to take to the tip today as there are usually queues to get in at the weekend. I had 2 trugs left to fill, so I dug up all the geranium plants along the side of the tunnel. These have been annoying me for ages as they were growing through the netting in places, but the ground has been too rock hard to get them out. Not any more, and I dug all 6 of them out this morning and took them to the tip with the horsetail. I also harvested all the ripe raspberries (a lot of which were spoiled by raspberry beetle) and cut back any finished branches.

After lunch I went back and had another go at the nettles, brambles and horsetail in the roadside hedge. I got one of the bits of orange fencing out and removed all the nettles that were leaning over the path and pulled off all the horsetail I could see. There were also loads of snails which I removed. It looks much tidier, and there is now only the "wildlife corner" that is really messy. As that also consists almost entirely of hedge, nettles, brambles and horsetail, I think I am going to have to tidy it up at some point in order to get at and cut back the hedge (hawthorn, elderberry and leylandii).

Annoyingly the drizzle (not forecast) that had been falling on and off all afternoon started to get heavier and I decided to call it a day. I picked some peas for tea and wet home. Since then we have had 2.5mm of rain (not forecast), which is not very welcome as I want the ground to dry out a bit more from the flooding.

Never happy with the weather, am I?

[Penellype]

Went down early today to tackle the weeds in the tunnel. this is becoming increasingly difficult, especially on the west side as the cucumbers and romanesco plants are getting very big. I concentrated on the centre section at the road end and removed every annual weed and carefully dug up all the horsetail shoots I could see among the brokali plants. I then mulched the brokali with some of the same compost that I used earlier for the leeks. Hopefully that will reduce the area I have to weed a bit more. I don't have a huge amount of mulch left and there is no point in spreading it too thinly, so I am going to concentrate on the plants that are staying put all winter (the PSB and the calabrese) next.

I dug out some more horsetail from other parts of the tunnel before running out of time.

I was back at lunchtime with some slug gone to put round the brokali, since I have covered up what was left of the original. I also picked a couple of courgettes, some french beans and all of the tomatoes that ere turning red as some were getting slug damaged. One of the Crimson Crush was huge - it weighs 11oz.

Before I went home I decided to harvest the bucket of Desiree potatoes as these were dying down. The bucket was very heavy, which I put down to the compost being wet. However, there were a lot of potatoes in there, and even though one large one had a lot of slug damage, there were 3.8kg of undamaged potatoes in the one bucket. This is very nearly but not quite as good as the weight per seed potato of the Lady C grown in the quadgrow planter, and rather better than the best bucket of Nicola from the allotment.

[Penellype]

Yesterday I went down to the plot after lunch and stayed a couple of hours. I cleared the annual weeds and horsetail from amongst the beetroot in the tunnel, so that the whole of the east side has been weeded recently.

Having done enough bending down I then decided to dig over the onion bed. This was still very wet (almost sloppy in places) but I thought that it would probably dry out a bit quicker if I aerated it a bit, removing horsetail roots as I went. I got it dug over, then harvested some tomatoes and peas and went home.

While I'd been digging I'd been talking to the next door plot holder's dad, who is looking after the allotment while his son is on holiday. Unlike his son, who has never had a garden, this guy is an experienced gardener. He'd brought a strimmer and strimmed the horsetail under the hedge, and was digging some of the dead horsetail that had been sprayed into the ground when I left.

I went to the plot this morning intending to weed more of the tunnel and hoping to be able to cut the grass although it was likely to be too wet from persistent drizzle. When I got to the plot I found that the guy next door had strimmed the horsetail field next to my plot and there were little bits of horsetail EVERYWHERE. It was all over the raspberry bed, the paths, and the onion bed that I had so carefully removed every scrap of horsetail from yesterday. The bits were tiny, like lawn mowings, and had travelled as far as the path between the 2 rows of beds. I dare say he thought he was doing me a favour by cutting it down, but I'd sort of expected he would be a bit more careful not to spray it everywhere, knowing how invasive it is.

There is no point in getting cross and upset about something you can't change. All I could do was abandon any thoughts of weeding the tunnel today and spend the next 90 minutes attempting damage limitation. I carefully picked up every little bit of leaf I could see on the raspberry bed, swept it up off the paths, and then started on the onion bed. The only good news was that it didn't appear to have penetrated the debris netting over the brassica bed, which is just as well because that bed had been dug and appears (touch wood) so far to be horsetail free.

The onion bed was a serious pain. The soil was wet and sticky so the bits stuck to it and the only way I could get them off was to gouge out small pieces of soil with my fingernails. It was also lumpy and uneven so the bits had fallen between the lumps and I had to virtually pick up every piece of soil and remove anything underneath it. I finished it in the end, but there will be loads of bits I have missed.

I didn't attempt to clear up the grass path, apart from removing a few big pieces. I think the mowings from that will have to go to the tip, although I don't know why I am being fussy as its got horsetail growing in it anyway.

I feel like I might as well just give up.

[geepee]

Although I 'Liked'your last post, I did'nt like the sound of the bit about giving up......Not the 'Pen' I know...I understand it must be Daunting......if I were a betting man I'd lay odds that you will be back tomorrow with Renewed vigor.....you've never been beaten yet.....dont give up now after coming so far.

Look at my Motto if it helps. Gp

[Penellype]

Thanks geepee, Yes, I'll be back tomorrow. I was just so fed up that I'd had to spend the time I could have used for weeding undoing something that shouldn't really have happened in the first place!

I honestly don't know if bits of horsetail leaf will grow or not, but I didn't want to find out the hard way that they do!

[Penellype]

So, having had a break yesterday afternoon, I was back at the allotment this morning. Next door had been back and strimmed the central part of the horsetail field, so it is now all strimmed. That meant more little bits had found their way onto my allotment. I picked up the big bits but hadn't the patience to go through it all with a fine toothcomb yet again.

Instead I decided to dig the path where the strawberries were, where horsetail was beginning to grow back. This would give me something visible to achieve - I find that sometimes this is more of a mind game than anything else. The soil at this end of the allotment is drying out to the point where it is nice to dig, and I dug the half between the beans and rhubarb before I ran out of time. I picked some peas, a cucumber and some tomatoes and went home.

After lunch I went back and dug the rest of the path, between the hotbed and the tomatoes. I decided to stop the tomatoes as they all have loads of large tomatoes and it is unlikely that any flowers forming now will ripen before frost or blight arrives. While I was doing this I found that one of the Oh Happy Day ones had pretty much pulled its stake out of the ground as it was so heavy. I put in a reinforcement which hopefully will take some of the pressure off the original stake.

After doing this I had a look at the grass, which had dried out as the sun had come out. I got the mower out and cut it, but I made sure that the clippings from the path near the next door allotment went in the horsetail trug, not the compost bin. Finally I pulled out the horsetail under the roadside hedge behind the bin near the bus stop, to finish that job.

I didn't get the weeding done in the tunnel, but I felt that I had made some sort of progress today. I harvested a leek and a turnip for tea. The turnips are a variety called Oasis, which I really like. They are supposed to taste like melon, but they don't as far as I can tell. However, they are much less turnipy than ordinary turnips, and make a nice addition to mixed veg - in this case a mixture of leeks, beans, peas and tomatoes. I sowed some more when I got home, which I hope will be ready to eat before winter.

[Penellype]

Yesterday's job was to attempt to tackle the annual weeds from the tunnel. This is harder than it sounds - I'd like to be able to hoe them off, but with horsetail in amongst, that is not an option.

I started with the PSB in the middle of the tunnel and picked out every seedling I could find, dug out the horsetail as best I could, then mulched them with some of the horse muck/leaf mould mix. These are making nice strong plants even though they are still covered in whitefly (as are the other brassicas in the tunnel). The west side was much harder as I can only get at it from one side, and most of the plants are now really big. Next time the answer to this has to be to mulch it as soon as I plant things. I got some of the weed out but there are plenty more. The pathways are covered with a huge number of very tiny seedlings. When I'd had enough of bending down I picked some tomatoes and went home for an early lunch.

Other parts of the plot (away from the raised beds and paths) are also growing large numbers of weeds. One area that I have had my eye on for a bit is the area outside the road end of the tunnel, where I have parked the blackcurrant and blueberry bushes in their pots. This had perennial flowers in it, and although the geraniums appear to have gone, there is another plant I don't recognise which hasn't been so easy to remove and was growing back quite strongly. I decided to dig this out, along with some horsetail. This was easier said than done, and took me over an hour. The plant has black creeping roots that look almost identical to horsetail - I'd have thought it was horsetail if it hadn't come up with leaves attached. It was making its way into the grass path and it was hard to see if I had got all of it out, but I dare say it will let me know if I haven't!

That was all I had time for, so after checking that everything had enough water and picking a few raspberries, I went home.

[Penellype]

No time for anything yesterday except grabbing a few beans and nipping male flowers and yet more sideshoots off the rampant cucumbers in the tunnel.

Today I wanted to get going early as it was forecast to be very showery. I was getting concerned about the number of annual weeds about the place, so I decided to have a blitz on them today. I started with the path between the compost bins and the tunnel - this has remained weed free for most of the summer apart from the odd bit of horsetail, but since the flood it has sprouted loads of weed seedlings, mainly sun spurge, grass and willowherb. I worked my way down the path with 2 trugs, one for annual weeds and one for horsetail, and got the whole thing weeded reasonably quickly. I could also lift the netting and weed the bit of the tunnel that is behind the plants on that side, which is so hard to get at from the inside of the tunnel. I then went round all the hedge bottoms pulling out horsetail and any annual weeds, removed some dead leaves from the rhubarb and pulled out some horsetail from under it and dug some large dandelions out of the grass path.

By the time I'd done that I was tired and in need of a coffee, so I picked 2 courgettes, some peas, raspberries and a beetroot and went home.

Looking at the radar I could see that I probably had an hour or so more of dry weather before things became increasingly dodgy. Thunder was in the forecast so I wanted to stay at home once the showers arrived. Therefore I went back as soon as I had finished my coffee (and checked work).

The next job was to trim all of the long bits of grass under the hedges, which I wanted to do before the horsetail grew again. That done, I went back to removing some more weeds and horsetail from around the tomatoes.

By the time I'd done that it was getting on for lunch time and the sky was becoming increasingly threatening, so I picked some tomatoes and a few lettuce leaves for lunch and went home feeling that I had got a decent amount done today and could reasonably spend the rest of the day doing bits in the garden at home in between the showers.

[Penellype]

Early start this morning. I weeded the strawberry pots and potted up the runners that had rooted into MFBs and pegged down some more into small pots to root. I then decided to dig the path down the side of the tunnel as some horsetail was starting to sprout. I got about half way down the side of the tunnel before I ran out of time.

I was back after lunch to finish the path - the bottom end was where I nearly got stuck in the mud after it was flooded. It was still remarkably wet in places, but hopefully turning the soil over will help it dry out a bit - although we are forecast rain tomorrow. I didn't find too much horsetail, but I am not going to get complacent about that! Having ended up at the raspberries, I then cut back some of the canes that had finished fruiting. About half of them have now finished, but there are still some fruit on the others.

The next job was to go round all of the raised beds pulling out all the horsetail I could find. This seems to be getting easier, which probably means the stuff is finally slowing down a bit rather than that I have got rid of any of it, as I have only been pulling at it, not digging it out. The onion bed is starting to sprout lots of tiny weed seedlings, and I am going to have to either hoe or dig it soon, and just hope that I am not digging in hundreds of little bits of horsetail from next door's strimming. I can't see any bits, but I won't have removed all of them.

I'm finally beginning to feel a bit more in control of this now. The hedges and hedge bottoms are tidy and have been weeded (except for the wildlife corner), the grass is cut and the raised beds are at least visually horsetail free. The strawberry bed and path by the tunnel have recently been dug and the rhubarb has been weeded. There is still horsetail in the tomato bed - I don't want to risk knocking the tomatoes off by trying to get it out. The tunnel is mostly weeded, with just the area under the romanesco and cucumbers to try to clear. The path by the compost bins is weeded, although there is some horsetail growing up through the weed matting into the compost.

So, still a few jobs to do, but I don't feel overwhelmed by horsetail quite so much now as I did.

[Penellype]

Another early start as it was clear from the radar picture first thing that the rain was not far away.

I started off by carefully pulling some of the horsetail I could reach out of the tomato bed, but the foliage was so thick that there was quite a lot in the middle that had to stay. I then tackled the weeds in the tunnel, digging out the horsetail I could get at and removing all the bigger annual weeds I could see. The huge romanesco made this quite difficult, and I noticed that one of the plants has quite a lot of caterpillar poo in the middle, but I couldn't find the culprit.

The nettles in the wildlife corner were getting too big and leaning over the path, so I cut them back a bit. By the time I had finished it was starting to rain so I picked a cucumber, some tomatoes and a turnip and went home.

The rest of the day was far too wet to do any more, so I made some jam out of strawberries from the plot that I froze earlier in the year.

[Penellype]

Yesterday, for the first time at the plot, I had to look for something to do! This was partly because everything was very wet after Sunday's rain.

I collected up the water from the bin lids etc and tipped it into the water butt, then walked round looking at everything. I pulled out a couple of bits of horsetail from the leylandii hedge and dug out a few little bits that had sprouted in the tunnel since Sunday morning. I still couldn't find the caterpillar that has made a mess of one of the romanesco plants.

One of the jobs I'd intended to do was remove the horsetail that was growing up inside the dalek that I am using to store what was fresh horse manure. Last time I looked (a while ago) there were several long white shoots showing and I have been intending to remove them. When I took the lid off there was quite a bit of horsetail, but it appeared to have been cooked and looked quite dead. I left it where it was for now rather than breaking it up by trying to pull at it. If it regrows I will know that it is only pretending to be dead!

The nettles that I cut back on Sunday were again leaning over the path, presumably because they had been weighed down by the rain. I cut some more off them but they were too wet to get really stuck in. I need to clear this area properly really as the bottom is full of horsetail. Its one of those jobs where it is hard to clear the horsetail first without getting stung, but if you try to clear the nettles first you get horsetail bits everywhere.

What else to do? I tied in some more raspberry canes that were flapping in the breeze and picked a beetroot, a couple of pods of peas, a few raspberries and all of the large beans from the runners. The ones that were clearly too big and tough went in the compost bin, but I still had a large bag full, and I can't eat that many beans. I'd just finished this when a lady who lives in one of the houses on the main road walked past and said hello. I asked if she liked beans but she said no. However one of the bus drivers was out on the pavement (its the terminus so they wait there for upto 10 minutes sometimes), so I gave him some instead, and went home for lunch.

After getting on with a few jobs at home, I took some kohlrabi plants down in the afternoon and planted them in the brassica bed. I also planted out 6 leeks that I had rescued from the original leek bed when I dug it up to make the brassica bed. I'd put these (almost invisibly small having been chewed to nothing by slugs) into a pot and stuck it on the shelf in the tunnel, and they had finally grown into plants that were big enough to plant out (but by no means pencil thick). I put them next to the brokali in the tunnel, and they can survive or not as they wish.

Its not that there is nothing to do. The plan for now was to dig over the onion bed again to remove horsetail roots. I just have a horrible feeling that if I do that I will simply dig in all the little bits of horsetail from the strimming and give myself an almighty problem later. I've left it for now (it is also too wet to dig) but something will have to be done at some point and I am rather at a loss as to how to tackle this situation. The same problem will arise with the bed next to it (the pea bed). The peas are nearly finished and the plan was to dig this bed too, as well as taking up the path between the 2 beds and making a really good job of removing every scrap of horsetail (of which there is plenty).

So do I dig these beds as planned, or do I wait - for what? If I do nothing I will have beds full of horsetail again next year. I am really stuck as to what the best plan of action is.

[bario1]

Horsetail, it really doesn't bother me or my crops. I pull it when it's big enough to get good bit of root out with it, that slows it down. It doesn't compete with much for nutrients or light, so I just live with it.

[Penellype]

I may have to live with it, but its not really my style. I think I will have to dig, because if I don't I will definitely have the same problem next year as I had this year, if I dig I might. Growth from little bits of leaf is probably easier to extract later than a huge network of interlinked roots a foot or more deep.