Penellype's Allotment

[Penellype]

I boil them before I eat them, but when I drain them there are aphids in the water. They are also sometimes some stuck between the flower buds, which I don't care for on my plate!

[Penellype]

The weather today was unpleasantly windy and wet at times, but there was not as much rain as expected. I managed a quick trip to the plot in the morning to harvest a lettuce and a cucumber for lunch, but other than that I stayed at home and got on with some much needed housework.

[Penellype]

Another horribly windy day today, although the rain mostly stayed away. I went down to the plot fairly early, avoiding the worst of the wind, to collect the rain water and harvest a beetroot. I was going to pick the tomatoes as well, but they were very wet and I decided to let them dry off and come back later to pick them.

When the wind had moderated a bit I went out in the garden at home and noticed a patch of blight on the stem of one of the Shirley tomatoes in the growhouse. I cut the plant down and having washed my hands, decided to go and check the plants at the allotment. As I went out of the back door there was a really strange smell, and looking around I saw a large column of thick black smoke to the south. I suspected there had been a crash on the ring road resulting in a fire. Walking down to the plot the extent of the smoke became clearer - the plume was blowing over the village and my house (and allotment) were clearly on the edge of it. I had a cursory look at the tomatoes and couldn't see any blight, and I picked a bagful that were turning red. On my way out a bus had pulled up at the bus stop and the driver told me the B&M store on the ring road was on fire https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-englan...shire-45852357. I hurried home, not wanting to inhale any more of the smoke than absolutely necessary.

Tomorrow is now forecast to be comprehensively wet. I may not get to the plot at all if the forecast is correct.

[Penellype]

As expected yesterday was pretty much a write-off. I did get down to the plot briefly in the evening after it had stopped raining, mainly to check the tomatoes again (no sign of blight so far) and collect up any slugs and snails (several).

I also tipped the water collected in the various containers into the water butts and bins, which are now completely full. I doubt I need to worry much about water there now until next spring/summer.

[Penellype]

Today was pretty damp, with light rain on and off all day. I managed a short stint at the allotment in the morning, collecting slugs and snails, checking the tomatoes (still no sign of blight) and doing a little clearing of leaves and cutting back nettles. Everything was very wet and as my gloves soon got saturated I decided that it would be better to wait for drier weather. I picked a small cucumber and a lettuce and went home.

[Penellype]

Somewhat better weather today, and more productive as a result. I went down in the morning, taking with me a sprayer with a solution of "SMC oil" which is a bit like neem oil and is for controlling things like red spider mite and aphids. I've used this successfully on aphids on carrot foliage at home. I wanted to see if it would work on the whitefly as there are ridiculous numbers of them. I found a leaf of romanesco that I could easily identify again, and sprayed the colony on there. I will check it tomorrow and if it looks to be working I will spray more leaves.

That done, I set about weeding the raspberries and brassica bed. There were quite a few small weeds, presumably germinating because of the warm and damp conditions over the weekend. I made quite a bit of progress before my knees had had enough of crouching down, so I got my leaf rake out and raked up the leaves behind the compost bin to make leaf mould. In hindsight this was an error because what I ended up with was a pile of a mixture of leaves, twigs and creeping grass (complete with roots). While I don't mind a few twigs in the leaf mould, I don't particularly want it full of extremely invasive creeping fescue! I won't do that again in a hurry, and it is going to take me a while to sort the mess out. I picked out some of the leaves and put them in a sack, then picked a couple of little cucumbers and 7 ripening tomatoes and went home for lunch.

In the afternoon I decided to ignore the pile of raked up stuff and do a bit more weeding. I weeded along the path where the strawberries used to be, then when I got to the end of it I decided to have a look at the grass edging near the rhubarb. I want to edge the grass path, and ideally I would put 2 raised beds in the gap between the hotbed and the grass, but frustratingly there is only 8ft of space, and in order to use raised beds the same size as the ones I have I'd need 10ft. I might be able to put a couple the other way round, but they are 2m (about 6ft 7in) long, which would leave a narrow path, and the grass path is not straight, mainly because the hedge is not straight, so the bit near the tunnel is less than 8ft...

I decided to try to straighten the hedge a bit by cutting it back. This wasn't particularly easy, and I don't think it is going to give me enough room because I have to leave some leeway for new growth anyway. I don't want to make the grass path too narrow. I think I will probably leave this area as basically just bare soil to plant into rather than as raised beds. The current position of the rhubarb makes it difficult to do anything permanent with it anyway. I did put in one piece of edging, across the corner, but decided to leave the rest for later.

Finally I harvested the last 2 summer leeks and a turnip for tea and took the jar of slugs and snails, which had been added to considerably during the day, home with me for the chickens.

[Penellype]

Somewhat frustrating yesterday.

Basically I want to get on with the digging while the weather is nice, and yesterday it was ideal, except that the soil is completely saturated from about 3 inches down. I was hoping it would have drained more than that, but my only option is to wait until it dries out a bit. I did have a quick poke at the pea bed in the afternoon and removed a few bits of horsetail, but it wasn't a proper dig, more like a rather deep hoe. Something that concerns me a bit is that if it is like this with a row of 12ft high trees nearby, is it going to turn into a bog when the trees are no longer sucking up the moisture? I'll just have to wait and see.

In the tunnel, inspection of the leaf I sprayed with SMC oil showed a large patch that was completely clear of whitefly. I cleared up all the debris of dead brassica leaves around the bottoms of the plants (they seem to shed at least 1 leaf a week if not more), then went round the brokali, PSB, calabrese and romanesco spraying the undersides of the leaves where the whitefly were congregating. The air was thick with the things as they flew off when the leaves were disturbed. Hopefully this will have some effect , but I suspect I will have to repeat the process at least once more. There are huge numbers of whitefly everywhere, not just in the tunnel - they are quite noticeable flying around outside.

I dealt with the pile of leaves etc that I raked up on Tuesday by pulling out as much of the rooted grass and larger pieces of twig as I could and putting the rest in the compost bin.

One of the things that has been causing a slight problem is the buckets of potato compost. The last 4 of these have been sitting on the potato bed since they were harvested, as I was going to put them alongside the hedge while I dug the bed, but that's no good now until the hedge is removed. I want to get that bed dug soon, so I spent some time making space for them in the compost area. When I first got the plot I used some green mesh fencing to make bays to put all the compost and leylandii debris in. As I've sorted out the various compost bins and shredded the leylandii the need for a fence around this area has gone. I therefore spent some time taking it down. Cable ties are great for attaching things but not so easy to undo, and I hate wasting things I could reuse. I managed to undo all but 2 of them using the point of a nail and with a good deal of swearing. With the mesh out of the way I could then rearrange the buckets to fit.

Other than that I also harvested a huge beetroot from the hotbed for my friend, and another 7 beefsteak sized tomatoes.

[Penellype]

After a no-play day yesterday I was keen to get on with things today.

Firstly I was keen to see what had happened to the whitefly in the tunnel. I wasn't hopeful that the spray had worked, as I could see that the leaves of the brassicas were still covered in whitefly. It wasn't until I got into the tunnel and disturbed the leaves that I realized that they were in fact dead whitefly. There were some that were still alive and flew off when I disturbed them, but nothing like the clouds of them on Wednesday. This was actually quite spectacularly different. I will leave it a bit longer to work its magic, then assess whether I need to spray again sometime next week.

The next thing was to test whether the ground was dry enough to dig over the tomato bed again. It was, so I did that and removed some more of the horsetail roots.

I then spent some time tidying up the strawberry plants, which are currently in MFBs and pegging down some more runners. I started off with 8 young runners that I saved from the original plants. These have now multiplied so that with the runners I pegged down today I now have 26 plants. These can stay in the MFBs for next year while I decide where to put them. Some of the older plants have flowers and green fruit on them but I am not hopeful that anything will ripen now.

By the time I had done that and pulled out a few weeds it was lunchtime so I harvested a lettuce and 2 small cucumbers and went home.

Having had a rest over lunch I was back in the afternoon, tackling the potato bed. I moved the wooden edging to the pea bed and scraped off the rotting horse muck and put it in the metal dustbin. I then peeled back the path between where the potato bed had been and the raspberries and started digging. As usual this was very compacted and contained a lot of horsetail root, and it took me a good hour to do just the path. I will continue with this over the weekend.

Finally I cut some calabrese spears and took them home for tea - some had aphids in and others didn't so I did at least get something to eat.

[Penellype]

Saturdays are always much busier than I expect them to be. The only chance I got to go to the allotment today was first thing this morning. The focus was all on digging the potato bed, which I managed to do before I ran out of time. As with all of the beds, I will need to repeat the process several times, but at least I have made a start and removed about a bucketful of horsetail roots.

I also harvested 2 small cucumbers and a baby courgette.

[Penellype]

Another early start today, and again I dug over the potato bed, removing another 1/2 a bucketful of horsetail roots. I took home a lettuce and a small cucumber for lunch, and the jar of slugs for the chickens.

After lunch I went back and dug over the path area between the potato bed and the raspberries again so that I could put the path back down. This area had been dug before I planted the raspberries and although some horsetail roots came up there wasn't as much of it as came out of the potato bed. I also peeled back the central path that goes between the potato bed and the brassica bed and dug that for the first time. Quite a bit of root came out of there. The central path is going to be tricky to do as the edges of the weed matting are under the raised beds, which seemed a good idea when I put it down but means that the beds that still have things in create a problem. I'll just have to do the best I can with it.

Having got that far my back had had enough of digging so I decided to cut the grass, as some of it was getting quite long again. Then I picked the last baby courgette and another 16 ripening beefsteak tomatoes (!) and went home.

[Penellype]

More digging yesterday morning, but not as much as I would have liked to get done as my back had had enough. I got the potato bed dug over again but not the path between it and the parsnip bed, which is what I had planned to do. I took a small cucumber home with me - I keep thinking I am getting to the end of these, then finding another one buried under all the foliage.

I went back for a bit in the afternoon and cleared up a few leaves, pulled out some weeds and harvested a leek from the tunnel for tea. These (Northern Lights) are probably the biggest leeks I have ever grown, about an inch in diameter and still growing.

[Penellype]

Yet more digging yesterday. In the morning I dug as much of the path between the potato and parsnip beds as I could (some of the weed matting is trapped under the parsnip bed). As usual the path was very compacted and a lot of root came out. I'd had enough by the time I'd finished that, so I harvested a lettuce and a small cucumber and went home for lunch.

I've now eaten one of the 2 mushroom trays of 6 Warpath lettuces, so when I went back in the afternoon I refreshed the compost with some bfb and planted the 6 Rouge D'Hiver seedlings into the tray. Hopefully these will have time to get comfortable before the cold arrives at the end of the week.

With that in mind, I dug over the tomato bed again (much easier than the path) and removed a few stray bits of horsetail root, then put 2 layers of the raised bed edges round it, carefully making sure that they didn't overlap the weed matting on the paths. This puts the bed rather nearer the tunnel than before, but I can still get past and I can always move it if I need to. Rather than filling the bed with compost, I covered (most of) the soil with a spare piece of weed matting cut from the path along the other side of the tunnel. It was not quite 2m long, but will do the job. I then put up the frame of one of the Outsunny tunnels around the bed. I decided to put the cover on later rather than battling with it in the wind. The plan is to move some of the shelves with lettuces on into this bed to give them a bit more protection. I won't have room for all of them, but it will be interesting to see any difference between performance in the plastic cover and the bigger net tunnel.

Finally I cleared up some leaves, then went round the tunnel with the SMC oil spray, spraying the whitefly again. There were quite a lot of them, presumably some of which had hatched from the nymphs I had missed last time. I'm likely to have to repeat this several times, I think.

[Penellype]

Another glorious sunny day, very hard to believe that it is going to be much colder soon.

In the morning I put the cover on the frame over the raised bed and moved some of the lettuces into it. This took longer than it sounds as the cover is a very tight fit and I didn't want to tear it. I also had to weigh it down around the edges so that it doesn't blow away.

Having done that I dug over the potato bed again, removing more horsetail roots, then harvested a small cucumber and a beetroot for lunch.

In the afternoon I cleared up some more leaves that had blown down last night, and trimmed the long bits of grass that the mower can't reach.

[Penellype]

No gardening on Thursday, which was a shame as it was another lovely day.

Yesterday was colder but dry and I went down mid-morning to open the plastic cover over the lettuces so they didn't get too hot in the sun.

The pea bed was starting to grow a few annual weeds, so I dug it over quickly and found only a couple of pieces of horsetail root. The soil is still very wet a few inches down. This bed is probably now "finished" for now, and is waiting to accommodate the filling from the bean bed next door, which has not yet been dug and currently contains nasturtiums and a couple of florence fennel plants which I will harvest as baby fennel soon.

I cleared up a few more leaves and pulled out a couple of weeds around the tunnel, then picked a small cucumber (not many of these left now) and 6 large tomatoes that were turning red, and went home.

It got colder through the day, and by tea time was perishing in the wind. I went down and closed the plastic cover over the lettuces and had a quick look round. I think the Romanesco may finally be considering forming flower heads, but I'm not certain yet. Considering this is supposed to happen in September - October, they are cutting it rather fine!

[Penellype]

A miserable, cold and often wet weekend, starting with surprisingly heavy snow on Saturday morning which settled enough to make the lawn white before thawing as fast as it arrived.

I didn't visit the plot at all on Saturday - it was very showery, cold and windy and most unpleasant to be out in. I did the bare minimum at the stables and spent the time freezing tomatoes and mashed potato.

Today was slightly warmer and sunnier so I walked down in the morning to open the cloche over the lettuces so they could have a bit of fresh air. I collected a lettuce and a small cucumber for lunch - the cucumbers just keep coming, although the plants are looking very unhappy now. I also picked up the jar of slugs for the chickens.

I went back briefly in the afternoon and cleared up the fallen leaves from the raspberries. I like to remove these as soon as they fall as they can harbour raspberry beetle and I'd rather they didn't. I meticulously removed every damaged fruit earlier in the year for the same reason.

After a quick look round I decided it was too cold to stay, shut the cover over the lettuces, cut some calabrese for tea and retreated to the warmth of the kitchen to make tomato soup.