Penellype's Allotment

[Penellype]

Yesterday morning was lovely and sunny. I went down to the plot mid morning and collected a load of leaves (the tunnel makes an excellent leaf catching screen). I then pulled out some weeds in the tunnel.

The ground was very wet at the hedge end of the plot, but the top end wasn't too bad so I decided to try digging the bean bed. I soon found that the very bright low sun was a much bigger problem than the wet - I simply couldn't distinguish the black horsetail roots from the black soil with the sun shining in my eyes. I met this before when trying to dig in the evening in the summer. I harvested some lettuce leaves and a couple of small beetroot and went home.

I went back after lunch and as I expected the sun had moved round behind the houses and it was much easier to see. I dug about half of the bed before it became clear that we were going to have a heavy shower shortly. I cut some calabrese and pulled a medium sized parsnip for tea, and went home.

[Penellype]

Yesterday I did 2 sessions at the plot, morning and afternoon, and finished the first dig of the bean bed area (but not the path). I also removed quite a few dead rhubarb leaves - there are still a few more but hopefully soon I will be able to lift one of the plants for forcing next spring.

Today I was quite pushed for time, but I did manage a session digging this afternoon. I dug over most of the bean bed again, removing more horsetail roots.

I decided to take the cover off the lettuces as it is so warm, and put it to dry in the wood shed. The plants should be fine outside for now and I will move them into the tunnel before it turns cold so that they have a little protection.

One of the Romanesco plants is finally forming a flower head, which is currently about an inch across. There are also flower heads forming on the brokali (expected) and PSB (which shouldn't flower until spring). Hmm. I hope these are not going to be full of aphids like the calabrese.

[Penellype]

No time for gardening at all on Thursday. As often seems to happen, it was the best day of the week weather-wise.

Yesterday was a dull, damp and murky day, not at all conducive to enthusiasm for anything very much. Despite the insistence from forecasts and radar pictures that it was dry, there was a very fine drizzle that made everything wet. By 11am I had got sick of waiting for it to stop and went to the allotment anyway.

For a change of scenery I decided to dig the area of the tunnel where the cucumbers and summer leeks had been - I forgot to mention in my last post that the plant I had left with 2 small cucumbers on it had died. I found that one of the little cucumbers was actually big enough to be edible when I removed the plant. Apart from a few small stray tree roots digging this area was much easier than the digging I had been doing earlier in the week as it had been dug several times before the crops were planted. I removed several fairly large pieces of horsetail root and spread out the compost from the bottomless pots that the cucumbers had been in.

Next I moved the shelves and lettuces back in to the tunnel and put away the frame for the plastic tunnel. I can always put this back if it turns really cold. I cleared up a few leaves and weeded the raspberry bed, but my enthusiasm for this was very limited once my gloves got wet. I harvested the last Warpath lettuce (these have been superb) and a couple of spinach thinnings and went home.

As is probably apparent from my posts, I'm quite busy with other stuff at the moment - basically catching up with things that I "should" have done earlier in the year. I didn't get back to the plot in the afternoon.

[Penellype]

Very little got done over the weekend - mucking out the horses and doing my friend's garden in the mornings took up most of the available gardening time and a lot of my energy. There was no time at all for the allotment on Saturday and on Sunday I managed one visit, when I cleared up quite a lot of leaves, removed dead leaves from the brassicas in the tunnel and dug some of the bean bed again.

The forecast from tomorrow is looking increasingly wet, so today might be the last opportunity to dig for a while - work permitting, of course.

[Penellype]

The forecasts for yesterday had consistently shown a dry day, so I was disappointed to find that the morning forecast was for showers in the afternoon. Even that was wrong.

After the usual Monday morning work meeting I went down to the allotment knowing from the radar that I was likely to get a little wet. I wanted to at least make a start on digging the path between the pea and bean beds. This hasn't been dug at all and is very compacted and full of horsetail, and I'd hoped that the lack of bright sunlight would be helpful. It was, but I'd only done about 10 minutes before it started to rain. I carried on digging, telling myself it was only a light shower and would soon pass, but it got wetter and wetter so I abandoned ship, harvested some lettuce and went shopping instead. As soon as I got to the shops the sun came out...

After lunch I went back and did a bit more, but once again I'd only cleared a few leaves and done a few minutes digging when it started to rain. It was also colder than the morning, my back had had enough and I was not enjoying it, so I decided that it was time to call it a day. After all, this is supposed to be fun!

Today looks wet and tomorrow looks wetter so it remains to be seen how much more I can get done this week.

[Snadger]

Still think I would rather be gardening than shopping!

[Penellype]

Still think I would rather be gardening than shopping!

Unfortunately I have no option if I want to eat!

[burnie]

The joys of raised beds, no heavy digging, though I used to enjoy doing it when I was younger.

[Penellype]

The joys of raised beds, no heavy digging, though I used to enjoy doing it when I was younger.

The plan is to end up with no digging to do in the majority of the allotment, but I expect it to realistically be another couple of years before that becomes a reality. I may be being optimistic - I haven't had to deal with this amount of horsetail before. I do enjoy the digging, but my back and sometimes my stomach muscles do protest sometimes and a few days off due to rain is not all that unwelcome.

I haven't been down to the plot at all today, as it has been very showery, cold and windy.

[Penellype]

It rained on and off most of yesterday morning, but by lunchtime it had cleared. I went down to the plot after lunch expecting everywhere to be very wet as parts of my garden paths were under water. It wasn't as bad as I expected, although the parts I have dug were very wet and sloppy and the grass at the hedge end was rather squelchy.

I cleared up the raspberry leaves that had blown off in yesterday's wind, but there weren't that many from the trees - these are on the west side and the wind was from the east, so they have blown into the garden the other side of the hedge.

That done, I wandered round looking for something sensible to do. I dug up some bluebell bulbs that were showing their new leaves near the rhubarb and planted them under the hedge. I've had bluebells in a veg garden before and they are a pain, and quite hard to remove. Most of the leaves had died down on the rhubarb, so I put them in the compost bin. The rhubarb is on a ridge and at the highest part of the allotment, and I don't need 3 huge plants. They are also, inevitably, infested with horsetail. The plan has always been to gradually remove them, and the first stage of this is to dig up the one nearest the tunnel, split it and grow some pieces for forcing in the spring. This can be done in November once the leaves have died down, so I decided to have a go.

As I had hoped, the ground here wasn't too wet and digging was possible. However, I was soon wondering if I was ever going to get the thing out - it was a very large plant and my efforts to dig it up in one piece with the fork seemed more likely to result in a bent fork and a sore back than anything else. I changed tactics ant tried chopping it up, and I found that although the roots were in places as thick as my arm, they broke reasonably easily and I could then pull it out in pieces. I potted up the 3 best pieces, with a decent bud and a reasonable amount of root, into a 30 litre bucket. Whether it will survive this treatment and grow remains to be seen, but I still have the other 2 plants so it doesn't matter if it dies.

By the time I'd done this I had had enough. There are still plenty of pieces of root in the soil, along with the usual tangle of horsetail, so this will need much more digging. I've 2 large trugs of roots (plus another 2 of horsetail), so a trip to the tip will be on the agenda for Friday. I also have to find something to cover the bucket with to force the rhubarb - I have my eye on the black dalek (currently full of chopped leylandii) for this. Some of the leylandii is going to be used as a mulch for the raspberries once they have finished losing their leaves, but I will need to find another home for the rest, or find something else to cover the rhubarb with.

[Penellype]

No gardening time on Thursday.

Yesterday I wanted to go to the tip to free up my trugs, all but one of which were full. I dug over the area where the rhubarb was again and removed quite a few more roots (rhubarb and horsetail), then took the lot to the tip. That took up most of the morning. When I returned with the trugs I harvested a beetroot for lunch.

I went back in the afternoon and cleared up a load of leaves from the paths round the raised beds, removing any weeds I could find as well.

This weekend is very busy and I won't have time for any gardening tomorrow. I had a few minutes this morning so I went down and picked up all the fallen raspberry leaves, hunted down a few slugs and picked some lettuce for lunch.

[Penellype]

Sunday was always going to be a non-starter as I went to a family party. As it happened, despite a dry forecast, it rained almost all day.

Yesterday was better weather-wise, but I had to stay in all morning while I had a filter fitted to my boiler. This coincided with a job I had to do for work which took most of the day, but I did manage to get to the plot for about half an hour in the afternoon. I spent the time picking up fallen raspberry leaves (plenty more to come down), clearing up dead brassica leaves and digging over the area where the rhubarb was again. Several more large roots came out along with some horsetail.

I'm hoping to get a bit more digging done today before the wet weather arrives tonight, but its quite frosty at the moment. I'm expecting most of the rest of the week to be a washout.

[Penellype]

Having given things a couple of hours to "warm up" yesterday (the local weather station said 3 degrees) I put on my overtrousers, coat, woolly hat and gloves and went to the allotment. It is a measure of how cold it was that the only thing I removed while I was there was the hat, and only because it kept falling off.

Today's job was to finish the first dig of the path between the pea and bean beds, which I started last week. Being hard, compacted soil, this was hard work and about 40 minutes of it warmed me up slightly. By this point I had dug about half of it and removed about half a bucketful of horsetail roots. My back was starting to protest, so having picked up the fallen raspberry leaves I went home for a rest.

After lunch, with the band of heavy rain making steady progress in this direction and the temperature having risen to a balmy 6 degrees, I went back to finish the job. I really did want to get this done, as it was the last bit of the eastern half of the raised bed area that had not been dug at all. I'm fairly sure that after this week's rain digging horsetail will be off the menu for a while.

I got it done in about 30 minutes, removing another half bucketful of horsetail roots and reaching the end of the raised bed. The central path area will have to wait as my back had had more than enough and the rain clouds were gathering in earnest. I relaid the weed matting on the path and secured it so it doesn't blow about, picked up yet more raspberry leaves (hopefully the wind in the next few days will bring the rest down) and went home.

Most of the areas I have dug will need more digging before the raised beds are refilled, but at least I have made a start on a lot of it. There are 2 beds that have not yet been touched - the parsnip bed (still occupied) and the hotbed (needs emptying into other beds), plus quite a bit of the paths. The next stage will be to empty the contents out of the hotbed, probably into the pea bed temporarily, and dig that. This will also allow me to peel back the central path as far down as the parsnip bed (the edges of the raised beds cover the matting on this path, which has prevented me digging it), and hopefully I can seriously reduce the amount of horsetail in this as well. The timing of all this will depend a great deal on the weather, but I need to get the top end done by February at the latest as I want to build a new hotbed then, preferably 2.

[Penellype]

As predicted the weather was pretty vile yesterday. I managed a brief trip down around lunchtime when there was a gap in the showers, but all I did was pick up more raspberry leaves.

No time for gardening today, but hopefully the weather will have improved a bit by tomorrow.

[Penellype]

Yesterday morning started fine and sunny, and typically I couldn't really use it. I had the vet coming to one of the horses first thing (routine visit), and then the man who paints the fence had rung on Thursday evening to say it looked a decent day to get the job done, and I couldn't do anything but agree.

The fence is an annual job which is becoming more and more expensive. The back fence is about 15 metres and the front one 5 metres (both sides to do) and there is also the trellis and archway in the back garden. I can paint, but I hate doing it and it would take me a long time, so I get someone in. The water-based paint looks nice for a few months, then seems to wash off, particularly on the top surfaces, and moving everything every year is a pain. So I was interested to see an advert for some paint that is supposed to last "upto" 5 years. Its more expensive (about 50% more per tin) but if it lasts 2 years it will have more than paid for itself in labour costs and convenience, so I decided to try it. I was therefore far from amused when the forecast completely dry day turned distinctly showery by lunchtime. Hopefully most of the paint will stay put.

The showers cleared a bit in the afternoon and the painting was finished so I went to the allotment for about an hour. I cleared up more fallen raspberry leaves (still loads left) and attempted to dig the bean bed. I soon gave up with this as I could hear the fork squelching as I lifted the soil. I decided to do the tomato bed next to the rhubarb instead. This is a bit higher up and was drier and easier to dig as it has been done several times. I removed a fairly small number of pieces of horsetail, enough to make the job worthwhile.

After that I cut a few calabrese shoots for tea (some were still full of aphids) and went home.