Penellype's Allotment

[Penellype]

For some reason I was lacking enthusiasm yesterday and it took me ages to get going. I took down 2 5 litre cans to store some water as the bins are getting quite full and more rain is forecast. They may as well be full at the plot as empty at home. I also took some more net bags (the sort fruit comes in) to support the melons. The intention was to harvest some raspberries, but by the time I got down there the wasps were out and I couldn't face it. I then wandered round aimlessly, pulling out the odd bit of horsetail from the raised beds, and nipping off a few tomato sideshoots, and I put away the pea supports which I hadn't had time to do on Sunday. Everything was still wet and I decided to go home and leave it all to dry.

The afternoon was marginally better, although it was nearly 2.30 by the time I got my act together. I spent most of the time in the tunnel, removing weed seedlings and bits of horsetail that seem to appear from nowhere. Then I harvested a kohlrabi (these have split, presumably because of the sudden influx of large amounts of water, and are now being attacked by slugs) and some french beans. I decided to pull a carrot from the tunnel to see how these were doing - they look great on top, but you can never tell with carrots. The one I pulled was nearly an inch across, about 6 inches long and with a nice, straight, undamaged root. This is far better than I expected and if they are all like that they will be superb when they have grown a bit more.

[Penellype]

A bit better yesterday. I went down early and cut some more finished branches off the raspberries, picking about a dozen undamaged fruit in the process. I also rearranged my metal dustbin, which had been housing 2 sacks of leaf mould. These have now considerably shrunk in size, so I moved them into the black dalek, which still contains the remains of the forced rhubarb, and used the metal bin (which is not watertight) to store some of my 5l bottles of water. I have 10 of these and 6 fitted in the dustbin, which is unfortunately not tall enough to stack bottles double height, but the 4 remaining ones can stay at the back of the shed for emergency use.

That done, which included a minor tidying of the shed and putting away nets, I tied up the tomato plants again then harvested a decent quantity of late peas and went home.

After lunch I went back down with the intention of cutting the grass and digging the horsetail out of the pea bed. I went round pulling all the horsetail I could see out of the grass paths then got the grass cut, which was a relief with the forecast rain as I could see them getting increasingly long and being unable to cut them with my little push mower which is not at all good with long or wet grass.

I'd noticed on my way down that the elderberries on the tree were starting to turn black. There are several reasons for cutting back the elderberry - I don't like being hit in the face by wet elderberry branches which seem to drop several feet when it rains, the tree drops ripe fruit everywhere which then grows in my pots, in the grass etc, and the wasps arrive in force to eat it. I therefore wanted to remove as much as possible before it ripens. So I abandoned digging in favour of an all-out attempt to cut back the elderberry. I got a lot done, but there are some high branches that still overhang my plot. However I have removed thousands of fruits and everything is now well above my head, so it must be a lot better than it was. I do feel guilty about this as we are supposed to be growing more trees not cutting them down, and the fruits would provide food for the birds, but the trees are huge and will soon grow again, and there is plenty of fruit on the bits I can't reach.

By the time I had finished that I'd had enough, so I picked some beans for tea and called it a day.

[Penellype]

Wednesday was a decent day after a bit of overnight rain - showers were forecast but we didn't get one. I collected the water then made the most of it by digging the pea bed, which took 2 sessions as it is about 2m square (including the path next to the hotbed). Quite a bit of horsetail came out, which was expected as it had been growing in the rows of peas where all I could do was break it off.

I covered most of the area with weed matting to keep the cats off and the annual weeds down, and the rest with a piece of mesh. I also had to cover the onion and potato beds with nets as the cats had found them and were using them as large litter trays and I had to remove the dirty deeds. I do detest cat poo - it stinks . This is a pain as I want to hoe the potato bed every couple of days as it has very weedy compost on it.

That done I went round trimming the long bits of grass that the mower can't reach and also cut back some brambles in the hedge, which seem to be growing several inches a day at the moment. I also pulled a few weeds and some horsetail from the hedge (again) - that is also growing at an enormous rate just now. Then I picked some beans, peas, gooseberries and blueberries and went home.

I was back later to water the melons, as they are under cover so don't get rained on. I also harvested some courgettes, leeks and a beetroot for my brother and more beans for my Mum.

Nothing doing yesterday as I was busy all day.

[Penellype]

I was expecting yesterday to be a complete write-off due to rain, strong winds and thunderstorms. It wasn't great, but not quite as bad as I feared.

The morning was wet, and although the radar implied the rain had stopped by about 10.30, in fact it carried on drizzling until around mid day. Then suddenly the sun came out and for an hour or so it was very pleasant. I went down and collected quite a bit of water, noting that there was standing water now in the wetter part of the plot, particularly alongside the fence end of the grass path between the path and raised beds.

I staked a couple of brokali plants that had got blown over, trimmed some more off the raspberries (finding 4 edible fruit) and picked some peas, beans and a couple of courgettes.

By the time I'd done this the sky was full of lumpy clouds and with thunderstorms forecast for the afternoon (with large amounts of CAPE and vertical shear making these likely), I didn't want to hang around. I went home where I could retreat indoors if necessary.

In fact there were some very hefty showers around later in the afternoon, but they mostly missed York, with thunderstorms moving to the north west and south east of us. That suited me just fine, and hopefully the excess water at the plot has had a chance to drain away.

[Penellype]

Not a particularly productive weekend, which I was expecting due to a poor weather forecast.

Saturday was rather unpleasant with quite a strong wind. I went down first thing to collect water form overnight rain, had a quick check that everything was ok, nipped off a couple of tomato sideshoots and watered the melons. I then harvested a beetroot, some blueberries and the rest of the gooseberries and took the jar of slugs to the stables, where I did the absolute minimum as it is more exposed than the allotment. One of the polytunnel covers was thrashing about and looked like it was going to take off (it didn't) and the runner beans were leaning at a precarious angle, which I tried to correct by tying their support to the pea fencing. That was it for the day as the wind got worse and showers arrived.

Sunday was much less windy and managed to stay dry. I spent the morning at the stables trying to catch up and a good couple of hours in the afternoon at the plot. There didn't seem to be any noticeable wind damage, probably because of the shelter from the trees to the west.

Most of the time was spent weeding and removing horsetail and I also hoed the potato bed again and thinned the parsnips as some were very close together. I had a good look at the melons to see if any more fruit needed supporting, but although there are large numbers of female flowers, some of which look like they will develop, I couldn't see any bigger ones that I had not already found. The growhouse is so full of foliage that it would not be at all surprising if I have missed some.

Last time I looked closely at the brassicas the undersides of the lowest leaves were covered in whitefly nymphs, and I decided I had better spray them with SMC oil. This is a job I hate doing and I have been putting it off. So when I looked at them again I was pleased to see that there were not many whitefly visible. Hopefully the problem has gone away by itself (unlikely), but I decided to leave spraying for the moment. I did find a silver Y moth caterpillar feasting on one of the PSB plants and removed it - these moths seem to be able to get around (probably under) netting and I have found large numbers in my carrot cage at home before now.

Finally I harvested peas, french beans and a couple of runner beans for tea.

Today is supposed to be dry and mostly sunny, so why am I sitting here writing all this? Well, its drizzling - the sort of drizzle that makes you very wet very quickly. From the radar this looks likely to continue for some time, so it will probably be afternoon before I get to the plot today.

[Penellype]

Yesterday was very disappointing. The drizzle stopped by about 11.00 and it looked like there wasn't any more coming, so I went down to the plot. The basic idea was to sow some winter salads in mushroom trays, but as with everything else involving containers, this meant some preparation.

The place for mushroom trays is the shelves in the tunnel, and last year my shelves made out of the blowaway shelving almost collapsed under the weight after rain. I therefore bought some stronger aluminium shelves, which have had strawberries on them, but there has been slug damage. I needed to add copper tape to the legs, as I do with the blowaway shelving. However, with aluminium it is not that simple, because copper reacts with aluminium when wet and causes it to corrode. My brother suggested putting duct tape on first and the copper tape on top of that, so that was job number one. However, I soon realized that I couldn't do this as things were. Although one of the shelves was clear of strawberry plants, it was still surrounded by them, and the plants had runners which were rooted in the soil. So the first job was to start cutting off the runners and moving pots and troughs of strawberries out of the tunnel. some still have flowers and developing fruit so those stayed where they were. I trimmed off a lot of runners so that there were "only" about 50 rooted runners left. I still have to work out where these are eventually going to go...

The big black trough and smaller balconniere trough of strawberry plants joined the other black trough and blackcurrant bush on the weed matting near the fence. All of these strawberry plants are Marshmello - a lovely variety that I've grown at home for years, but which hasn't done well this year at the plot. The ones in MFBs are an unknown variety potted up from the plot last year, and these have done rather better, but are not as nice tasting - these are the ones producing a 2nd crop. I've kept the rooting runners separate so I know which variety is which. I also took the gooseberry bush out of the tunnel and put it on the weed matting as I have now picked all the fruit. This is looking very sorry for itself and I am in two minds as to whether to keep it. Every time I moved anything I had to stop and pick up several slugs, so all this took quite a long time.

Finally I got to the point where I could extract the aluminium shelf without causing damage, and then I had the fiddly job of putting bands of duct tape and copper tape round the legs, which are pieces of right angled aluminium rather than the round poles of the blowaways which are dead easy to tape round. I had to be careful not to leave a gap in the angle where a slug could squeeze through. I think I have managed it - hopefully it will keep the wretched creatures off my salads.

Having done all that I had a quick walk round to pull out any horsetail shoots and I dug some up that were sprouting again in the path next to the tunnel. It was now lunchtime and I picked a cucumber and went home, intending to go back and spend a good chunk of the afternoon there.

By the time I had eaten my lunch it was raining - proper rain, not drizzle. A look at the radar showed that the previously small areas of blue had developed into a rash of showers and York was surrounded. There were brief drier intervals and a few glimpses of sunshine during which I managed to nip in the garden for a few minutes, but often even when it was sunny it was still raining. There was no chance of going back to the plot without getting very wet. It was 5pm before the showers moved away and I was finally able to go back and collect the water.

While I was there I had a look at the raspberries. There were 4 ripe fruit, one of which had wasp damage, 2 of which had beetle damage and the 3rd was edible but only just ripe. There were still some small green ones, but at a 75% attrition rate I decided they were not worth waiting for and I cut down the remaining old canes. I pulled out a few of the smaller new canes, and there are plenty more that need to come out, but my back really does not like this job so I have to do it in small doses.

[Penellype]

A better day weather-wise yesterday and I made good use of it.

I'd decided to sow 3 mushroom trays of winter salads - one of winter lettuce (Rouge D'Hiver and a Winter mix), one of oriental greens (a mixture of mizuna and namenia) and one of spinach. The idea is to eat these as baby leaf salads through the autumn, as attempts to grow salads over winter at the plot last year were almost a total failure. Last year I started the plants in the house and transplanted them into the mushroom trays, where they hardly grew at all before mostly going brown and rotting, hence the decision to try a different approach this year.

The first job was to take a half full bag of compost down in the car. That done I walked down and collected the water from overnight rain then sorted out 3 mushroom trays from the back of the shed and filled them with compost. As often happens I had underestimated the amount needed and had enough for only 2 and a half trays - I think these trays must hold about 10l each. I sowed the lettuce and oriental greens and went back home for more compost for the spinach. This is the same variety (Amazon) that I grow in the hotbed in spring, but I am not expecting it to make those huge leaves when sown close together in a little mushroom tray.

The next job was to check and harvest the crops, as it was possibly going to be showery later. The cucumbers have gone completely berserk since the weather cooled down. I have been eating them at a rate of 1 a day (sometimes from the plants at home), but a brief glance showed me that was not going to even scratch the surface. I picked 9 cucumbers, 8 of which went to the stables for my friends later, leaving about 6 that were nearly as big to take to my family later in the week. The runner beans were still a bit small, but there were plenty of french beans and a few peas, which are coming to the end of their cropping now. I also harvested a kohlrabi that had been damaged by slugs and some blueberries from the little new bush. These are very disappointing as they are only about the size of currants, and a lot of them had fallen off the bush in the wind. More fell easily as I touched the bush, most not completely ripe and almost all with about a millimetre of stalk attached, which is unusual for blueberries. This meant that every blueberry had to be picked over and de-stalked which was fiddly and tedious. I think the bush was suffering from lack of feed when I bought it (before the leaves opened) as it looked very yellow at first, but better after I fed it. The hot weather probably hasn't helped either. Once it has finished fruiting I will pot it up into a 30 litre bucket and hopefully next year it will do better.

By the time I had finished it was lunchtime. I checked the radar as there were several largish clouds forming, and saw there were showers about, but luckily they seemed on course to miss us, which they did. I went back to the plot after lunch and decided that as the forecast is mostly wet except for Thursday when I am unable to do much, I would cut the grass if at all possible. It was surprisingly reasonably dry, so I went round it with the mower, then set about weeding the tunnel as there were plenty of small seedlings growing. This is getting easier and I managed all of it in one session this time (although I didn't stop to dig out tiny bits of horsetail). While I was weeding I found and removed a large green caterpillar of unknown variety from one of the brokali plants. I also planted out the swedes which have been sitting in the tunnel waiting for space for far too long. These went in the place vacated by the strawberry trough. Hopefully they will recover now that they are in the soil, but I won't be too upset if they don't as swede is not one of the priorities.

Finally I went round and removed a few larger bits of horsetail from various places, but I was too tired of bending down to tackle the smaller stuff. I went home to mow the lawns instead.

[Penellype]

Yesterday was always going to be wet at times and it was a case of finding a time to do something useful between the showers. A managed an hour or so in the morning, but the afternoon was much more showery.

The main job was to deal with the hawthorn hedge as there was quite a bit of couch grass appearing as well as horsetail and some bindweed. I worked my way along, pulling as much as I could out with the aid of a hand fork. It will be back, no doubt. I need to do the west hedge too, but the weather was getting worse and my back had had enough so I called it a day. I harvested a couple of courgettes, a cucumber and a beetroot and went home.

This morning I nipped down first thing and collected the water from yesterday's rain, then gave the potato bed a quick hoe over and harvested some beans, cucumbers and a few blueberries. That's all that there will be time for today.

[Penellype]

Nothing doing today after a quick visit this morning. I harvested some peas and a cucumber for lunch and nipped a few long bits off the roadside hedge, but I didn't have much time before the rain set in for the day.

[Penellype]

Saturday was busy and I had little time to do anything other than collect the water from Friday's rain, pick up the jar of slugs for the chickens and harvest a cucumber and a beetroot for lunch and water the melons in the growhouse. It was raining again by the time I would have been able to do anything else.

Sunday was better. I collected more water first thing and harvested another cucumber for lunch. I went back in the afternoon and spent a good hour pulling horsetail and couch grass from under the west hedge and straightening the edge of the grass a bit. I didn't quite get time to finish this but I've reduced the couch grass (the main problem) to a small patch around the honesty plants which needs more care than I had time to give it.

Apart from nipping off a few nettle tops and some tomato sideshoots and harvesting beans and a couple of ripe (slightly slugged) strawberries for tea, that's all I got done.

The bean supports were moving a bit in the wind so I bashed in a post and tied a piece of string round the whole ting in the hope it might secure it (I very much doubt it though).

I was going to go back around 5pm to do a bit more and check if anything needed water, but some very heavy showers arrived and I ditched the idea very rapidly having got wet harvesting potatoes at home.

[Penellype]

Yesterday was mostly a decent day and I got quite a bit done. I collected the water from Sunday's showers then spent some time in the morning weeding and digging up horsetail from various parts of the plot and also re-staked one of the tomato plants in the hotbed as it was leaning at a fair angle due to the wind. The runner bean tripod is still standing. I then harvested a cucumber and some peas and went home for an early lunch while a band of showers passed over.

I was back in the afternoon and went round the grass areas removing dandelions which had seeded themselves. I also pulled up some of the horsetail and spent a while trying to remove some creeping buttercup from the path alongside the hawthorn hedge as this was trying to encroach on the beans. I got about half of it out, so more work is needed there. Then I watered the melons and tomatoes and checked everything else. The winter salads I sowed a few days ago have all germinated. Finally I picked some beans for tea and also some blueberries.

Today I wanted to get several jobs done at home (deadheading, mowing lawns etc) so I didn't get to the plot in the morning except a quick visit to pick the compulsory cucumber for lunch. I went back in the afternoon and spent about an hour weeding, hoeing the potato bed and constructing a better cover for the onion bed as the cat had still managed to poo in it. I harvested quite a large leek for tea - these are in the bed next to the onions that had white rot, but so far the leeks seem perfectly healthy.

As it had been sunny and breezy I watered both the hotbeds well. Everything else seems ok for today but I think I will need to start applying more water tomorrow unless we get more heavy showers.

[Penellype]

Quite a busy day yesterday but I did manage an hour or so at the plot in the morning. The plan had been to cut the grass, but after some overnight showers some of it was far too wet to cut. I decided I wanted to finish that patch of creeping buttercup, which as well as expanding rapidly was showing signs of producing flower buds.

My initial thoughts were that this was too big to attempt in one go, but I would shrink it from the edges, removing the spreading runners, rather than attack it from one end like I did before. The middle area of the patch was almost solid buttercup. I applied my usual tactic of ignoring the size of the whole job and concentrating on small areas, and I had soon made quite an impact. In fact I did get it finished, although I had had more than enough of bending down by the time it was done. Some bits of horsetail came out as well.

Apart from that, all I had time for was harvesting a cucumber, several courgettes and some runner beans.

[Penellype]

No time for gardening on Thursday, and I decided to take it easy yesterday as my back was rather sore. This was probably due to moving a very heavy hosta pot on Wednesday.

One job I did want to get done was cutting the grass as it was getting a bit long. I got this done in the morning, but it was a frustrating job as the council had cut the roadside hedge and sprayed bits of woody hawthorn quite widely over the plot. My little mower can't cope with these and even though I walked round first removing what I could see, it was a case of mow a foot or 2 then stop and unjam the blade. Obviously this took some time, and I was thoroughly fed up of it by the time I'd finished. I harvested a cucumber and went home.

I went back in the evening to water and also pulled out a few pieces of horsetail from among the rhubarb. Another job that has been crying out for attention is thinning the new raspberry canes. You are supposed to pull the excess ones out, but this hurts my back at the best of times so I decided that rather than leave them I would simply cut them off at ground level. I also tied in some of the stronger canes. More needs to be done to finish this, but at least I have made a start.

[Penellype]

The weekend was too hot for me to get as much done as I would have liked.

On Saturday I went down to the plot fairly early and finished cutting down the excess canes and tying in the remainder to form a nice, neat row. I took a cucumber home for lunch and went to the stables to do my friend's garden.

The onion bed was annoying me as it was empty and covered with a net and therefore ought to be growing something. I decided to grow some baby veg, and use them to test the effectiveness of the copper mesh I'd got earlier in the summer - this did seem to help with the runner beans. I divided the bed in half and pegged down mesh around half of it. I then sowed a row each of florence fennel, carrots and kohlrabi inside the mesh and another row of each at the other end of the bed. I would have liked to include leeks, but as this was the bed that had onions with white rot in I didn't think that was a good idea. sprinkled Slug Gone pellets over both seedbeds. On past performance I expect the seeds to germinate and the ones at the end without the copper to disappear very quickly. It is what happens to the others that will be interesting.

Having done that I decided it was too hot to do anything useful so I watered all the pots, tomatoes and melons and took some beans home for tea.

Sunday was even hotter. I went down first thing to collect the jar of slugs and snails for the chickens, which I had forgotten on Saturday and took some nets down to support a couple of small melons that were in need. One of these was at the front of the growhouse resting on the bed so I wanted to lift it up before it got eaten. While moving the foliage to get the net around it I found a much larger one buried in the middle of the growhouse and also lying on the bed. There was no way I could support this off the floor and as it was nearly 6 inches long I decided to cut it and bring it home to ripen.

After lunch I went back with some feed for the tomatoes as they were starting to look in need. I'd been intending to cut the long bits of grass that the mower can't reach. I got about half way round the edges pulling out horsetail in preparation before deciding that as all of it was in the sun this was not a good idea.

The only place that was in the shade was the road side of the hawthorn hedge, and now that it has been cut there is slightly more access to the underneath. The horsetail has been growing back and annoying me, so I decided to get on with removing it, which took some time. There was also some bindweed which I did my best to disentangle from the hedge. Altogether about a trug full of weed tops came out.

After that I gave all the pots and raised beds a good drink of water and harvested some blueberries, including a few of the Pink Lemonade which are finally ripening, and yet more beans.

[Penellype]

Another blazing hot day (the 2 local weather stations are currently showing 30.4 and 31.9 degrees and Linton On Ouse, usually a degree or 2 cooler than here, is currently 28). No point in expecting miracles at those temperatures.

I walked down mid morning to collect a beetroot and 2 small (5 inch) cucumbers for lunch. As I expected after a heavy dew, the long bits of grass were too wet to cut. The next door plot holder has sprayed his weeds with weedkiller over the weekend and some of it has encroached a bit on my grass, which is going yellow along the edge. At least I know its not clopyralid as that does not kill grass.

I went back mid afternoon, when the fence end and the compost area of the plot were in shade. I cut the long bits of grass in these areas, then had a 10 minute sit in the shade before tackling the bits that were in the sun. I still need to do the edges that border the raised beds, but I'd had quite enough of that for today.

I then went round watering everything, and while I did so I noticed that one of the PSB plants in the tunnel was being chewed. Investigation produced 6 large cabbage white caterpillars - I have no idea how these have got in as I haven't seen a butterfly inside the tunnel and the plant was a good foot from the netting. I will have to keep a close eye on the brassicas in case I have missed any. I also found that the calabrese plant I had planted in the tunnel expecting nothing as it seemed to have no central bud has produced a head about tennis ball size, which I will be eating soon.

The cucumbers, which had a short break in production recently, have more than doubled their efforts now. Having already harvested 2 for lunch today I decided to count all the fruits that were more than about 3 inches long. I got lost at 34 (on 2 plants)! Normally these produce 1 fruit per leaf section of stem (some of which sometimes drop off), but there are bunches of 2 or 3 fruits per leaf in places. I've never seen anything like it.