Penellype's Allotment

[Snadger]

Yesterday was very frustrating. It rained most of the morning and I had one of those lovely appointments where the person coming says they will arrive between 12 and 2, but they actually turn up at 1/4 past 2. By the time we had finished it was nearly 3pm. I went down and collected the rain water (surprisingly large amounts given the forecast of very little) and picked some beans, a small head of calabrese that was being attacked by woodlice, a couple of tomatoes, 3 strawberries and a few pink blueberries. That was all I had time for.

I went back in the evening when the sun was off the plot and watered all the soil areas with nemaslug (I also did the garden at home). Hopefully these will have time to soak in over night before the surface dries out again.

I haven't used Nemaslug before but wonder once applied is it self perpetuating and the land only needs doing once?

[Penellype]

I haven't used Nemaslug before but wonder once applied is it self perpetuating and the land only needs doing once?

Unfortunately not. The packet says it treats the area for upto 6 weeks. In practise it depends a lot on weather conditions - the nematodes are quite sensitive and will die if there are no slugs to parasitize, or if they dry out, get too hot or too cold. You need to keep the area well watered for a while so that they can do their job. I usually fail to do this beyond about a week, but I do sometimes find dried up and sick looking slugs after I've applied them, suggesting they are doing their job.

I usually apply them twice a year - in spring once the temperature is well above freezing and in autumn (around now). If the summer is very wet I add a dose in late July or early August. It is possible to make your own, which you might like to do as they are quite expensive - there are instructions here https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gardenin...s-at-home.html. I don't fancy the smell so I am prepared to buy mine!

One thing that isn't apparent from the instructions - the substrate they come in is not soluble and quickly blocks the watering can rose. I've given up trying to use a rose and just fling the solution around from an open watering can spout.

[Penellype]

A blank day on Thursday as usual. Yesterday was a lovely sunny day and I made the most of it.

One of the jobs that has been on my list for a while is to find homes for the strawberry runners. I love strawberries, but I struggle to find a way to grow them that doesn't cause problems. They grew well last year in the ground but got attacked by strawberry seed beetle and some were damaged by slugs even though it was very dry. They are also impossible to weed and would soon become infested with horsetail. I've grown them this way before and lost most of the crop to slugs so it was always the intention to do something different with them. Last year I potted up 4 runners into each of 6 MFBs and these have done quite well (but not as well as last year in the ground), avoiding the beetles but still with a little slug damage (my fault for not using copper tape). The problem with the MFBs is that being round they take up a lot of space on the shelves, so they are not practical for large numbers of plants, and I do have large numbers of new runners. I also tried growing another variety (Marshmello) in 1ft x 2ft troughs and was bitterly disappointed. Some of the plants didn't fruit at all, one plant died and the others were very poor. I've no idea why this happened, although it could have been due to using allotment made compost (although I used this for the MFBs too), or possibly lack of water at a critical time. I've left all these plants where they are, and rooted 4 Marshmello into a balconniere trough, but I still have loads of runners to house.

Because of the difficulty in finding somewhere sensible to put them I've sort of ignored them and let them scramble around in the tunnel. Yesterday I decided it was time to do something with them. At home I had 2 "flower towers" which I bought to grow strawberries in several years ago. They did ok the first couple of years but the plants in them have now mostly died. I decided to take one of them down to the plot and use it for the runners of unknown variety. This meant a trip to the garden centre for compost. I'd forgotten how fiddly this was, and it took me the rest of the morning to achieve a planted up flower tower (24 plants) with copper tape round the bottom. I left the bottom 2 rows of holes unoccupied so that the plants wouldn't rest on the floor and provide a bridge for slugs. I also potted up a dozen runners to go to a charity event in a couple of weeks time. Even after doing all that there were some runners left, and I also have some Marshmello ones to find a home for...

Having dealt with the strawberries for now, I walked round checking everything and gave the melons some water. The growhouse smelled strongly of melon, and I decided to cut the biggest fruit (Magenta), thinking it was probably ready. It is impossible to get near enough to smell the individual fruit so I had to guess. I also picked a cucumber, some baby leaves and a beetroot and went home for lunch. When I got home I weighed the melon - 3lb 13oz! However, it did not smell ripe.

After lunch I went back and investigated the melons again. The growhouse still smelled strongly of melon. One of the smaller fruit (Alvaro) near the back was turning slightly yellow so I decided that must be the one, and this time I was right. Having harvested that I did about an hour's weeding before picking some beans and a courgette and going home to eat half my melon. This one only weighed 1lb7oz but was absolutely gorgeous. This is why I was prepared to reserve a whole bed, carry in 20+ trugs of horse manure to make a hotbed and buy an expensive growhouse to go on top. The melons are well worth the effort, and there are at least another 8 melons in there, plus the 2 that are now ripening at home and half of one in the fridge.

[Penellype]

Another busy weekend, but I managed to squeeze a couple of sessions at the allotment in between everything else.

On Saturday the only job I had time for was cutting the grass, which was at least dry by lunchtime. I didn't even need to harvest anything as I was going out for dinner. I made sure I watered everything before I left as I knew I wouldn't have time later.

Sunday was marginally less busy. I went down at lunchtime and did a little weeding and spent some time straightening the edge of the grass near the roadside hedge. I got about half way along before running out of time. I watered the newly planted strawberries which were looking a bit wilted but left everything else apart from the melons as rain was forecast in the afternoon (it was really only a bit of drizzle). When checking round I found 2 pods of peas which were ready and very quickly eaten, and I also harvested 6 mostly undamaged ripe strawberries, a cucumber and some pink blueberries.

[Snadger]

Another busy weekend, but I managed to squeeze a couple of sessions at the allotment in between everything else.

On Saturday the only job I had time for was cutting the grass, which was at least dry by lunchtime. I didn't even need to harvest anything as I was going out for dinner. I made sure I watered everything before I left as I knew I wouldn't have time later.

Sunday was marginally less busy. I went down at lunchtime and did a little weeding and spent some time straightening the edge of the grass near the roadside hedge. I got about half way along before running out of time. I watered the newly planted strawberries which were looking a bit wilted but left everything else apart from the melons as rain was forecast in the afternoon (it was really only a bit of drizzle). When checking round I found 2 pods of peas which were ready and very quickly eaten, and I also harvested 6 mostly undamaged ripe strawberries, a cucumber and some pink blueberries.

Do you cover your blueberries Penelype as the birds have eaten all mine!

[Penellype]

Do you cover your blueberries Penelype as the birds have eaten all mine!

Yes, I find the birds eat them as soon as they start to turn blue unless you net them. As you are supposed to leave them on the bush for a couple of weeks after they turn blue, no net usually means no blueberries.

[Penellype]

A gorgeous day yesterday. I spent a good hour in the morning finishing the edges of the grass path along the roadside hedge, attempting to straighten them, pulling some of the horsetail that was growing in amongst the grass and removing nettles, brambles and couch grass from the hedge. It is by no means perfect, but I was pleased with the result. I picked a cucumber and quite a few baby leaves for lunch.

I went back in the afternoon and did some weeding and removed some of the dying rhubarb leaves, then having had enough of bending down I thought I would dig the area where the peas had been to remove horsetail. I peeled back the weed matting expecting to find lots of horsetail shoots underneath, but there weren't any. Not one. I decided not to dig it for the sake of it, and put the weed matting back to deter the cats.

I'm undecided as to what to do with this bit of the plot. It is rather wide for a single bed, but when I grew 2 rows of peas in it this year they were a bit close together to walk between. The size of the bed was originally determined by the rhubarb, which was too big to make the path any nearer the road. As a result the bed is about 5ft wide whereas my raised beds are 3ft. I find 5ft is a bit wide to easily weed, and that is not going to get any easier the older I get!

I stood and pondered the situation for a while. There are various things that I have yet to find permanent homes for, including the minarette cherry, and the chilean guava. The cherry is next to the blueberries at the moment, but is moveable and really wants more sunshine. I may put the chilean guava where the cherry is as it is a similar sized bush to the blueberries. I could maybe have a row of minarette fruit trees along the side of the grass path, leaving a narrow bed between them and the hotbed. I could leave it as it is and have 2 narrow beds. Alternatively I could get myself a walk in blowaway greenhouse which I could use as a greenhouse over winter and in spring and then remove the cover and net it to provide bird protection for the cherry and possibly my apricot tree (currently at home), which could do with a sunnier spot and frost protection. I have something along the lines of what I was thinking of at home, about 6ft x 4ft which I use as a fruit cage, which would be ideal, so I was confident I could find one that would fit. Ideally I want something that I can move around if I want and that will fit over a raised bed (I'm thinking of protecting the tomatoes), which means it needs to be just over 2m long. I harvested a leek, some beans and a tomato for tea and went home to trawl the internet.

To my utter astonishment, 6ft x 4ft blowaway greenhouses do not seem to exist. I can have approx 5ft x 5ft (really too wide for comfort), and several sizes smaller than that. The next size up is generally a full blown 2m x 3m polytunnel, which is too big and too permanent. That's bonkers - I'm sure I've seen the walk in greenhouses like the one I have in Wilko (where I got it from) but they don't sell that sort of thing in September. I must be missing something somewhere...

[Jungle Jane]

It looks like they’ve been selling them all off at wilko for £2.50 each in this link,some stores might have one left it says to phone to check,there’s another blowaway at wilko for five pounds with more shelves but out of stock,they probably won’t get any stock in till spring,wayfair have a few with some interesting sizes,but it would be good to find some on an end of season sale at a garden centre.
https://www.wilko.com/en-uk/wilko-wa...b358dd2e11c898

When I’m looking for something there’s a uk hot deals web page,you can type what you’re looking for & it shows you deals that are going on,good for finding compost too

[Penellype]

Thanks for the link JJ. I'm having second thoughts about a blowaway greenhouse as it would probably blow away and/or break in the wind. The Wilko one I use for a fruit cage frame has only had insect mesh on it, suspended from hooks that come off in strong winds, and 2 of the plastic joints are broken. I dread to think what it would look like if it had been covered in plastic.

Yesterday was one of those days when inanimate objects seem to conspire to cause havoc. I'd intended to spend plenty of time at the plot, but... First the light bulb in my desk lamp went. I hadn't a suitable one so I had to go and find a replacement, which took half an hour I hadn't planned for. Then I discovered an urgent email in my spam folder that had been there a few days and needed instant attention involving my printer. The printer had decided to disconnect itself from the wifi and I spent another hour or so trying to get it connected again, eventually succeeding. By the time I'd dealt with the actual job I was trying to do it was lunchtime.

After lunch I had a straight choice between cutting the rear hedge or going to the allotment, and the allotment won. I trimmed the remaining grass edges and decided to start on the grass at the shed end of the tunnel, which is a job I have been meaning to do but not really had time. The tunnel net has been buried and grass, horsetail and tree roots have grown through it, which is great for anchoring the net, but lousy for weeding. There are also a load of bluebell bulbs there, which provide a nice, damp home for slugs in spring. I don't mind bluebells in the hedge bottom, but I don't want them near my veg. I got about a third of the way along before my back had had enough.

I watered everything and picked some beans and quite a few peas. The pods mostly seem to be surviving the mildew but the plants themselves are very badly affected now. Hopefully I will get a few more peas (there are plenty of pods) before they die completely.

The inanimate objects hadn't finished with me yet. When it was time to go to bed I picked up the tv remote to turn it off, and must have pressed something because the screen turned to snow. I had absolutely no idea what I had pressed or how to return it to Sky. It took about 20 minutes of pressing various buttons before I discovered one that produced a menu telling me I was trying to use the aerial connection (absent) rather than HDMI. Problem solved, but not what I wanted when I was ready for bed!

Now I'd better go and get on with cutting that hedge...

[Penellype]

Very little time for the allotment yesterday morning mainly due to hedge cutting, which I finally got done. I nipped down before lunch to harvest a cucumber and some baby leaves.

In the afternoon I spent a couple of hours finishing sorting out the shed end of the tunnel net. Part of it was thoroughly intertwined with tree roots and it took some time with the secateurs to free it without cutting it. Having got the net free and removed all the bits of horsetail, couch grass, bluebell bulbs etc that I could find, the next thing was to stop the grass growing back into the tunnel. this is only a problem on the eastern half of the tunnel as the part between the tunnel and shed is too shady and too often walked on to grow much grass. I had one of the long white boards left over - these were originally along the edge of the grass path between the allotments, and I removed them earlier and put proper lawn edging in their place. I used some for the raspberry bed and the remaining one was just a nice size to fit half the width of the tunnel. I dug a trench and buried it with about an inch protruding, which should stop most of the grass. I won't be able to get the mower right to the edge, but it will stop me from accidentally cutting the net. I weighed the edges of the net down with bricks.

By the time I had finished it was nearly tea time and I watered everything then harvested some beans, 3 large courgettes for the charity table, a few strawberries and a small ripe melon and went home.

The melons are being quite interesting. I have 2 varieties and have planted one of each at both the allotment and my friend's garden. In both places the Magenta have produced more and bigger melons, and in both the Alvaro are either dead or nearly dead after a couple of cold nights whereas the Magenta are still very much alive. The 2 ripe melons I have harvested at the allotment so far have both been Alvaro.

[Penellype]

Nothing doing on Thursday as usual. Yesterday was another gorgeous day. I went to the allotment in the morning and wandered round looking for something useful to do. There were quite a few large bunches of elderberries hanging over the compost bins, which were dropping fruit everywhere, so I cut off the ones I could reach. I trimmed back a few nettles in the hedge and harvested some baby leaves and a couple of small cucumbers. I have finally eaten or given away the huge number of big ones, but there are loads more coming along.

I spent most of the afternoon at home where there were more little jobs to do, and went back to the allotment to water and harvest some beans for tea. I decided to pull one of the Autumn King carrots to see how things were in that department, and chose one which was clearly quite large. I was expecting it to be forked (as the ones that are big on top often are), slug eaten or otherwise damaged but I was pleasantly surprised. The carrot was perfectly straight, 9 inches long and 2 inches across at the top. It weighed 10.8 oz, much bigger than the carrots I grow in my buckets at home. It is highly unlikely that all the others are the same, but I was very pleased with this one.

[Penellype]

A slightly frustrating weekend as Saturday was a glorious day when I was mostly busy with other things, and Sunday deteriorated in the afternoon, when I had the most free time.

On Saturday I managed to "steal" about an hour around lunchtime and weeded the raised beds then cut down some more of the elderberry branches. There are still a few that are overhanging the plot, but they are too high up to reach. They are a nuisance at this time of year as they drop ripe fruit everywhere - my strawberry plants are covered with splodges of fruit and they end up in the water when it rains. No doubt a large number of the seeds will start growing in spring. I also trimmed back some of the leylandii that had missed last time and pulled some horsetail from under the hedge.

By the time I had cleared up the branches I'd cut down I was seriously running out of time. I harvested a couple of small cucumbers and 3 strawberries and dashed home for lunch. I didn't make it back in the afternoon, but I did get the lawns cut at home. In the evening I stopped by to water on my way back to the stables, and decided to pick all the remaining pink blueberries and take off the net while it was dry. The melons were starting to smell ripe again and I located one that was turning yellow and harvested it.

Sunday was little better. It had clearly been raining a bit over night as everything was wet, but there wasn't anything to collect in the trays. I nipped down for half an hour in the morning before going to the stables and weeded the tunnel. From the radar picture I could see a mass of rain approaching, although it faded somewhat as it reached us and wasn't as wet as it could have been, but it was enough to prevent much more gardening. I stopped off on the way home and picked a couple of small cucumbers, 2 tomatoes, some baby leaves and a decent number of peas from the poor, mildewed plants in the tunnel. The peas themselves were unaffected and tasted gorgeous.

I'd been hoping to get back in the afternoon but it was too showery and there were thunderstorms brewing to the south which looked like coming our way (they died before they reached here, luckily). I spent the time making sauce out of the ripest tomatoes, making stewed apple from some of my friend's windfalls and sowing some cauliflowers to overwinter. By evening we were clearly going to get a deluge, so watering was not required.

[Penellype]

Yesterday wasn't a bad day weather wise but was littered with appointments. I went down fairly early to collect the water from the overnight rain and then called back mid morning to collect the trug of horsetail and some bits of sticks that needed to go to the tip (I had to get rid of the leylandii clippings from last week's hedge cutting at home).

After lunch I managed an hour before the next appointment, during which I dug all the horsetail I could find out of the tunnel (4 pieces) and pulled some from under the hedge. There was also some couch grass that needed to come out, but the end of it is trapped under one of the water bins, which is nearly full. I hadn't the time to empty it into the water butt and dig out the grass roots - that will have to wait for another day.

The other job I wanted to get done today was sort out the melons as some of the foliage is looking rather dead. On investigation I found that the Alvaro plant, which has produced 3 ripe melons, was completely finished, with no further fruit forming and the stems dying back. I untangled it from the Magenta plant and removed it. Some of the Magenta foliage is also looking ropey, but the plant is still very much alive. This has done much better, with a total of at least 8 fruit of varying sizes, including 3 that are much bigger than anything produced by Alvaro. I noticed that one of the fruits had a small damaged area in the skin, so I cut it off and took it home along with some beans. I will probably need to harvest the remaining melons within the next week or so if the current forecast of a cold snap proves correct. The runner beans have nearly finished as well.

With rain forecast today there was no need to go back to water. I managed a quick visit first thing today and collected a bucketful or so of overnight rain and a couple of small cucumbers for lunch. It has rained solidly all morning and doesn't look like stopping any time soon.

[Penellype]

The rain finally stopped at around 3pm, having dumped nearly 30mm on us. The paths in the garden were awash, but the pond (which leaks and is therefore a good indicator of the water table level) was not full. I scooped up some of the water to fill my dustbin for the blueberries then went down to the allotment to investigate the situation.

The bin lids and trays were nearly full and I collected a whole bin full of water from them and the wheelbarrow. The bottom corner of the plot was flooded, with about 1/2 an inch of water on the grass path and a good inch or more between the 2 raised beds. I scooped up another bin and a half of water from there which goes a long way towards replenishing what I have used over the past couple of weeks (including about 50 litres when applying the nematodes). I didn't seem to have made a lot of difference to the water level, but no doubt it will have drained away by today.

Apart from capturing a few slugs and checking everything, it was really too wet to do anything else.

[Penellype]

A quick trip to the plot in the morning showed that while it was dull and damp there had not been much more rain over night and the water level had indeed gone down although the grass was still a bit soggy. I checked everything was ok, tied up one of the romanesco plants that had fallen over and harvested 3 tomatoes, a cucumber and 2 strawberries.

After lunch the sun came out for a bit and I took my 2nd strawberry tower down to plant more runners in. The first batch of unknown variety have recovered from being transplanted after looking very wilty for several days. This time I already had the compost and experience of how to do it, so the job was much faster. I used the Marshmello runners from the tunnel and planted 24 of them, leaving the smaller ones connected to larger parent plants and pegging them into the holes with hoops made of wire that I'd found on the plot when I got it. It took me about half an hour to do. I then had to find somewhere to put it.

The logical place was next to the fence, where there is still some space. However, the ground here is not at all flat, so I lifted part of the weed matting, revealing quite a lot of slugs (which I later fed to the chickens) and did my best to level an area big enough for the tower to sit on without falling over. It is still full of bits of leylandii and chunks of concrete, but is getting a little easier to deal with. I then secured the base of the tower with a heavy brick - this has worked at home, but how it will stand up to a gale remains to be seen.

I then went round picking up bits of leaves and a few weeds before it was time to go home. I went back in the evening to pick some courgettes, cucumbers and beans for my brother.