Penellype's Allotment

[Penellype]

Looking forward to my first crop of rhubarb I brought from my other plot, although I forgot to check how it was doing?

Do you blanche yours P?

The 2 (well 1 + 1/2) plants that are still where they were when I got the plot are not forced, but I planted some in a 30 litre bucket and put it under a black dalek and I picked the first 2 stems today - they are still small though. I also chucked a load of bits of root into a compost sack to take to the tip, and when I looked today this is what I found:



I was able to pick a stem from the bag as well so I had 3 to eat (along with a couple of leeks):



The stem with the greener leaf came from the bag.

Clearly this is not a conventional way to grow rhubarb, but it seems to be quite effective!

[Penellype]

Spent a bit longer at the plot yesterday afternoon, mainly shredding sticks to mulch the newly planted rhubarb. I also put a piece of wood across to contain the sticks to stop them from falling onto the grass, as my little mower won't cope with chunks of wood. I took a photo of it this morning:



Now I just need to find some more sticks to shred.

Today I went down to the plot briefly at lunchtime, mainly to take photos and harvest leeks and rhubarb for tea (see previous post). Here are some of the photos:



Leeks and brassicas in the tunnel.



PSB should be ready to eat soon.



Despite the scruffy plants, the brokali is producing a decent harvest.



On the other hand the swedes are pathetic, and as I am not all that keen on them anyway, I think I will stop trying to grow them.

[Penellype]

More photos:



The original rhubarb is growing quite fast. Lettuces and spinach in the growhouse are rather disappointing.



Nothing germinating yet in the hotbed.



This is my attempt at fixing the cover.



Parsnips just visible under the green net.



Mizuna and namenia are bolting.

[Penellype]

No time for anything at the allotment on Sunday as there were a few little jobs I wanted to get done at home.

Yesterday I went down to check that everything was still in place after a windy night (it was) and harvested a few winter spinach leaves and a lettuce from the growhouse, some fennel fronds and a couple of the flower stalks from the namenia (which have nice soft leaves) for a lunchtime salad.

When I checked the hotbed I could see a few signs of the lettuces (Black Seeded Simpson) germinating.

[Penellype]

Very little time during a busy week with appointments all over the place. All I managed to do before yesterday was check for wind damage and harvest a few brokali shoots.

Yesterday started with almost freezing fog and remained very cold and damp until after lunch. By mid afternoon the sun had come out and it had warmed up enough to be tolerable. I'd wanted to cut some of the longer bits of grass, but it was wet through from the fog so that was a non-starter. Instead I planted my onion sets, which I had originally planned for Sunday. As Sunday looks wet and stormy I won't be doing any gardening then so I decided to get on with the onions while I could. Like last year I have 50 each of Sturon (my usual favourite) and Stur BC which performed slightly better last year and seems from 1 year's trial to keep slightly longer. 100 onions fits nicely in one of my raised beds. They are growing in 100% rotted horse muck from last year's hotbed on top of a thick layer of cardboard to hopefully keep out the white rot. I added some bfb before planting. As always I covered the bed with a net to keep cats and birds off.

Once I'd done that I walked round checking that everything was secure as we are expecting upto 80mph gusts on Sunday and I may not have time to get down there today. I harvested some brokali for tea on my way round.

[Penellype]

As expected absolutely nothing got done over the weekend. I was too busy on Saturday and the weather on Sunday was mostly appalling. There was a brief lull in the lashing rain and gale force winds at around 3pm and I legged it down to the plot to check everything was still in place. Apart from the bricks weighing down the tunnel, which had moved to release the net in places, and one of the clips having come off the hotbed cover so a corner of the plastic was flapping, everything looked fine. I replaced the bricks and reinforced the plastic with a few extra clips.

The spinach and mixed lettuce in the hotbed have germinated but there is no sign yet of the beetroot or carrots.

By the time I got home all of 15 minutes after setting off, the wind was howling again and it was threatening to rain.

[Penellype]

Yesterday was a bit better, although still windy and rather showery. I picked a drier slot and went down to check everything. The water level had gone down a bit in the bottom corner and everything was still in place.

Out of the wind it was fairly pleasant, so I spent a while picking up bits of fallen twigs from the trees and chopping them for mulch around the rhubarb. When it started to look like rain again I pulled out a couple of extremely muddy parsnips (at least the very wet soil meant they came out easily) and went home.

The GFS and higher resolution forecasts for last night and today were significantly different, with the GFS forecasting winds of around 25knots and gusts in the 40s, while the higher resolution model (I'm not sure which one they use) had base winds in the mid 30s with gusts in the 40s. Judging by the noise over night the higher resolution model was right and I got very little sleep. This went on much longer than the high winds on Sunday and the base wind is probably higher although the gusts aren't as bad. I therefore decided to walk down to the plot this morning in a slight lull to check that things hadn't blown away. All seems to be ok and I retreated home, battling my way back against the freezing wind and getting home just as it started to snow. I very probably won't be going back to the plot today.

[Penellype]

Having given Tuesday a miss, yesterday was somewhat less windy and slightly warmer. I went down to the plot after lunch and checked that nothing had blown away. Some of the weed matting needed adjusting and weighing down better and I noticed a few leaves had blown off the strawberry plants in the towers - the wind must have been from a slightly different direction as this didn't happen at the weekend.

I picked up some twigs that had blown down and shredded them to add to the rhubarb mulch (which the blackbirds are doing a good job of scattering everywhere) then walked round the whole plot removing weed seedlings, mostly from under the roadside hedge, where it is warmest.

That done, I looked around for something else to do. The most obvious job was that the grass needed cutting in places, particularly at the edges of the paths where it hasn't been walked on. It was too wet for the mower but I got out the edging shears and chopped off a small trug full of long grass from the road end of the plot. It now looks rather better, although the rest of the grass paths could do with similar treatment.

The PSB looks as though it will be ready to cut the central heads in the next week or 2. I left everything where it was as I had calabrese at home that needed eating.

[Penellype]

Just a quick visit yesterday to check that everything was secure for storm Dennis and harvest some brokali.

[Penellype]

As anticipated the weather was appalling this weekend - I think Dennis has been worse than Ciara both from a wind and rain perspective. For the first time for many years I didn't go to see to the horses in the evening, asking a friend to look in on them and give one of them her medication in the afternoon. It simply seemed far too dangerous to go out in such a storm.

Today was marginally better in that the rain was less torrential and the wind a little less violent. I went down to the plot in the afternoon between showers to check for damage. The wind had blown one of the panes of glass out of the growhouse having worked a bolt loose. As the panes are toughened glass it hadn't broken and was leaning against the side of the raised bed. However in order to replace the bolt I would need to dismantle a fair amount of the growhouse, so I did the best I could to secure the pane without it.

The wind had also blown the net cover almost completely off one of the raised beds, so I replaced that, then retreated back home as it was showing signs of raining again.

The bottom corner of the plot is still under a good inch of water, which I doubt is doing the parsnips much good. My garden is also flooded in places - I removed 6 bucketfuls of water from the paths during today but they are already flooded again. York is due to flood tomorrow with the water from higher up the river but hopefully it will not flood here as we are protected by the newly improved Foss barrier.

[Penellype]

Yesterday was rather showery so I just did a quick visit to check for any further wind damage. The net had blown off the same raised bed again (this is the net with the finest mesh and probably acts like a sail when wet) so I secured it again as best I could.

Other than that I picked up a couple of dead brassica leaves and fallen twigs which I added to the rhubarb mulch.

The PSB is now about ready to harvest and the beetroot is starting to germinate in the hotbed.

[Penellype]

Another quick visit yesterday, just to pick some salad leaves for lunch and PSB and rhubarb for tea. No time today and the weather doesn't look great for tomorrow and Saturday so I suspect all I will be doing before Sunday is quick checks to make sure everything is surviving the wind.

[Penellype]

The grotty weather continues and everywhere is far too wet to do anything constructive even when it isn't actually raining or blowing a gale.

On Friday I checked again for wind damage and found that the growhouse glass was again working loose at the east end (the southwesterly wind hits this pane hard when the doors are slightly open). I decided to close the side doors completely, leaving just a small gap either end of the top for ventilation. I also propped the glass up a bit with some bits of wood, as the top of that pane was only about 1mm above the metal lip, which was where it was working loose. This seems to have worked, as after some really strong gusts on Saturday the pane was still in place.

During the weekend I had been keeping an eye on the snow risk, mainly because snow on the top of the tunnel is not a great idea. Yesterday the models all moved the snow risk slightly south, and as we had been on the edge of it anyway, this meant a change in the forecast from heavy sleet to heavy snow over night. York is warmer than the surrounding area, and if forced to give an opinion I would have opted for sleet, not snow. I couldn't decide whether it was worth taking the net off the tunnel or not.

Yesterday afternoon was sunny and pleasantly mild out of the wind. I went down to check the nets were still in place and decided to cut the tops off the 3 tallest raspberry canes as they would be too tall to net if I left them. That done and a few dead brassica leaves picked up, I'd run out of thing I could sensibly do. I set off to go home and stopped at the gate to talk to the guy who has the next plot, whom I haven't seen for ages. He was planting potatoes and I mentioned the possibility of snow and that I couldn't decide about the tunnel net. Talking about it reminded me that if I was wrong and it really did produce the forecast possible 3 inches of snow, I could be looking at a collapsed or broken tunnel and having to try to repair it. I decided to take the net off, which only took me about 10 minutes. I went home, muttering to myself that it wouldn't snow and I had very probably removed the net unnecessarily.

This morning I woke to about 3/4 inch of snow with big wet flakes still falling fast. The net over the carrot cage was sagging to half its height and I removed a couple of bucketfuls of snow from it. I was extremely glad that I had taken down that net over the tunnel!

[Penellype]

Once the snow had stopped on Monday I went down to check everything and shook the snow off the top of the hotbed cover. Some of the nets over the raised beds had collapsed under the weight of wet snow so I shook that off too. As it was still very cold I picked some PSB and went straight back home.

Yesterday was better and managed to remain dry with some pleasantly warm sunshine. I took the newly germinated peas down in 2 lots and put them on the shelf in the growhouse. I also took down the little kiwiberry plant, which went on the shelf in the tunnel for now. I watered the seedlings in the hotbed then looked around for something else useful to do. Some of the grass edges near the fence were really quite long and amazingly not too wet, so I got my shears out and cut off about 1/2 a trug full of clippings. I was quite surprised how much of it there was.

Today was also nice and sunny but I had to wait in for a parcel to be delivered, which mostly kept me away from the allotment. I nipped down in the morning to open the covers a bit as the sun was quite strong and I didn't want the seedlings to get too hot. I watered the plants in the growhouse and nipped off quite a few yellowing old leaves from the spinach now that it is starting to grow new ones. I went back to close the covers after lunch, before the sun moved off them completely so that they would have a chance to stay warmer for longer tonight when frost and possibly more snow is forecast. While I was there I dug a parsnip for tea. I am astonished that these have survived the last few months growing in what can only be described as almost liquid mud. There is one left which I will eat soon as it is starting to grow new leaves.

[Penellype]

Just a couple of very quick visits to the plot early morning and at teatime to open and shut the growhouse and hotbed cover as it was a very sunny day. Grabbed a leek while I was there.