Penellype's Allotment

[Penellype]

Hmm last url points to
https://www.progreen.co.uk/kurtail-gold
Never heard of that, has anyone ???
Jimmy

Not heard of it but the guy who has the allotment next to mine said he bought some weedkiller off the internet that was guaranteed to kill horsetail. He's sprayed half his "field" with it and the horsetail has gone brown. He started digging it out this morning. I forgot to ask what it was that he used, but I don't use weedkillers anyway so I won't be buying it.

[Penellype]

I hope you wore a hat

On the subject of everyone's favourite weed, my neighbour seems to be having success with a brew made of white wine vinegar, salt and a dab of washing-up liquid. Obviously it kills everything it touches, but he's confident enough to put some sweetcorn in after it and that all looks fine (better than mine in fact... grrr)

I wear a hat for the allotment (but not for watching Ascot) .

I'd be worried about applying too much salt to the soil, and vinegar would make it acid, at least for a while. Interesting that the sweetcorn doesn't seem to mind.

[geepee]

Hmm last url points to
https://www.progreen.co.uk/kurtail-gold
Never heard of that, has anyone ???
Jimmy

Maybe where the saying 'Put the Kibosh on it ' came from......if it REALLY works , might be worth going out of 'The Box'..???

[geepee]

I wear a hat for the allotment (but not for watching Ascot) .

I'd be worried about applying too much salt to the soil, and vinegar would make it acid, at least for a while. Interesting that the sweetcorn doesn't seem to mind.

Amazing........ ?how can a LADY be in Ascot Mode without a hat ...??

[Penellype]

Amazing........ ?how can a LADY be in Ascot Mode without a hat ...??

I'd feel daft watching telly in a hat!

[Penellype]

Maybe where the saying 'Put the Kibosh on it ' came from......if it REALLY works , might be worth going out of 'The Box'..???

I'd prefer not to use weedkiller. If I'm still digging out similar amounts next year I might consider it, but there are things I don't want to kill.

[Penellype]

More digging of horsetail today in the tunnel, trying hard to get this done in the next couple of days. Progress is slow, but steady. The bit I am doing now (road end east side) has only been dug over once so far.

Also today I cut down some of the geraniums (cranesbill) that were near the tunnel edge - as well as harbouring snails and horsetail these were also drinking precious water supplies. I deadheaded the remainder to try to prevent them seeding everywhere. I will remove these plants soon, when I get the time.

While I was doing this I noticed a small greenhouse had appeared on the road side of the hedge. It is not the sort of thing you expect to see waiting at a bus stop! This turned out to belong to the man who has the next allotment - he is going to put it where his horsetail is when the weedkiller has done its job. It appears to be plastic windows in an aluminium frame - it will be interesting to see how it copes with wind.

Altogether today I made 5 trips to the allotment, taking a 5 litre can of water with me each time. 2 of those occasions were when I was passing in the car. I should shortly have an empty 10 litre can (its currently full of rain water for the blueberries at home, but they will drink it fairly quickly in the heatwave as they are big bushes). I won't be able to carry 10 litres all the way to the allotment but I will be able to take it down in the car when I go past. I'm determined not to leave my plants short of water.

[Penellype]

More horsetail digging in the tunnel. After 2 sessions of digging I have finished the road end east side except for Mr Toad's house. I may need to disturb him soon.

I also cut the grass, trimmed the west hedge and chopped down some of the flowers near the tunnel door. I want to get these out of the way now as I'd like to put the blueberry bush there (in its pot). It is currently in the tunnel, but it has aphids and the predators can't get at it in there, so this is now top priority.

Other than that, I picked over the peas and brought back a bag full for the freezer. The sugar peas are flowering at last - they are purple podded ones and have nice bicoloured (purple and pale purple) flowers.

I've noticed when picking the strawberries that almost all of them are damaged. Some have holes in which are clearly made by slugs, but most have brown marks on the surface. I thought this might be where slugs have crawled over the fruit, but there is far too much of it - I would have expected much more in the way of holes. I think this is strawberry seed beetle damage https://www.kenmuir.co.uk/image/data...TLE%20_57_.pdf - I don't get this at home so I didn't recognize it. The few plants that I potted up and moved into the tunnel to ripen are not damaged in this way.

[Penellype]

Outside the tunnel, next to the door is a bed full of geraniums and some other perennial plant that I don't recognize. This morning's job was to finish removing these to make room for the blueberry bush in its pot.

I went down to the plot at about 8am and spent about 90 minutes cutting these plants down. I had to keep stopping to remove horsetail into a different bucket (not for the compost bin) and also to put snails in the jar for the chickens. The ground under the plants was baked hard and I decided that attempting to dig the roots out would probably be extremely hard work and take a long time, so I left them and put the blueberry on its drip tray in amongst. It will need sorting later but there is too much else to do just now.

On my way to the stables I stopped at the plot to deliver 15 litres of water and 3 30 litre buckets of compost - these have been growing Lady C potatoes and have had signs of blackleg, so I want to put the compost somewhere where I am definitely not growing potatoes.

After a morning in my friend's garden and a quick lunch I went back to the plot and uncovered bed 4 which had been protected from cat and birds with an old piece of netting and some black cotton. I used the compost from the 3 buckets to top up the bed. I then pulled all the horsetail out of bed 6 (where the cauliflowers were). I had been going to dig this bed over like I did with bed 4, but there are still 3 turnips in it and I don't want to hurry to eat them as there are other things (notably spring cabbage and carrots) that are in more urgent need of using. I took the net and frame off the bed and also the 2nd layer of wood which was originally on the raspberry area. A double layer is useful for securing the net cover. I used this wooden edge and the frame to put the net over bed 4. I then used the spare piece of net to cover the turnips to protect mainly against cabbage root fly.

By now it was time to go home and watch Royal Ascot, but I picked a large bag of strawberries on the way and got some of them frozen (and some eaten) while I was watching the racing.

This evening I dropped off another 15 litres of water on the way to the stables as well as 2 courgette plants and 2 tomato plants. After I'd seen to the horses I went back to water everything and planted the tomatoes in bed 6. These are bush tomatoes (Red Alert) and I've always had problems with the branches of bush tomatoes bending or breaking and the tomatoes ending up on the floor. The other day I did some googlng and found a video by an american with a suggestion for staking bush tomatoes that sounds very interesting. He puts in a strong stake (I have several 2x2 stakes) and knocks a few nails into the top. He then attaches strings to the nails for each branch of the tomato and ties a tomato clip to the end of each string. These clip onto the branches, holding them off the ground. That's the theory anyway. Normally when I find a video that I want to use I keep it loaded in the browser until I've done the job, but annoyingly my computer insisted on updating yesterday and I had to close everything down. Even more annoyingly, when I tried to find the video today I couldn't, so I had to do it from memory. I may never know if I did it right!

The clips I used for the tomatoes are like these https://www.amazon.co.uk/Unusuality-...s=tomato+clips

The courgettes will have to wait until tomorrow to be planted in the hotbed as there are carrots in the way which I need to eat. Bed 4 will probably be planted up tomorrow too. I will also need to do something about the compost soon as the bin is about full.

[Runtpuppy]

Normally when I find a video that I want to use I keep it loaded in the browser until I've done the job, but annoyingly my computer insisted on updating yesterday and I had to close everything down. Even more annoyingly, when I tried to find the video today I couldn't, so I had to do it from memory. I may never know if I did it right!

Firefox has settings where it will reload the tabs you had open before you shut down. That's what I do. At any given point, I have at least 8 tabs that I have open, and don't want to lose/have to find again.

Also, you should be able to find the video in your history if it was yesterday. Just open the history and check the sites you visited yesterday.

[Penellype]

Brilliant, I didn't know you could look back as far as that. I've found the video - this is the method I am trying:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eb0XfYDlJUw

[Penellype]

Down at the plot early again yesterday trying to make use of the cool early morning. Removed horsetail from the hotbed, onion, potato and parsnip beds and attempted to pull it out from the pea bed having first removed the Meteor peas, which had finished. These will soon be replaced with Terrain, which are currently at home getting big enough to withstand slug attack. I'm trying to remove anything that drinks water and is not needed as the ground is only going to get dryer.

With this in mind I harvested the 2nd bucket of "Maris Bard" (probably Highland Burgundy Red) potatoes. These have grown well despite being treated like a drought tolerant variety, but they are extremely floury (probably due to lack of water). I tried making chips from them the other day and they just fell apart, so I think I will cook the lot and mash them for the freezer. There was 1.1kg of edible sized potatoes plus a lot of tiny ones in this bucket.

I also harvested 6 small carrots from the hotbed to make room for courgettes (there are a few more but they are less in the way), a yellow beetroot the size of a tennis ball, all of the lettuces that I sowed between the 2 rows of beetroot (one fairly decent sized plant and a few pathetic leaves, mostly shredded by slugs) and some Douce Provence peas.

After lunch I went back for a quick visit during which I trimmed off the long bits of grass around the edges and the stalks that the mower had missed. I also removed quite a bit of horsetail along the border with the neighbouring plot. That was all I could cope with in the afternoon heat.

It was still hot when I went to water at about 6pm, although most of the plot was in the shade. I wanted to get the planting done in the evening when it was cooler, so I went back at about 8pm and planted the 2 courgette plants in the hotbed, the 3 Romanesco in the tunnel and 3 kohlrabi in bed 4. Each of these plants has its own copper ring and is surrounded by a sprinkling of "slug gone", a combination which is appearing to work in the tunnel. The carrots in there, which are surrounded by a plastic edge with copper tape on but no slug gone are slowly disappearing. I removed a slug from inside the barrier when I was there last night and also removed some weeds at the back which slugs may have been using to get past the copper.

There are still some cabbages and turnips to plant out, but I need a couple more rings for the cabbages and the turnips could do with something a bit bigger than the plastic bottles I usually use so I will have to see if I can find something suitable.

[Penellype]

Monday was very hot so I restricted the allotment to early and late. Unfortunately I had a work call first thing so I didn't get much done in the morning before it got too hot. I removed the plastic cover from the tomatoes and harvested strawberries and some of the blackcurrants which have started to fall off the bush but to me don't really look ripe. Then I weeded some of the plants in the tunnel until it became unbearable and I went home. I spent the afternoon doing little jobs in the garden at home, where I could go back inside after a few minutes.

In the evening I went back to the plot and finished weeding the tunnel - the only bits that now have any visible weeds or horsetail are Mr Toad's corner and behind the water bins at the shed end. It won't stay like that for long though! I also watered everything and planted out the 2 savoy cabbages that my friend gave me a couple of weeks ago and took some photos of bits that have changed:



The bush tomatoes with their string supports.



Kohlrabi and cabbages in bed 4.



Courgettes in the hotbed.



Inside the tunnel - getting fuller!



The blueberry bush where the geranium was.

[Penellype]

Yesterday I had meetings all day and only had time to nip down first thing with some water and pick strawberries, peas and beetroot, then go back in the evening to water.

One more photo from Monday:



These are the purple podded sugar peas. They are really strange - apart from being huge plants they have ordinary leaves, ordinary pea type tendrils, and strange frilly bunches of leaves like the ones you can see bottom right of the photo. I've never seen these on peas before.

[Penellype]

Cloudy this morning and much cooler so I made the most of it and did about 90 minutes weeding, pulling horsetail and cutting down geraniums before the sun came out. I even managed to dig out one of the geraniums completely (the one behind the blueberry in the photo on the previous page). The ground was absolutely bone dry underneath it.

I took 15 litres of extra water down in the car on my way to the shops, then went to the garden centre (Wyevale) to get some new secateurs as I have destroyed mine with all the chopping of leylandii, weeds and hedges (the spring keeps falling out which is irritating). I was rather annoyed to find they had some tomato Megabyte, having specifically asked for it last time I was there and been told they didn't have any. The ones they had were potted up into "decorative" plastic pots and selling for £10 each - no thanks!

I went back to the plot this evening to water and planted out the turnips, having found some plastic biscuit tubs to cut up for slug protection. Cutting them and applying copper tape took longer than planting the turnips. I added a bit of slug gone around the plants as insurance. Even with this double protection I noticed one of the kohlrabi in the same bed has been decapitated. Hopefully the bud is still there and it will regrow.

My raspberries are starting to turn red, but not quite red enough to eat yet. I'm very impressed with these, which were planted in cold, wet soil in late March, having spent a week in the garage. They have loads of fruit and I am really glad I didn't go for the more traditional option of buying short canes and cutting them down after planting so that you don't get a crop in the first year.