Penellype's Allotment

[Penellype]

Another complete change in the weather yesterday - a lovely sunny day and the first time this year that my solar panels have registered over 10 kWh for the day. The solar panels are an interesting indicator of how much light the plants are getting, much better than human eyes, which are designed to enhance dim light and protect the eye from very bright light by opening and shutting the pupil. The solar panels have a range from about 2 kWh on a sunny day in mid winter to about 25 kWh on a sunny day in mid summer - a huge difference. On a very cloudy day in winter they may not come on at all, and however bright moonlight may seem it is not enough to turn the panels on.

Anyway, aware that the rest of this week looks rather wet and very windy, as well as having the distraction of Cheltenham on TV, I wanted to get plenty done yesterday. I had a good look round the plot and removed weed seedlings from under the hedge and around the dug areas of soil. The difference between the carefully weeded areas like the tunnel and the one place that got out of control and some weeds went to seed, where the strawberries were, is huge. I am going to have to put weed matting down along that bit as there are thousands of tiny seedlings.

One job I have been meaning to do for a while is straighten the edge of the grass path between the hedge and the rhubarb and put some lawn edge pieces in to stop the grass invading the bed. I'd been dithering because I didn't have enough edge pieces to reach to the tunnel, but I decided to go half way along anyway as the rhubarb is growing fast and will soon be in the way and make the job much harder. I got it done reasonably easily, although I may still move some of it a bit as I'm not really happy that I have got it right, but the end nearest the rhubarb is fine. I probably need to order more edging to finish the job properly.

The warm February has not helped my winter veg at all. The swedes and kohlrabi were starting to bolt and the big cabbage was splitting. I decided to harvest all the swedes as most have been munched by slugs, and make soup out of anything edible. This clears half of the bed next to the raspberries, where I will be sowing parsnips this year. I took the swedes home and made swede and carrot soup while I was waiting for a parcel to arrive, using up the June sown bucket of carrots from home which were all rather small and going "hairy".

Once the soup was made I went back to the plot and carried on with straightening the grass right up to the tunnel. I dug over the area between the end of the tunnel and the grass and removed some horsetail roots. This area was covered by large geranium plants last year, which I removed, and it makes a reasonable sized bed. For now it houses the pink blueberry bush and I will add the cherry tree (both are in 30 litre pots) when the tunnel top goes back on as it will soon get too tall for the tunnel.

I then decided that I really had better do something with that huge savoy cabbage before it became completely inedible (if it wasn't already). Cabbage is not my favourite veg, its one of those things that is tempting to grow but I never really want to eat. I cut the head off and peeled off the outer leaves, which were full of slugs and brandling worms. Eventually I got to a cleaner part which I took home. To my surprise there was a decent amount of edible cabbage, which will probably keep me going for 3 or 4 days.

[Penellype]

Far too windy and unpleasant to do anything yesterday except check that everything was still there after a very windy night. The cover had blown off the onions - I'd lifted the net slightly the other day as the onions were starting to grow, using some small and fairly flimsy plastic hoops. This wants attention as soon as I have time - I need to take the net off the parsnips and harvest them, put the proper hoops and a smaller net over the onions and start digging the parsnip bed.

This morning I went down first thing as the wind had again been very gusty. The frame for the hotbed cover had come apart in places and I put it back together. I also harvested some PSB and brokali and fought my way home against a strong headwind.

I can't wait for these wretched low pressure systems to get out of the way and then I can get on with something useful!

[Penellype]

Another horribly windy day with some really vicious gusts. I went down to the plot in the morning and put the hotbed cover frame back together again as the wind had pulled it apart. It had also knocked over some of the hoops that were holding up the net over the onions. This was only ever intended to be a temporary arrangement and I decided it was time to put up a proper net. The onions only need protecting from birds and cats, so I knocked in 6 pieces of 2x1 timber in the corners and middle of the bed and draped an old fruit cage net over them. It is rather big but will do the job.

The parsnips are rapidly producing new growth so I dug them all up and laid them on the surface of the bed, then covered the roots with a little soil. Hopefully this will slow them down a bit until I can process them - there are about 6 left. I took one home with me, having had quite enough of the wind, which seemed to be getting worse.

The postman comes to me around or after lunch, and today he brought my cauliflowers. This was awful timing - they need planting immediately and I wanted to watch Cheltenham, not battle with nets and plastic covers in a gale. I could at a pinch have left them until tomorrow, but tomorrow is very likely to be just as windy and extremely wet, so it had to be today.

I spent the afternoon nipping out between races to plant 2 of the cauliflowers in buckets and cover those with a plastic cloche weighed down with bricks, and I potted 6 of them up into 3.5 inch pots and made room for them in the growhouse, which is crowded with peas that are desperate to be planted out but need to go to the allotment and preferably not be thrashed about in a gale. The remaining 8 plants needed to be planted in one of the raised beds at the allotment, so I went down with them after the racing.

First I had to prepare the bed with some bfb and the hoops and net from the parsnip bed. Then I planted the cauliflowers and sprinkled "slug gone" around them, then added a copper ring round each plant and watered them. I had to find some bricks to secure the net with - this net is really too big, but it was out and wet so I am using it for now, but a smaller green one will be better eventually.

Cauliflowers planted, I then used the piece of weed matting that had been covering that bed to cover up most of the parsnip bed to stop cats from using it as a toilet, put the hotbed frame back together again, and battled my way back home against the wind which showed no sign of easing.

Roll on next week when the high pressure is due to return and this horrible destructive wind will go away.

[Snadger]

Another horribly windy day with some really vicious gusts. I went down to the plot in the morning and put the hotbed cover frame back together again as the wind had pulled it apart. It had also knocked over some of the hoops that were holding up the net over the onions. This was only ever intended to be a temporary arrangement and I decided it was time to put up a proper net. The onions only need protecting from birds and cats, so I knocked in 6 pieces of 2x1 timber in the corners and middle of the bed and draped an old fruit cage net over them. It is rather big but will do the job.

The parsnips are rapidly producing new growth so I dug them all up and laid them on the surface of the bed, then covered the roots with a little soil. Hopefully this will slow them down a bit until I can process them - there are about 6 left. I took one home with me, having had quite enough of the wind, which seemed to be getting worse.

The postman comes to me around or after lunch, and today he brought my cauliflowers. This was awful timing - they need planting immediately and I wanted to watch Cheltenham, not battle with nets and plastic covers in a gale. I could at a pinch have left them until tomorrow, but tomorrow is very likely to be just as windy and extremely wet, so it had to be today.

I spent the afternoon nipping out between races to plant 2 of the cauliflowers in buckets and cover those with a plastic cloche weighed down with bricks, and I potted 6 of them up into 3.5 inch pots and made room for them in the growhouse, which is crowded with peas that are desperate to be planted out but need to go to the allotment and preferably not be thrashed about in a gale. The remaining 8 plants needed to be planted in one of the raised beds at the allotment, so I went down with them after the racing.

First I had to prepare the bed with some bfb and the hoops and net from the parsnip bed. Then I planted the cauliflowers and sprinkled "slug gone" around them, then added a copper ring round each plant and watered them. I had to find some bricks to secure the net with - this net is really too big, but it was out and wet so I am using it for now, but a smaller green one will be better eventually.

Cauliflowers planted, I then used the piece of weed matting that had been covering that bed to cover up most of the parsnip bed to stop cats from using it as a toilet, put the hotbed frame back together again, and battled my way back home against the wind which showed no sign of easing.

Roll on next week when the high pressure is due to return and this horrible destructive wind will go away.

And its the beginning of the trout fishing season! whoopee!

[Penellype]

Yesterday was wet from start to finish as well as being unpleasantly windy. I didn't visit the plot at all.

Today was much better, although rather cold and still windy. I went down first thing to check all was ok, which it was, and to collect the jar of slugs for the chickens. Despite all the rain it wasn't too wet and soggy, and most of the earth under the fence has stayed put, which surprised me.

I needed to muck out the horses and spend some time in my friend's garden in the morning, so I didn't get back until the afternoon. I was very tempted to take down the peas that are rapidly getting too tall for their shelf in the growhouse, but I resisted because it was still very windy and I could see them getting thrashed about and broken. It WILL be better tomorrow...

I removed the trugs of compost from the big compost bin and sorted out the best of it to grow potatoes in (which I will plant tomorrow). That gave me somewhere to start a new compost heap, and I went round pulling out a few weeds, cutting back the nettles which are starting to grow and collecting up all the dead brassica leaves. I added some shredded paper, and that makes a start. I also removed the turnips that I planted rather late last year, as these were bolting having got no bigger than marbles.

I didn't harvest any more veg as I am still eating the parsnip that I brought home on Friday. It has done 3 meals.

[Penellype]

A much better day today and a chance to catch up with some jobs that were becoming urgent.

The first thing I had to do was get the allotment rent paid for the year. The clerk is only there on Mondays and Tuesdays and it was getting uncomfortably close to 1st April, given my ability to forget to do things until it is too late!

I wanted to finish off planting the potatoes - there were 4 buckets of Lady C to do and as these are supposed to be earlies they really needed to be planted. 2 of the buckets joined the Nicola and Maris Bard in the potato bed, and the other 2 went in the tunnel under one of those 2ft by 4ft plastic cloches. I have several of these, but this was a new one that I bought last year and unlike the older ones which have a spare piece of cover at the bottom that can be pegged down, the cover was really very small - so much so that it didn't touch the ground. I will just have to hope that it stays put.

I mended the hotbed frame which had come apart again and put the bricks back on the tunnel net as they had been dislodged in yesterday's wind. By the time I had done this it was about lunchtime, so I cut some baby lettuces and spinach from the hotbed then went home for lunch.

The other urgent job was to plant the first lot of Meteor peas, which have been in the growhouse and were starting to climb up each other. I also needed the space in the growhouse for the next lot, which in turn were in the way of the next lot of germinating peas in the grow light garden. The peas go in the bed next to the road this year, and this bed is next to the grass path that I got part of the way through edging last week. The extra edging that I ordered had arrived and I decided it was best to do the edging before planting the peas. I got this done reasonably quickly, as unlike the end near the rhubarb, the ground had been recently dug and was fairly soft. It was then a case of planting 10 pots of peas, which I did in a double row either side of the netting, giving them some twigs to climb until they are tall enough to reach the bottom of the net, and surrounding them with a strand of black cotton to keep the birds off. I also found some pieces of mesh to put on the remaining bare soil to stop the cats digging it up. There is room for another 2 lots of Meteor peas (the ones currently in the growhouse and grow light garden) in this row.

After all this I was tired, so rather than give myself work preparing fresh veg, I decided to leave harvesting the brokali until today and eat pasta and tomato sauce from the freezer.

[Penellype]

Today I spent rather less time at the allotment, mainly because I was planting potatoes at home, which required constructing a plastic tunnel to keep them frost free.

After lunch I went down to the plot and found that the birds had pulled the mulch off the raspberry bed in places onto the grass. This is another job that is getting urgent - the grass is covered with bits of leylandii anyway from the tree removal and I need to get it all cleared up before I attempt to cut the grass (which is growing) as the bits of wood will jam the mower. I therefore spent an hour or so picking bits of leylandii out of the grass area and putting them back on the raspberry bed. Big bits went in a trug to go to the tip. There was a piece of green mesh which I used to fence the compost area when I first got the plot. This was originally used at home to fence a gap in some trees to keep out the local kids, and the wooden posts, which were stapled to the mesh, were rotting at the bottom. The mesh was exactly half as long as the row of raspberries. I removed the posts and cut the mesh into 3 pieces lengthways and pegged 2 of them down with matting staples to cover the grass side of the raspberry bed. I used the other piece to protect the area near the peas as it was a better fit than the 2 small pieces I found yesterday. There is still a lot of bits of leylandii in the grass, but hopefully the mesh will discourage the birds from adding any more.

When I'd done that I spent a little time chopping back the buddleia that is growing in the hedge and also cut back a bit more of the hawthorn. There is more to do but I like to be able to deal with all the rubbish I create straight away, so I stopped and chopped up what I had cut off, by which time it was time to cut some brokali and PSB and go home to make tea.

[Penellype]

Yesterday I'd planned to try cutting the grass, but first I had to go round picking up all the bits of twig that had blown down in the gales as well as finish picking leylandii bits out of the bit where the hedge was. I did along the west hedge and round near the shed, but by the time I'd finished that my back had had enough of bending down. The grass was also still wet with dew, so I decided to give it a miss until Friday and cut back more hawthorn instead. I filled a trug with trimmings and got the west hedge just about back to where I want it, although I really would prefer no hawthorn or blackthorn at all in that hedge, which is a jumbled mixture of both plus leylandii, ash and various other shrubs, several of which are at least partly dead.

I picked some lettuce and spinach thinnings from the hotbed and gave it a good water as it was getting rather dry. Then I picked a couple of sticks of rhubarb and went home for lunch.

I was intending to come back after lunch and do more twig clearing but I got distracted. I wanted to plant 4 quadgrow pots of Lady C potatoes at home, which will start off in the growhouse, but in order to do so I needed to take a dozen strawberry plants out of there. While I was pondering this problem I noticed that the peas that I put in there the other day were already touching the top of the growhouse and I decided to take them to the allotment and put them on the shelf in the tunnel. They should be ok - there is no frost forecast at the moment and it is not particularly windy. There were 2 trays of peas so I set off with one of them while thinking about what to do next.

By the time I'd got to the plot I'd decided that the best thing to do was to take the strawberries out of the growhouse and plant them in the Hozelock planter (their intended home) today. This is the sort of job I loathe as it involves removing other plants first. The strawberries in there are at least 6 years old and they fruited very poorly indeed last year. At the very least they needed replanting, but they were old and woody, and the runners in the growhouse were last years runners from these plants. I bit the bullet and got on with it.

In order to plant the new strawberries I needed some compost, so that involved a trip to the garden centre just down the road. One of the things that's been bothering me this year is the state of my blueberry bushes at home. They look healthy enough and have plenty of leaves opening, but neither bush has more than about a dozen flower buds. They are in pots and fruited really well last year, so something has upset both of them this time. It could be last year's heat, or maybe I forgot to feed them (although I was sure I had). Anyway, the garden centre sells blueberry bushes so I went to see whether theirs had flower buds on. I was expecting to see 3l pots of small plants (which is how I bought mine), but they had some big plants in 10l pots and one in particular (variety Spartan) was covered in flower buds. I decided to buy it and grow it in a pot at the allotment. It was so big that I had difficulty fitting it in the car.

I took the car down to the allotment with blueberry bush, the 2nd lot of peas, some pea mesh for later and a bag of ericaceous compost for the blueberry. The pot I want to plant the bush in is currently occupied by rhubarb but should soon be available. I put the bush next to the pink one near the entrance to the tunnel. Hopefully they will pollinate each other and give me a bigger crop.

That done I went back to the strawberries and got them planted up. I was too tired to start on potatoes but I'd got a good job done. I still had to walk down to the allotment again and shut the covers over the hotbed and potato bed.

[Penellype]

No gardening yesterday, apart from nipping down morning and evening to open and shut the hotbed cover, as it was a sunny day.

Today was much cloudier. I spent the morning at home sorting out compost to plant potatoes in, among other things. I then went to B&Q to get a clip to mend one of the horses' rugs with and took the opportunity to buy some water pipe to make hoops with. I had enough hoops for 2 beds already and bought another 15m of pipe which did another 2 beds. This means that I should be able to put nets or plastic covers over all of the beds one way or another if I need to.

Having cut up the water pipe I got out the mower and cut the grass. I must have done a reasonable job of removing the bits of wood as the mower only jammed twice. I then picked some PSB for tea and went home to cut the grass there.

[Penellype]

Not a bad weekend, and as a result several jobs got done.

Yesterday I went round the edges of the plot with the edging shears, trimming off all the long bits of grass that the mower can't get at. The trimmings went in the compost bin. I then went over the whole plot looking for signs of emerging horsetail, as I had found some at my friend's. I couldn't find any at all, but I didn't have much time for complacency as the next job was to plant the 2nd lot of Meteor peas. While I was digging a trench to plant these in I found 2 largish pieces of horsetail root that was obviously starting to grow. I suspect it will be emerging all over the plot very shortly.

Having planted the peas and protected them with black cotton, I then harvested the 3 remaining kohlrabi plants as these were about to flower. The "bulb" area was quite hard and woody, but the flower stems were edible and made a change from broccoli.

Rather less got done today as I spent some time at home sowing carrots and watering all the pots, which were drying out as there was quite a stiff (and chilly) breeze. I did spend some time weeding under the hedge, and clearing out the week's collection of plastic rubbish. Why people have to throw it on the ground when there is a litter bin next to the bus stop I have no idea

I also harvested some baby lettuces and spinach and a couple of sticks of rhubarb today.

[Penellype]

The main job I wanted to get done yesterday was to cut back the edges of the lawn in the back garden at home. This was quite a big job as although I had put an edging strip round it about 3 years ago, the grass had climbed over the top of it and was rooting into the flower bed. In some places it had crept about 4 inches, meaning that the lawn was too big and no longer a nice, neat circle. I therefore didn't have much time for the allotment.

I went down in the morning to open the hotbed cover a bit as the sun was out. I'm sure the lettuces have doubled in size over the weekend - they are growing ridiculously fast.

After lunch, when I'd finished the lawn, I took some more cauliflowers down to plant in the bed next to the onions (I need the pots to plant peas in). There are 2 sorts - 4 of them are the Maybach I bought, which arrived a couple of weeks ago and the other 4 are Snowball which I sowed myself in autumn and have been in the growhouse all winter. The Snowball are about twice the size of the Maybach, so it will be interesting to see which is ready first. Incidentally, apart from the romanesco I grew last year, I have never managed to grow a cauliflower from seed, which is why I ordered the Maybach. I sowed 12 Snowball, which I fully expected to die, but 10 of them have not only germinated, but are clearly quite happy. I therefore have 26 cauliflower plants . I can absolutely guarantee that if I had not ordered the Maybach, the Snowball would have done what cauliflowers have always done before - curled up and died.

The cauliflower bed was dug over the winter and was one of the earlier ones to be filled with compost. It has been covered with weed suppressant for the last couple of months. When I took the cover off I found a piece of horsetail poking up through the compost - the first of many, I suspect. I removed as much of it as I could.

Having planted the cauliflowers, added copper rings and slug gone, and found a net to go over them, I harvested some brokali and a parsnip and went home to cook tea.

[Penellype]

Things didn't really go to plan yesterday because one of the horses needed the vet. She was having difficulty eating, and when horses don't eat there is something wrong. I therefore spent a significant part of the day waiting for and talking to the vet. We came to the conclusion that she had bitten her tongue, which had formed a painful ulcer, hence her reluctance to eat. The vet gave me some "bute" for her and she was eating happily by evening.

As a result of all this, allotment time was restricted to a brief visit to check all was ok and harvest some PSB for tea.

[Penellype]

Another awkward day yesterday as I had to take my car in for MOT and service and then collect it mid afternoon. I did manage to spend some time at the plot in between.

I took down a bottle of ericaceous feed for the blueberry bushes (I also fed the ones at home) and watered everything that needed it (most of the pots plus the onion bed). The Maris Bard and Nicola potatoes now have leaves showing through the compost.

Other than that I had a little time to pull up a few weed seedlings and search the tunnel for horsetail and slugs. I found both under the weed matting at the shed end and removed as much as I could.

I then harvested a nice handful of spinach leaves from the hotbed - the first time I have been able to pick enough to cook.

This morning I have been down to open the covers as it is sunny (unlike yesterday, which was supposed to be but wasn't). I've also harvested some lettuce, PSB and brokali (which is starting to flower) for later.

[Penellype]

Another glorious sunny day yesterday and for once I had time to make use of it. I wanted to make a start on the parsnip bed, the only one of the 8 raised beds that has not yet been dug to remove horsetail. There were just 3 parsnips left so I dug them up and put them aside to take home.

The plan was to scrape off the surface layer of rotted horse muck and leaf mould that I filled the bed with last year and put it to one side while I dug the soil. It soon became clear that this was not going to be possible as it was full of fragile horsetail shoots that broke off as soon as I tried to remove the top layer. I quickly decided I would have to leave the top layer where it was and dig the lot.

By the end of 2 sessions, before and after lunch, I had dug over about 1/3 of the area and removed quite a lot of horsetail roots and shoots. The paths either side need taking up and digging too as there are shoots under the weed matting. Hopefully I will be able to do some more of this over the weekend.

Apart from that, all I did was harvest some brokali, spinach and rhubarb and water the hotbed.

[Penellype]

More digging today, concentrating on the path between the bed I am digging and the potato bed. I wanted to get the path dug and the matting put back down before it rains and turns into a mudbath. As usual it was slow going as the soil under the path was very compacted and full of horsetail roots, but I got it done.

I also added some more of the old raised bed filling to the bed I'm going to sow parsnips in, as it was rather low. This needs topping up with some used compost from home and then I can sow the parsnips.

The only other job I got done today, apart from watering the hotbed, was planting the final lot of Meteor peas. I now have a 2m row of early peas planted in 3 lots so there should be a decent spread of pods, which will hopefully last me until the maincrop Hurst Greenshaft are ready.