Penellype's Allotment

[Penellype]

The plan today was to get the rest of the bed and paths dug while the weather was reasonable, and I managed to do this in 2 session, removing about 1/4 of a trug of horsetail roots. Some of them were producing new shoots, and some of these were about the thickness of a hair - not easy to see or remove without breaking them. When I had finished I put the matting back down on the paths and swept up the soil so that it doesn't turn to mud tonight.

Other than that, I harvested some lettuce for lunch and some spinach for tea, and took a few photos:



Hard to see much because of the covers. Rhubarb is growing nicely. The nearest bed will be a hotbed for melons later. The 2 netted beds in the next row are cauliflowers.



Plenty of lettuce and spinach in the hotbed.



Tunnel is looking rather more empty. There is still some beetroot and a few leeks, plus plenty of PSB, but the brokali is rapidly bolting. At the front of the photo is the minarette cherry tree which is just starting to come into leaf.



Potatoes under the cover are just coming through. Raspberries are coming into leaf. Some of the peas can just be seen on the left of the photo, in front of the hedge.



The empty bed under the blue net needs topping with used compost, and will be planted with parsnips, beetroot and summer leeks. Onions are showing in the bed behind.

[Penellype]

Rather wet to get anything done yesterday, so all I did was go down and empty the collected water into the water butts, nip off a few dead daffodil heads and harvest some PSB for tea.

[Penellype]

A very cold start this morning, with white frost everywhere. I normally check my local weather station to see what the minimum temperature was in the area, but when I tried to do so I found that Wunderground, who post the weather station data, have a new layout which has completely and utterly ruined the presentation of the data. The "max" and "min" for the day were the same as the current temperature, 6 degrees at the time, and clearly totally wrong. Despite changing my settings (again) to centigrade, the map persisted in telling me the temperature was 48 degrees. I don't think so! Why can't these damn know-all computer buffs LEAVE THINGS ALONE!!!

<Sorry, rant over!>

Anyway, when it warmed up a little I went down to the plot and opened the covers a bit to let some air in as it was sunny. I hadn't much time so I just harvested some lettuce and rhubarb for lunch.

I went back in the afternoon to shut the covers and harvest some spinach and PSB (which is starting to flower).

The potatoes have provided an interesting experiment. I planted 4 buckets of Lady C on the same day and put 2 of them in the potato bed, on a 4 inch layer of fresh horse muck. The other 2 went in the tunnel, on bare soil. Both lots are covered with plastic cloches. The leaves were showing through in both buckets on the horse muck yesterday, but there is no sign of anything appearing in the buckets on the soil.

I almost forgot - on my way back from the plot I noticed that a house across the road, which has been having some building work done, had a skip in the drive with some bricks in it. Bricks are very useful and I am always wanting more, so I got the car and asked if I could take some. I'm not at all good at this sort of thing, but I came away with 8 extra bricks, which pleased me.

[Penellype]

Not much time yesterday so all I did was open and close the covers. The wind got up a bit during the afternoon and pulled apart the hotbed frame, which I had to mend.

It was still windy this morning, but also sunny, which meant I needed to open the covers. I did this on the way to the stables, where I took some of the germinated peas to the greenhouse. By the time I got back it was clear that the cover over the hotbed was either going to have to be shut or come off as it was threatening to break the frame. It wasn't so much the strength of the wind as the direction that was the problem. I decided that it was better to take it off and let the bed cool down a bit than to cook the plants by shutting it. This also gave me an opportunity to harvest some of the lettuce and spinach at the back of the bed, which is not very accessible when the cover is on.

I did some weeding and found a horsetail shoot emerging from under the hotbed - the first of many I suspect. I dug out as much of it as I could, then cut the grass which was getting a bit long in places and went home for lunch. My 48 begonia plants had arrived while I was out, so they had to have priority and there was no time for very much else.

I went back in the afternoon to put the cover back on the hotbed and shut the others. Hopefully the wind direction will change soon and I will be able to leave the cover open.

[Penellype]

A very busy weekend, with little time to do anything at all on Saturday other than open and shut the covers and take the slugs and snails to the stables for the chickens and pick some lettuce and spinach for lunch.

Yesterday was better and I managed to spend about half an hour at the plot in the afternoon, digging a few horsetail shoots out of the tunnel and weeding the raised beds. I'd not really finished when it started to rain - I'd seen on the radar that there were some heavy showers around, so I grabbed some PSB and rhubarb and legged it home. That was it for the day, unfortunately.

[Penellype]

Yesterday was dull, grey, uninspiring and rather cold - the forecast 15C was way out. I therefore did much of my gardening at home, where I could keep going back indoors.

I did get down to the plot for a while around lunchtime, when I collected the water from Sunday's rain and did a few bits of weeding. There were quite a few horsetail shoots showing in the tunnel, particularly in the path areas, and I did my best to dig them up. The roots were thin and fragile, and the ones I didn't break came up attached to very short pieces of thicker root that I clearly missed before. I suspect there will be loads more of this to do, as the more I looked the more little shoots I found. Some of them are underneath the PSB and brokali, so they will have to wait until I can dig there.

I had nowhere near finished by the time my back had had enough, and that was it for the day.

[Penellype]

Yesterday was extremely frustrating. It was a nice sunny day, if rather chilly, but I had an important job to sort out and although it should have taken about half an hour to do, it had all the hallmarks of an all-day affair. And so it proved - waiting for phone calls, about 20 emails, battling with a printer that worked fine the day before but decided to only print half the page when I really needed it... and then having to fill in a government form having finally collected together all the required info. Yuck.

I escaped to the plot briefly in the morning to open the covers a little, and by lunchtime I was so fed up that I downed tools and went back to dig some horsetail in the tunnel. However, I couldn't really get stuck in as I knew I had to get home, so I was only there about 15 minutes. I grabbed some spinach for tea and went back home.

Once everything was sorted at home I took some fleece down and wrapped up the strawberry plants as they have flower buds on, and closed all the covers. This is going to be a daily routine for at least the rest of this week

[Penellype]

Another busy day yesterday, when distractions included meetings and waiting in for a parcel that never arrived. At least some of this stuff is one-off and has now been dealt with.

As it was quite frosty I delayed opening the covers until nearly lunchtime when things had warmed up a bit. I had to go to the shops in any case, so I took some buckets of used compost with me and stopped on the way to top up the parsnip bed, a job I have been meaning to do for a while.

I went back for a short while in the afternoon to level the bed, dig some more horsetail out of the tunnel and pick some spinach for tea. The potatoes in the 2 buckets in the tunnel are finally beginning to emerge - quite a big difference from the ones in the main potato bed which were planted on the same day and sprouted leaves about a week earlier. I decided to earth these up a bit with some compost from a finished tray of lettuces to keep them warmer.

I went back again at about 5pm to shut the covers and was pleasantly surprised to find that there was still a little sunshine on the plot, including on the raspberries. Removing the hedge and that big overhanging tree branch has made a lot of difference.

[Penellype]

Nothing doing on Thursday except a couple of quick trips down to open and close the covers and grab some lettuce, spinach and PSB.

There was a bit more time yesterday and I spent an hour or so in the morning attending to the wildlife corner. I'd put pots of strawberries on various seats in this corner, and there were nettles growing up behind them, threatening to swamp the lot.

When I started off with the plot the hedge was a lot wider on the west side and I used the piece of orange mesh that was already there to create a corner, behind which I threw a load of hedge cuttings and bits of wood. The idea was to create a nice environment under the hedge for wildlife, with nettles growing up around it which I could cut back from time to time for compost. I quite like this, but having cut back the hedge, the corner was out of line, and I felt that if I moved the pile of sticks back a bit I could create a better corner with easier access to cut the hedge. So that's what I was trying to do yesterday.

I moved the pots of strawberries and the seats (except the one that is embedded in the ground, which I may try to remove at some point) and cut back the nettles. As expected, this revealed some horsetail shoots, and when I started moving the sticks, I uncovered quite a few snails. I removed these and managed to get the orange mesh back into a line along the roadside hedge, which is much better. Removing the sticks from the remains of the nettles was harder, and there is a limit to the amount of bending down I can do, so after a while I put the strawberries back on their seats in the corner.

The idea is to have the strawberries on proper shelves (I have these ready), but the ground needs levelling there first, and this is a job for another day.

I harvested some lettuce and a few spinach leaves for lunch and went home, and didn't get back to the plot until evening as there were jobs I wanted to do at home, and it unhelpfully decided to rain for a short while mid afternoon.

The next job is to start thinking about creating a 2nd hotbed for some melons. I have another plastic tunnel which I could use to cover it, but I'm looking for a more permanent solution. The tunnels I have are just over a year old and they are splitting near the zips and little holes are appearing in various places, which I mend with greenhouse repair tape. One of the zips also came apart above the fastener, which I managed to fix, but clearly these covers are not a great long term solution - I will be surprised if they are useable for more than another year. They also have the disadvantage that only one side opens, which means if it is windy when the cover is open the whole thing catches the wind like a sail and pulls the frame apart. This is probably one of the reasons why the covers are getting damaged.

I need a frost cover which is light enough for me to lift onto and off the hotbed, will fit over a bed 2m long and 3ft wide, is heavy enough not to blow away and tall enough to accommodate mature lettuces, spinach etc. This is proving something of a problem. Most cold frames are either 2ft x 4ft or 4ft x 4ft approx, neither of which is any use. There are plastic covers of which the one I have is the best fit, all of which have similar issues and most of which would blow away in the first strong breeze. I looked at small greenhouses, but as the main objective is to cover the hotbed(s), and most greenhouses are roughly 6ft (too small) or 8ft (too big), it seems a very expensive way of going about it and is rather a waste just for the hotbeds, which in any case don't want a 6ft high cover. I also have the massive problems of delivery (which would have to be to the allotment, so what's the postcode?) and putting the thing up by myself.

There is a wood and polycarbonate cover for one of the veg trugs that is nearly the right size, but at 15 kg and nearly 6ft long I think I would struggle to lift it on and off the hotbed (which I need to do at least once a year to empty and refill it). I'm not getting any younger, so if I think that would be hard now, in 5 years time it will be impossible. Also, with a V shaped ridge, the cover is not very high at the sides and taking that into account I'd probably lose the use of about 1/2 the area of the hotbed.

Another option is one of these: https://www.garden-products.co.uk/sh...alf-growhouse/. There are several advantages to this, although it is expensive (but not as expensive as a greenhouse). Firstly, as I have the 4ft version at home, I know I can put it together and what it does and doesn't do. I know that you can lift out the panes of glass so it is light and easy to move around (although anything 6ft long is going to be a little awkward). It has straight sides so although I lose a foot width (1/3 of the bed) plus a bit at each end, I can at least plant the whole area inside. With the glass in it is heavy enough to stay put in a gale so there are no worries in that department. There are also shelves, which I can use for hardening off and for greenhouse space for salads in winter. I think this looks like a solution for the melon hotbed (where I won't be planting to the edge of the bed anyway), and I can continue to use the plastic tunnels for the lettuces and potatoes until they fall apart. Worst case scenario I can revert to the plastic tunnels and move this elsewhere, and use it for tomatoes in summer, taking the top glass off when they get too tall. I'm tempted .

[Penellype]

Not much time on Saturday, so all I did was open the covers and collect the jar of snails for the chickens, nip in to harvest some lettuce for lunch on the way home from the stables and go back to close the covers and harvest spinach and PSB for tea.

Today was all about hotbeds. I spent the morning mucking out and filling the hotbed at my friend's (16 trugs of muck) and the afternoon filling the hotbed at the allotment (24 trugs of muck). I'd intended to do my friend's one yesterday, but the muck trailer had just been emptied and there wasn't enough muck to do the job. Today was a good day to do this as it kept me warm in a really very cold wind - I would probably not have spent long at the plot if I had been weeding etc.

I decided to bite the bullet and ordered the growhouse to go on the hotbed. They have a 1-2 week delivery time and as Easter is in the way I thought I had better get on with it!

[Penellype]

First job today (apart from opening the covers) was to get 3 bags of compost and spread it on the new hotbed. That done, I covered it with weed matting again and it can be left to itself until the growhouse arrives.

The next job was watering. Although it has been chilly, the persistent wind has dried everything out and the whole place was looking really dry. I gave all the pots and everything planted in the raised beds, plus the peas a good drink. This has an unexpected advantage - because of the hedge removal I had to move 2 of the water dustbins away from their proper positions and they need moving back near the fence, but of course they are far too heavy when full of water. One of these is now half empty and I should be able to move it in the next couple of days. I can then move the water into it from the other one and move that too.

The plot was really quite cold as it is exposed to the east, so I picked some lettuce and spinach and spent the rest of my gardening time cutting the grass at home and straightening the lawn edge in the front garden, which faces west and was therefore a lot warmer.

[Penellype]

An unpleasant surprise awaited me at the plot today, but first things first.

I went down fairly early to open the covers and collected the horsetail roots and other rubbish to take to the tip. I noticed some bindweed was appearing in the hedge and pulled that out as best I could to add to the load.

When I got back the plan was to move one of the water bins to the back of the shed, but before I did so I wanted to take out some of the longer sticks I'd piled behind the shed, so that I can get at them easily if I need them. These were going in the woodshed, and there I ran into a problem. There is no pretty way of saying it, something (or more likely someone from the positioning of it) had had a sh*t in the woodshed and one of my bags of wood pieces was covered in what was clearly diarrhoea. It had also got onto a roll of mesh that was in there. I managed to remove and empty the offending sack and rolled it up with a piece of contaminated plastic, put both in a charity bag and stuffed them into the dog poo bin at the bus stop. I attempted to rinse the mess off the mesh, but with no running water and no rubber gloves it was impossible, so I left it outside in the hope that it will eventually wash clean when it rains. That was not how I had envisaged spending a large chunk of my morning

Having removed the smelly and revolting mess I extracted one of the pieces of metal mesh that came with the plot from behind the wood shed and used it to barricade the doorway. It won't keep a determined human out, but it at least covers the opening. I then went back to what I was doing before and moved the half empty water bin to its proper position. I put away a couple of sheets of bubble wrap that I had been drying off in the wind, and put a couple more out to dry. There (hopefully) shouldn't be any need to keep the water bins wrapped now. By the time I had done all this it was lunchtime so I picked a lettuce and some rhubarb and went home.

I went back for a while in the afternoon to do some "proper" gardening. There were a load of horsetail fruiting bodies popping up in the grass path (and loads of them in the neighbouring plot), so I removed all I could find on my plot, plus a few ordinary horsetail shoots. I then dug over the old parsnip bed again, removing more horsetail roots and finally weeded the peas and along the roadside hedge. Everything is really starting to grow now and I am determined not to let it get out of control.

[Penellype]

No repeat of yesterday's problem and the mesh I put across the wood shed door has stayed put.

Now that the weather has warmed up a bit I took some turnip and beetroot seedlings down to plant out. The turnips were planted next to the parsnips and hopefully will be harvested before the parsnip foliage gets too big. The beetroot went next to the turnips, leaving the end of this bed for some summer leeks which are still too small to plant out.

Other than that I had time for a bit of weeding and put some more of the bubble wrap to dry in the sun. I then went home with some lettuce, spinach and a leek, intending to cook the bread I'd made this morning. As I got home the burglar alarm in a nearby house went off, which I soon discovered was due to a power cut. I could have spent another half hour down at the plot, but I had no way of knowing that at the time!

[Penellype]

No gardening time yesterday, but I made up for it today.

First job was to take the growhouse parts down to the plot in the car. It was packed in sensible sized parcels so it wasn't too heavy to move. I then had to unpack it all and put the frame together, which I did on the grass near the fence. Getting the frame put together took until lunchtime, and when I was happy with it I harvested a lettuce and went home for a break.

After lunch I tightened up all the bolts, using one of the pieces of glass to check that everything was as square as possible. Then I put the frame onto the hotbed before putting the glass in, as it would be too heavy to lift when glazed. The glass panes lift out reasonably easily.

By the time I had put all the glass in, added a shelf and put the handles on the doors (which are tricky to put on) it was tea time, so I picked some spinach from the hotbed and went home.

After tea I brought down some pea seedlings and my camera - these are my 2 hotbeds this evening:



I'm very pleased with this and it fits on the hotbed perfectly, with a small area behind where I may grow some french beans. I need to make up the other shelf and then I should have room for at least another 4 seed tray sized trays for hardening things off etc. The bed itself should be ready to plant melons in by the time the plants have grown big enough to plant out - I will be sowing them this weekend.



I am trying very hard to keep on top of the lettuce and spinach in the older hotbed, but it is growing rather fast for me at the moment! There are also red and yellow beetroot and some carrots in there.

Finally I watered everything - it has been quite hot today and once again things are drying out fast.

[Penellype]

Another glorious sunny day, although verging on too hot for me.

After spending the morning at the stables I went down to the plot after lunch and spent some time removing emerging horsetail shoots from around the edges of the plot, particularly under the roadside hedge. I then checked the raised beds and removed one horsetail shoot from among the cauliflowers.

Next job was to dig the bed for the next lot of peas - this has been covered with weed matting and several horsetail shoots had emerged underneath it. I dug the whole bed and removed quite a bit of horsetail, then put in the stakes and netting ready for peas. The weed matting went back down to keep the cats off and the annual weeds down.

By the time I'd done this I was really hot so I picked some spinach for tea and went home.

There are still loads of ladybirds about, quite a few of which have discovered that my raspberries have aphids. Hopefully they will keep the wretched things under control.