Penellype's Allotment

[Penellype]

As expected, the rest of Saturday was pretty much a write-off, although not as windy as forecast. I managed to find a dry slot in the evening and collected another half dustbin full of water, otherwise it was mostly a (much needed) housework day.

The prospect of a prolonged deluge next week, with inches of rain forecast and little dry weather at all between Monday and Thursday had my brain buzzing all night trying to work out how I was going to fit a week's gardening into a dry morning and possibly showery afternoon. It didn't help that having not been able to do anything at my friend's on Saturday, the weeds there needed urgent attention. By 5.30 I'd had enough and got up to get on with it as it was a nice, sunny morning.

Luckily the whole day was dry and I was able to get on pretty much uninterrupted. Rather than bore everyone with details, this is what I got done:

Staked the tomato plants at home that I'd planted out late Saturday evening.
Moved more tomatoes out to the growhouse.
Took 4 5l bottles that my sister had given me down to the plot and filled them with water from the water butt to give me extra capacity if I need it.
Collected up a very small amount of water from rain after my last visit.
Collected up some slugs and snails.
Swapped the drip tray for a seed tray under the brassica seedlings in the tunnel so that they don't drown.
Walked round and pulled the horsetail from the raised bed area and as much as I could from the grass path.
Trimmed the long edges of the grass path.
Dug horsetail shoots out of the unoccupied parts of the tunnel and pulled what I could see from between the plants.
Spent an hour weeding at my friend's having seen to the horses and fed the slugs to the chickens.
Took the 2nd melon plant to the plot and planted it in the growhouse.
Tidied out the shed and put the nets and plastic covers in the storage chest.
Cut back the nettles in the wildlife corner and removed a load of horsetail
Trimmed long hawthorn shoots off both hedges and removed horsetail and bindweed shoots
Cut back some more of the fallen spinach and harvested a bagful.
Harvested the last 4 carrots from the hotbed, a turnip, some more new potatoes, a decent number of peas and 2 strawberries
Planted out 2 cucumbers at home and put up a plastic blowaway to protect them
Reorganized the cover over the cauliflower I had to move to fit the cucumbers in (only possible because I ate one of the cauliflowers on Saturday).
Tidied the garage and removed anything not waterproof from the floor (it floods in heavy rain).
Took runner beans to my friend's greenhouse and saw to the horses.
Watered all the plants in the greenhouse plus the potatoes at home and at the allotment.
Pondered what to do about the ants nets in the bottom of the hotbin as I need to empty it, and decided I need to use bait if I am not going to get bitten

By the time I'd done that lot I was more than a little tired. The evening forecasts moved the main rain area somewhat to the south, so that we are still wet but not looking at continuous rain for 4 days.

Unsurprisingly I am stiff as a post this morning. It is dry and sunny at the moment and the overnight forecasts have again reduced the expected rain so that (currently) there is much less of it today and tomorrow and Wednesday is dry, with most of the rain here forecast to land over night into Thursday. That would suit me fine, but as always these things can't be relied upon. I will be taking it easy today, but there are still plenty of things I can get on with if I want to.

[Penellype]

With York right on the northern edge of the rain band yesterday the forecasts had no chance of being accurate. While it was clear that the afternoon would be wet, the morning was up for grabs, and it turned out to be mostly dry.

I made use of the unexpected dry weather by spending an hour or so weeding the 4 raised beds nearest the raspberries. The courgette bed in particular grows lots of weeds, unsurprisingly as I added some of the compost that grew potatoes last year - this came from one of the daleks on the plot and was clearly full of weed seeds. I removed everything green, down to tiny pairs of seed leaves that were barely open, in the hope that nothing will now be big enough to seed itself before I have a chance to do it again.

That done, I removed some more of the leaning spinach from the hotbed and harvested a bagful. I checked the peas (not quite ready for another pick) and the strawberries (one ripe enough to eat) and went home to try and find a solution to the ants nest in the bottom of the hotbin.

A trip to the garden centre left me feeling at a loss as to what to do. The ant bait stations are clearly for indoor use, telling you to keep them away from pets and saying the chemical is dangerous and shouldn't be released into the environment. The sprays are similarly nasty, and I have to bear in mind that I want to eat potatoes grown in the compost, so I don't want to chuck poison about. When I got home the hotbin people, whom I had emailed for advice over the weekend had replied. They said if ants were in the bin it is too dry. Their suggestion was to empty the hotbin (that's what I want to do but can't because I'm scared of being attacked by the ants!) then pour half a cup of boiling water over it. Half a cup will make no difference to either the temperature or the dryness of that amount of compost unless it is a VERY big cup!

Has anyone any suggestions as to what I might do, bearing in mind that he hotbin is next to my back door and I do NOT want the ants moving out of the bin and into the house!?

[Jungle Jane]

Could you keep adding cold water to the hot bin,boiling water would kill everything,the ants should move out,maybe move the bin to the bottom of the garden before you start to keep them away from the house? A good watering won’t harm anything you want in there but the ants won’t like it,they’d happily move to another dry sunny spot in their hotbin removal van

[Penellype]

Could you keep adding cold water to the hot bin,boiling water would kill everything,the ants should move out,maybe move the bin to the bottom of the garden before you start to keep them away from the house? A good watering won’t harm anything you want in there but the ants won’t like it,they’d happily move to another dry sunny spot in their hotbin removal van

Thanks for the suggestions Jungle Jane - unfortunately its not going to be that simple.

There are several issues here. The hotbin is pretty much full, its far too big and heavy for me to move, even if I had a space to put it in, which I don't. To put this into context, half a trug full of the compost that comes out of the bottom is all I can lift, I usually dig out about 4 1/2 trugs when I "empty" it, which removes probably about 1/6 of the volume of the bin.

What surprises me is that the ants find it a nice place to live at all, as the compost that comes out is usually sticky and quite wet (which is why it is so heavy) - far too wet to sieve the chunks out of, for example. I usually give it another 6 months to a year to break down further by using it for potatoes when it first comes out of the hotbin.

The top part of the bin is running happily at 60C and steam comes out when you open the lid. Getting it into this stage and keeping it there is quite a tricky and delicate process, and its easy to get it wrong and have the thing go cold on you so you have to balance what you put in, including adding paper to absorb excess liquid. This is my only way of getting rid of my food waste (I have issues with the council neglecting to empty my dustbin, so I haven't put one out for 4 years, which is another story). Therefore I am very reluctant to pour cold water into the bin as it will stop it in its tracks and turn it into a cold, soggy mess. I would almost certainly have to empty out the whole bin (nowhere to put the contents) and attempt to dry it out or dump it (where, how?) and start again. The contents include fish and chicken skin from recent meals, which would be smelly and likely to attract rats if left in the open.

At the moment I am restricting what I put in the bin to cooked food waste, grass and deadheads that might seed in cold compost plus paper and a bit of compost chunks to keep the bin aerobic, and I'm putting everything else in the wormery. But I will run out of room soon. I love my hotbin, and it works really well, I just don't want it full of ants

[Penellype]

Yesterday was a write-off, but not because of rain. It was very cold and windy, more like October than June. Despite 3 layers of clothing I was frozen by the time I got to the plot in the morning to check for water. There wasn't any worth having.

The wind was already playing havoc with the spinach and several plants had broken. I cut these off and collected a bagful of edible leaves then headed home.

I got a a little gardening done at home in the morning before the rain started, and by lunchtime it had stopped so I went back down to the plot to check everything and collect the water (less than a bucketful). The spinach was no worse so I left it, but the wind was ripping leaves off the raspberries. Nothing I could do about that. I checked that the tomatoes and melons in the growhouse had water, picked a ripe strawberry and some peas and retreated back home.

It rained steadily from about 6pm, but as it wasn't a deluge I saw no point in going out and getting wet to collect a small amount of water. It has rained on and off all night and is currently drizzling, so the first job today will be to see how much water I have collected this time. I have a feeling the real deluge is going to arrive here tonight.

[Penellype]

Although yesterday was often "dry" according to the radar, it was in fact cold, damp and often drizzly. I collected the water from the overnight rain in the morning, checked everything was reasonably ok after the wind and removed a strawberry that was going brown while still green. That was it for yesterday.

A repeat performance today, not because its wet, but because I have meetings as usual today. We had about 8mm of rain over night which translated to half a dustbin full. Another 2 strawberries were going brown and I expect much more of this - strawberries hate being wet. Some of the petals have stuck to the fruit and I pulled off as many as I could to give the fruit some air.

Everything was wet through and I hadn't much time, but I did pick a bag of peas before coming home.

[Penellype]

Another day, more rain. Friday was showing as dry on the weather apps on Thursday night, but by morning it was raining. I managed to find a short dry slot and collected the water then cut down some more of the bolting spinach in the hotbed, harvesting a bagful for the freezer. Before I'd finished what I wanted to do it was raining again.

The afternoon was somewhat better and I made use of the drier weather. I collected yet more water (I still have an empty bin and a bit of space in another) then walked round the whole plot other than the tunnel and removed all the horsetail I could see. The fact that I could do this in one session shows how much less horsetail there is than this time last year.

Having done that I spent some time cutting back the grass that was growing into the roadside hedge and removing the dead bluebell foliage. I got about half way down the hedge before my knees started to protest, so I picked some peas for tea and went home.

By teatime it was raining again, so I stopped off on the way back from the stables and collected another bucketful of water. The ground is coping quite well with all this rain - the grass near the raspberries is a little squelchy, but its by no means a mud bath out there.

[Penellype]

Yesterday was rather drier than recently, until about 4pm when heavy showers arrived. I went down in the morning to check for water and decided to plant out the kohlrabi in the tunnel. I then checked the strawberries (not quite ready), collected the jar of slugs and went to the stables.

I was back for a short while after lunch and found to my surprise that most of the grass was reasonably dry. I decided to cut it as it was growing quite fast and although the odd dry day is forecast early next week I have learned to "make hay while the sun shines". I therefore got on with it then went home to mow the lawns, although the back lawn was too wet and squelchy to cut.

Once again I collected a fair amount of water in the evening, and I'm off to do the same again now as we had more rain after I came home.

[Penellype]

Another dryish day yesterday with no rain until about 3pm. After a morning gardening at my friend's I spent a decent amount of time at the plot.

The main job was to remove the rest of the bolting spinach from the hotbed. Although this was still growing, all it was producing was flowering spikes with loads of tiny leaves which were rather coarse. It took me a good hour to cut it down and sort out anything edible to bring home and freeze. 5 trugfuls of chopped spinach plants went into the compost bin.

Removing the spinach cleared one half of the hotbed (the other half contains beetroot which will be there for a while yet). There were 2 tomato plants in the growhouse on drip trays alongside the melons and these were earmarked for the space. Bearing in mind how big this variety (Oh Happy Day) grew last year, before I planted them I knocked in 2 sturdy wooden stakes. When I moved the bigger plant which has been in the growhouse a while, I found an ants nest under the drip tray. There seem to be ants everywhere this year.

Tomatoes planted I then harvested a couple of cauliflowers - these are growing rapidly and are almost all ready to cut. I think I will be eating cauliflower solidly for the next couple of weeks. I also picked some peas and ate a ripe strawberry from the tunnel, then went home to mow the back lawn, which I decided would simply have to be dry enough as I couldn't rely on Monday's forecast of a dry day being correct. I was right about this - there is a weak front over Yorkshire this morning, and it is scheduled to stay put all day, producing some rain and drizzle.

After a couple of heavy showers I was back in the evening to collect yet more water. One dustbin still needs filling, then there will just be the water butts that fill from the shed roof, which are about 3/4 full at the moment.

[Penellype]

Supposedly a dry day yesterday, but the morning was grey and drizzly. I collected the overnight rain and a few damaged strawberries and went home.

Things brightened up a little around lunchtime and I went back and tidied up some of the grass edges, removing horsetail shoots as I did so. I also dug up some horsetail from the tunnel and pulled a few bits from the raised beds, particularly among the cauliflowers.

The grass near the fence is hard to cut because the ground is not flat and I have various things near the fence (bins, storage box and blackcurrant bush). I intend to add the gooseberry (which has sawfly despite being in the tunnel so there is no point keeping it in there) and possibly some of the strawberries when they have finished fruiting, and this will make it even harder to cut the long bits of grass. So I decided to put some weed matting down along the fence line which these various things can stand on. I had a spare roll in the shed so I might as well put it to good use. I moved everything away from the fence and removed 5 huge slugs from under the storage box, which I took to the chickens later.

Trying to lay out weed matting was something of a challenge. I didn't realize it was windy until I started, and the matting kept lifting up despite being weighed down in places with bricks. I got it tamed in the end, and put the bins, storage box and blackcurrant back on top. It looks ok. I left the half away from the shed folded up so that I can remove the grass which is mostly creeping bent and is threatening to take over in that area.

Finally I harvested the remainder of the bucket of Lady C potatoes. I haven't been weighing these, but there were enough small to medium potatoes to do me probably 4 meals.

The heavens opened again in the evening, so I was back on the way home from the stables to collect yet more rain water.

[Penellype]

Update on the hotbin situation - after seeing several birds pecking around the bottom of the hotbin I noticed there were far fewer ants about. They still appeared to be making tunnels out of fine powdery compost around the edge of the removable panel, but the rain washed some of this away. I decided to be brave yesterday and take the panel off. I armed myself with rubber gloves and used the stirring hook that comes with the hotbin to pull the panel off, prepared for anything upto a cloud of angry flying ants. There were actually only a few ants running about with no sign of winged ones or eggs, and as I expected the compost in the hotbin was far too wet and sticky for ants, so what they thought they were doing in there I have no idea. I managed to empty some of the compost out and I now have more room for my rubbish .

[Penellype]

Finally a reasonably warm, dry and sunny day yesterday (until late evening when it started to rain). I spent a fair bit of the morning at the plot, weeding the tunnel and pegging down a few strawberry runners to root. Once again I had to remove several fruit that were going brown while still green, but there were a couple of ripe ones. There were also a few ripe raspberries - I ate one on Monday and about 5 yesterday. I also harvested another cauliflower, some peas and a lettuce. The cauliflowers are expanding at a tremendous rate and some are showing signs of slug damage now.

After lunch I went back down for an hour or so. I finished trimming the grass edge along the roadside hedge, pulling out a fair amount of horsetail and nettle roots that were creeping towards the grass. By the time I'd finished it was time for Royal Ascot, so I went home, intending to nip in and out of the garden between races. However, I found my back garden full of orange bodied flies - I have no idea what these are and Googling hasn't helped.



The abdomens are really bright orange, but I am not a good enough photographer to catch one in flight. As I have no idea what these are or whether or not they bite, I was reluctant to spend much time out there in amongst them, which was a shame. Strangely I haven't seen any of these at the plot at all.

[Penellype]

Yesterday started wet and it took until mid morning to stop raining. There was quite a bit of water in the trays again as it had also rained heavily the previous evening, although we avoided the forecast thunderstorms.

Once it had dried up I went down and collected the water, and pulled some bits of horsetail out from around the raised beds. Everything was dripping wet, so apart from picking some strawberries and eating a couple of raspberries, all I did was harvest a beetroot for lunch.

I went back after lunch having spent some time planning what to do about the blueberry bushes. There is plenty of fruit and my original intention was to protect them from birds by moving them into the tunnel. However, because I have all the strawberries in there at the moment and need to plant the brassicas soon, if I put 2 blueberry bushes in there I am going to be short of space. They don't want to live in there anyway as they flower later than I put the top back on the tunnel in spring, and they need pollinating. The idea has always been to build a fruit cage at the road end of the compost area and it has just been a case of how. This morning I firmed up on the idea of a 2m by 0.75m cage made of aluminium poles. This will easily fit in the available area and could be extended later if I want, but has the advantage that I have a net that will cover that size from an old fruit cage I had at home.

Having made the decision and ordered the poles and joints, I wanted to dig over the area and remove as much horsetail as possible. this area has been dug twice this year already and is covered with weed matting. I therefore spent an hour or so at the plot peeling back the weed matting, removing large numbers of slugs and digging the horsetail out. There was less of it that I expected and the soil was reasonably dry under the matting so it was not too difficult.

Slugs are becoming a problem now that it is wetter. I didn't apply the nematodes earlier in the year as I usually do, firstly because it was too cold and then because it was too dry. Despite my efforts with copper rings and slug gone there are signs of damage on the strawberries, carrots in the tunnel, runner beans, courgettes and cauliflowers. Before I went home I harvested a cauliflower and removed 8 slugs from the leaves and head. I've ordered some nematodes and also some copper mesh which I can experiment with. It might help if I put it round the beans (providing it arrives in time) and I may find it easier to deal with than rigid copper rings round things like turnips and swedes which tend to get too big for their rings.

[Penellype]

Thursday was busy as usual and I only had time to cut a cauliflower and pick some peas. Yesterday was a beautiful day and as I stood by the raspberries eating the ripe fruit and listening to the bees busy pollinating the flowers it finally felt like summer.

I'd brought the germinating swedes down with me and they went on the shelf in the tunnel with the other brassicas. I'd also brought a bottle of tomato feed , which I used to feed the tomatoes in the hotbed and the fruit bushes. I'd spent some time in the morning deciding where to put everything as I had 10 pots of late peas (Terrain) that I had forgotten about when I put the cucumbers in at home. I'd decided these could follow the cauliflowers in half of one of the beds, but as soon as I looked I wasn't happy with that as the bed has hoops over which would get in the way of the pea netting and I couldn't take them away until I'd finished the cauliflowers. The idea had been to clear the bed yesterday, but there were 3 huge caulis and one small one and I simply couldn't deal with all of that at once, so I had to think again. The bed is also one of the worst infested with horsetail so planting peas in half of it today is not a great idea.

While I was thinking about this I dug out some bits of horsetail from the path between the raised beds and the tunnel and harvested 2 of the large cauliflowers. I picked some peas and a few strawberries and went home for lunch.

I decided that I would plant some of the brassicas (probably romanesco) after the caulis - not great, but it will have to do. The peas could therefore go down the centre of the tunnel which was ready for planting. I took the peas down with me and spent some time giving the area a quick dig to remove any bits of horsetail, putting up the pea netting and planting the peas. I gave them and the potatoes and melons a water (amazing how quickly things dry out) and went home to watch Ascot.

While I was out my copper mesh and nematodes had arrived (less than 24hrs after ordering). I didn't have time to do the nematodes (which are not supposed to be applied in bright sunshine anyway), but I nipped down between races and put some copper mesh around the beans. The lower leaves of these have been completely shredded but the stems are ok and there are leaves higher up, so if the copper mesh works they should be fine.

[Penellype]

A very busy weekend which had me running about in all directions trying to get things done before the weather broke. Quite a lot of this was at home and at my friend's, so what actually got done at the allotment doesn't look much.

On Saturday I collected the jar of slugs for the chickens and a cauliflower for my friend and spent the morning in her garden. After lunch I just had time to go and pick some peas, raspberrries and strawberries and water the potatoes, fruit bushes and melons and it was time to go again.

I was determined to cut the grass on Sunday as the weather for the next week is warm and humid and the grass is likely to be too wet to cut, so I was down at the plot as soon as I had finished making a hotbed and planting out melons at my friend's. I went round first pulling out all the horsetail I could find then got the grass done. I also went round with a bucket removing some of the weeds and gave the potatoes a bit more water.

This time I harvested raspberries (which still get no further than being picked and eaten straight away), peas, all the ripe and nearly ripe strawberries (to save them from rain damage) and the first courgette (there is another ready and I am probably about to get swamped). Then it was off home for more of the same.