No action at the allotment

Rosie and I wandered down the lottie yesterday afternoon. I had a vague hope of doing some weeding but instead we chose to do an inspection of the plot, and take some measurements too, so that I can draw a little plan.

Update on the growth:

Potatoes (accent) – the flowers are out, we may be harvesting our first potatoes next weekend.

Aubergine (that’s Eggplant, Pamela) – a little nibbled round the edges of one of the three plants

Peas – one or two have been nibbled as well. One of the neighbour’s compost bins is inhabited by mice, so they are my first suspects.

Beans – not sure whether it’s the borlotti, enorma, or tendergreen, but there’s one flower. The plants generally look very unhappy.

First sowing of carrots and beetroot looking fabulous – very exciting.

Rosie and I took measurements of the plot and I can announce that it is 7.3m by 9m. I will be drawing out a little diagram to show where the beds are and hopefully will be able to scan it into the blog later on this week.

A Taste of Italy

There are a wealth of gardening/allotment blogs on the web and rarely a day goes by without me stumbling across another one that catches my imagination, and leads to yet another RSS feed being added to my Google feed reader.

One particular blog that I came across (somehow, through too much internet surfing no doubt) is a real gem. Fluffius Muppetus is a great site, authored by the Fluffy Muppet herself, Emma, and it is accompanied by an invaluable resource, the Alternative Kitchen Garden podcasts. This series of regular podcasts gives great advice on such things as water-saving ideas, sowing seeds, composting, and jerusalem artichokes to name but a few topics. She’s so enthusiastic about all the topics, it usually makes me want to immediately go out and start propogating whichever plant she may be discussing.

The other night, when I really should have been getting ready for bed, I listened to the latest podcast, which was on the subject of Courgettes. I got very excited, as she was offering to give away to the first 20 e-mailers a packet of seeds, which she had been given by Seeds of Italy. I did not hesitate to send off an e-mail to the Fluffy Muppet, and asked to be put in the draw for a packet.

And yay! I was lucky and my packet of Alberello di Sarzana arrived in the post today.

So thank you, Emma, I’ll be keeping you informed on how these seeds get on.

And you never know, she might have some packets left, so go and visit.

A Productive Day

I know it’s been a long time since the last post here. I have been very busy with other, non-outside things and today was the first time in ages that I’d been down the allotment. Julie ND arrived a couple of minutes after me and the girls, and we stayed for a good few hours.

I remembered the camera, having thought at first that it was still lying on the bed, before finding it in the depths of my handbag. This is how it’s looking today:

Our potatoes are thriving

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We’ve got beans (borlotti, dwarf french tendergreen, and enorma runner), peas and a couple of raspberry bushes.

One of the flower fairies, brought back from Batsford Arboretum, watches over one of the raised beds.

Julie put in some aubergine plants last weekend, as well as some sweetcorn and she popped in some beetroot seeds in a couple of spaces too. The raised bed that was primarily intended for the girls to sew whatever they wanted had previously been planted with garlic, which is doing really well. Also we’d sown some flower seeds, but those didn’t seem to faring so well.

Julie and I are not sure whether what we’ve got there is one of our flower seedlings, or a self-sown poppy, or whether it’s just a weed.

We could also do with your help in ascertaining whether these are mature parsnip leaves, or are we dealing with another weed.

Today we put in some peas that I’d been bringing on at home, plus we dug another couple of half rows to put some more potatoes in. Jenny was very involved today, carrying worms around and she was the one who put the Nadine potatoes in the trench. She also put in some yellow Dwarf French beans, which she chosen from the little shop, and we decided to call them Jenny Beans. I sowed some more carrots, this time a carrot mix from Kings, which will produce a variety of different sized and coloured crops. Ooh, and I sowed some Swiss chard, which I’m very excited about. The colours will be fantastic.

When Julie has been down there on her own, she’s had lots of people coming up and asking whether we’ve had an allotment before, as the plot is looking so good. Our only experience is some back garden growing, useful advice from other helpful allotmenteers, and of course, my bulging collection of relevant books. We haven’t got any produce yet, so whilst we’re pleased with how it’s looking, we won’t be counting our chickens just yet (and not just because we don’t have any chickens). We had some wind damage on a few of the beans – I guess until you really know your plot, it’s difficult to predict how the weather will affect the site.

Our first sighting of our rhubarb.

Judith, our lottie neighbour, has offered us a more advanced rhubarb plant, as well as a squash plant if she has a spare. I have a few varieties of squash growing in the lean-to, and a couple of melon plants that are coming on slowly, so perhaps I can offer her something in return.

Julie pointed out the lettuce that another kind soul had virtually insisted on giving us. We have got such a variety of crops growing, it’s going to be a real taste-fest.

We have been offered a wooden shed, 7 x 5, by an old neighbour of Julie’s, which may be available very soon. We just have to get it up from Medway, but that looks like it might be possible too, with help from Julie’s sister, who has use of a van. We’re already planning what we’ll be putting round the edge of it. We had talked sunflowers, and that may do, but I’m thinking about the numerous pepper plants I’ve been cultivating. I think they might benefit from a solid surface behind them.

All that digging and bending is certainly good exercise. I felt quite wiped out by the time we left and despite a hot soak in the bath, I have a feeling I shall be achey tomorrow.

When the Going Gets Tough

I have been slaughtering the innocent, or as it’s known, thinning out and potting on. As I worked, I thought of Pam’s terminology of the ones you cull being volunteers. I haven’t heard that terminology before and whilst it made me a bit sad, the thought of them sacrificing themselves for the greater good crossed my mind more than once.

The survivors

I’ve sown some more tomatoes, some of which were seeds I got free with Gardener’s World magazine. In fact, I had three lots of those, as my Mum, who also gets GW mag gave me her packet and my sister handed over hers. Both of them are gardeners, but neither grow seeds. I passed on one of the three packets to Julie ND.

This afternoon the girls sowed ten sunflower seeds each. Jenny used the Giant Yellow seeds that have a sunny sunflower face on the packet. Rosie did half of those ones, and half from the mixed packet that were in the selection of seed packets I bought earlier today (because, of course, I don’t have enough seeds yet). I put some courgette seeds in, plus some basil seeds in a tray. My other basil seeds have not materialised at all, which I’ve found very perplexing, so I thought I’d start again. Then I did the thinning and tidied up (I add that last bit about tidying up, because I’m not so good about that usually). My Hubby looks out of the kitchen window and the lawn is strewn with evidence of my propagation activities, sometimes for days on end.

These are fun. Pepper seeds embedded in paper disks. A lot less fiddly, although of course not very economical.

Rosie, the saviour of all creatures, rescued a slug from the allotment at the weekend. We thought it looked very interesting with its yellow and brown stripe. I asked her to take it as far away as possible from our – down by the river would do. If Julie had been there, it would have been dispatched swiftly.

Another survivor

Post-Easter Progress

Did you know National Welly Week starts tomorrow? It’s an initiative by Garden Organic (formerly HDRA) to raise funds to help educate and inspire people about organic gardening, farming and food. Sadly I haven’t managed to organise anything – I might have tried to get the girls’ school involved but the school needs more time to set something up. Maybe next year. But if it’s not too late for you, get over the Garden Organic site and download some of the resources to help you raise money to support their educational, social and international programmes.

Meanwhile, my seeds haven’t been doing as well as I’d expected. The Alicante that I sewed in the coir jiffys have all germinated but there doesn’t seem to be a lot happening with many of the others. I think maybe they’ve not been warm enough. I thought I would get enough heat our lean-to – it’s not a greenhouse, but does trap the heat as the weather gets warmer. But I know as the temperature drops outside at night, so does the temperature in the lean-to. I’ve moved some of the trays into my heated propagator – there’s not enough room for all the trays, so I’ll have to think of other solutions for the others.

I also need to do more sewing over the weekend – maybe I need to find a warmer place, somewhere inside the house for those seeds.

Last weekend at the allotment, I wilted under the lovely sunny weather. I am definitely not adapted to hot weather, having very fair skin that burns, even after a slathering of factor 40, and invariably I develop a heat-related headache. I was very aware that I need to develop strategies – ensuring that I am super-hydrated, that I take plenty of breaks in the shade, and wearing light-coloured, light-weight clothing that covers as much skin as possible without smothering me. If anyone has any other suggestions, please offer them up.

Here are some more piccies of our allotment progress. We’ve made great inroads, especially considering we only got our plot in February. Julie ND has been the star, doing much of the digging.

The potatoes are showing their foliage – really exciting.

In absentia

I’m afraid I didn’t get down to the allotment at the weekend. Julie has been down a couple of times and did some good work, digging a trench and chucking in some of the manure we’d had delivered to the plot and then putting in some broad beans.

In turn, I spent beautiful yesterday afternoon sowing seeds, as follows:

• 18 Tumbling Tom Tomatoes
• 22 Alicante
• 17 Sweet Million
• 7 Gardener’s Delight
• 20 Shirley f1
• 10 Sweet Basil
• 16 Rudbeckia Rustic Dwarf
• 20 Coriander
• 10 Tendergreen Dwarf French Bean
• 6 Enorma Runner Bean
• 10 Borlotti Firetongue Dwarf French Bean
• 5 Thyme
• 5 Greek Oregano
• 20 Aster Carpet Ball Mixed
• 12 Pepper Big Banana
• 16 Flat Leafed Parsley
• 20 Aster Ostrich Feather

The flower sowings are for my garden and for the NCT plant sale. I’m going to struggle if all of those tomatoes germinate. I didn’t have the heart to thin out the weaker ones last year but ended up with no space for some of them. I read on a gardener’s blog recently to think of it in terms of the cycle of life – put the thinnings on the compost heap and it goes back into feeding the crops in the future.

Batemans at Easter

We travelled down to Bateman’s in East Sussex. The house is set in beautiful grounds and there’s a working flour mill powered by a waterwheel.

As we walked through the dappled shade of the wild garden, hubby asked me name of the delicate, nodding flowers. They were the fritillaries, of course. He was amazed by the chequered bells of the f. meleagris.

A wide expanse of lawn at the front of the house is perfect for children of all ages to pelt across and blissfully there are no “Keep Off the Grass Signs”.

One of my favourite places to visit.