allotment – Page 2 – We bought ‘The Land’!!!

Onions are nearly ready!

Last weekend, Ashley and I decided to dig up all of the onions at the allotment. We had planted red and white onions, about the same amount of each. They had started yellowing and most were looking a very good size, they spent a day or two out in the sun and then we put them in the greenhouse to finish drying as the weather has been a bit up and down. A couple had gone to seed and so hadn’t really developed a bulb but overall a good harvest. We also put in some time clearing weeds that we’re starting to take hold on the newly vacated potato bed and around the onions. I’m a little ashamed to say that we haven’t really been to the allotment much this week – the plants in the greenhouse are going to be feeling a little sorry for themselves! And I expect the weeds will have used the time to ‘stretch their legs’! When will we learn to go there more regularly?!
I’m hoping that the weather is now warm enough to get some late runner and dwarf runner beans in the empty beds, also a fresh sowing of chard and possibly some peas. There should be plenty of room in the beds for the cauliflower and kale that I thought I’d try out (that’s if the seedlings have survived the recent neglect).

I think tomorrow will have to include a visit to the poor, abandoned allotment! I expect there will be courgettes galore, Swiss chard to be picked and maybe even some peas ready for picking! We had some peas the other day in a stir fry – they were quite small so not really worth removing from the pods so I cooked them whole, they were very yummy! I wonder how long until Ashley is sick of stir fry allotment veg?! I must look up some other recipes to use the veg – I’m not the worlds best cook I’m afraid!

Allotment visit – 30th June/1st july

Summer arrived here in Cornwall yesterday! High temperatures and glorious sunshine all day long meant that the allotment was really going to need some TLC but watering was going to have to wait until quite late in the evening. After visiting my best friend to help resolve a ‘which dress to wear’ dilemma, it was nearly 10pm when I stopped by the allotment. The temperature was finally dropping (but still not enough to need a cardi!) and it was light enough to spend a good half hour watering everything. I gave everything a good soak (except the onions, which I’ve read you should stop watering when the bulbs are starting to swell) and was thrilled to see some ripe fruits on the raspberry canes, flowers on the peas and beans and even a fruit or two forming on the sweet and chilli peppers in the greenhouse! After feeling for so long that this year might not be very productive and that we’d missed the chance to enjoy fresh peas, it is wonderful to finally be seeing some progress.

So this morning, I couldn’t wait to get back down there in the light of day and really see what’s happening! I was indeed met with the sight of 20 or 30 flowers on the peas (variety – Onward), 2 flowers on the runner beans (which I didn’t think would produce anything given the state they were in!), just 2 ripe raspberries (but more looking like they’ll be ready in just a day or 2!) and courgettes (varieties – Zuchinni and a rogue seed from last year) flowering and fruiting (is it a fruit?! You know what I mean!). I’ve never had any trouble with courgettes when growing them at home, they’ve always been so prolific we’ve been sick of the sight of them after a while! Maybe the more exposed conditions at the allotment have really slowed them down because we’ve barely had a flower until now. But there they were, in all their glory! There are at least 2 or 3 that, although tiny, could be picked now. I will wait a few more days as I already have some in the fridge to use up first. It’s so exciting to see things growing and fruiting!

The rhubarb has really picked up in the last week or so. It was a small plant when I bought it, just 2 or 3 stems on and these quickly got damaged by the wind. I was a little worried that it wasn’t going to recover, but I really shouldn’t have worried at all! It is booming! I won’t be harvesting from it this year but I think it will be good to go next year. I’ve seen an interesting rhubarb jam/butter recipe that I’d like to try. We only ever really had it stewed or as a crumble when I was growing up and, although I don’t mind eating it like that, I’d like to try something different with it.

The onions are looking good, too. As I said, I’ve stopped watering them now, a couple went to seed but I’m letting them do that and I’ll try to save the seed for next year – I’ve never done that before so we’ll see how it goes! I’m growing a red and a white onion, I can’t remember the specific varieties. Interestingly, none of the white onions went to seed, only the red. I don’t know if the variety has been bred to avoid this or if it’s just luck that the white onions haven’t produced seed but the red have. I’ll have to try and find the packets – I’m sure I kept them!

I started some more Dwarf French Beans (variety – Borlotto Firetongue I think!) in the greenhouse last week as the originals died outside. I really wanted to try these as I just love the colour of the beans and think they’ll be good for winter storing and using in stews and maybe some home made beans on toast! They are just starting to peek through, as are the cauliflowers and kale that I planted at the same time. The cauli and kale were free seeds with a gardening magazine. I just wanted to give them a go as I’ve never tried to grow either before! There are plenty of seeds left over for next years plants. I’m quite surprised that they are coming through already – I guess the conditions have just been right for them.

Weeding was the order of today, after I’d finished inspecting the veg and talking to myself about how much they’d grown or were ‘coming on nicely now’… passers by and the builders working opposite probably thought I was a bit nuts! Once my fingers were tingling from stinging nettles and I cleared as many weeds as I could bear, I started boxing up the mammoth harvest of summer raspberries (ha ha! maybe one day…) and picked some elderflowers for my next batch of elderflower cordial (the first lot is long gone and the second batch is well under way!).

Home for a much needed cup of tea and to write this up… my fingers are still tingling!

A ‘no dig’ bed

I thought I would share with you the process for building a ‘no dig’ bed. We have learnt this from our Charles Dowding organic veg book. I’m not sure we’re doing it quite right – Charles leaves areas covered with carpet or black plastic for months before building the bed but we have been impatient and skipped this step so that we can get growing a bit quicker. As a result, we suffer with the dock popping up all over the place. Hopefully there won’t be as much next year. We also only use wood chip and rotted manure as that’s what we have freely available, with a little of our home made compost as it’s available. Our vegetable beds probably aren’t the most nutrient rich at the moment but seems to be OK for what we are currently growing. We will be adding as much home made compost as we can when it’s available.

The first ‘layer’ is cardboard. It needs to be a decent layer with good overlapping. We probably should have used a bit more elsewhere on the plot so for this bed we made sure we didn’t scrimp on this step. The cardboard should be thoroughly soaked with water (we have found it easier to do this after laying it).

Next we added a layer of well rotted manure, then wood chip. We then built up much thicker layers of manure and wood chip until we were happy with the depth, finishing with the manure layer. The Charles Dowding book and website are well worth a look to see how he builds his beds. Looking at the bed now it’s finished, it’s a little big. The no dig method also relies on not compacting the soil by standing on it and so the beds are generally a bit smaller to facilitate this. I can reach the middle from both sides but we made this bed much deeper than all the others, so with the hight it can be a little difficult to reach properly without standing on it. I will have to make sure I always stand on a board to avoid compacting it too much.

I have plans for the leeks to go in this bed. There should be plenty of room for them and lots more besides!

Start of the harvest

A quick trip to the allotment this evening was a pleasure, even in the cool and misty weather we’ve had today. We pulled up the first potato plant and brought these beauty’s home, this should last us the week! I also picked just a few swiss chard leaves. It’s great to finally have produce to bring home, even if it is just the basics!

We planted out the leeks that have been growing away nicely in the greenhouse – they’ve been exposed to the elements for the last couple of days and now the nights are warming up, I think they will do just fine as long as the rabbit doesn’t take a shine to them!

Ashley managed to sneak a quick photo and video of the Swallows nest in the tool shed – I’ll show you what he found in another post very soon!

A quick visit to the allotment

I popped up to the allotment last night about 8pm to give the plants in the greenhouse a water and generally check on things as I haven’t been up there for a couple of days. Unfortunately, the birds and baby rabbits (who we discovered could get through our fencing!) have been having a nibble! The damage isn’t too bad but I needed to do something about it quickly before we lost crops. The peas and young brussel sprout plants were the worst affected, the Swiss chard had been nibbled but not too badly. Everything else seemed OK. Luckily, I had some gardening fleece in the car that was intended for the allotment anyway so I covered the affected veg with that. I had some hoops to raise the fleece off the young sprouts but the rest of it was just laid over the plants. It’s so light that it doesn’t damage the plants at all. I had to try and wrap the fleece around the pea supports. I will try to find a more suitable alternative for the peas but hopefully it will save the peas from the hungry birds for now! Thankfully, the bigger rabbits can’t get in or I don’t think there’d be much left at all!

The first strawberries!

I managed to get 3 perfect strawberries from the garden this evening! This feels like quite an achievement since the chickens discovered where they were! And they were MASSIVE! Home grown strawberries really are the most tasty. My much younger brother in law said that he didn’t really like strawberries until he tasted one of ours! Supermarket ones can be a bit bland, particularly out of season and if they’ve travelled a long way. I prefer to eat my strawberries ‘as they come’ – that is without sugar or cream, apart from the odd spoon of clotted cream (we are in Cornwall!). We chose to grow them in the garden rather than the allotment so that we could keep a closer eye on them and harvest as soon as they were ready, rather than letting the birds, rabbits, slugs and anything else get there first! Can’t wait for more!

One potato…

This little potato is the first produce from the allotment! Ashley and I spent the day there yesterday, the sun shone but the wind was a bit chilly – result = sunburn! Some of the first earlies are flowering so I had a little dig around in the soil with my hand and this little guy was there! I’m sure that there’s lots more but I decided not to dig them up as I don’t need them right away. Ashley strimmed some of the long grass and weeds, those threatening to spread seed all over our supply of rotted manure and those impeding the route into the potting shed area. In the tool shed, Ashley spotted a Swallow nesting which is lovely, but I’m a bit worried that we’ll be disturbing it going in and out for tools. We decided to sacrifice the beetroot that we’d put in a while ago as the weeds over took them early on and even though I’ve kept clearing the weeds, they don’t seem to have recovered well at all. We could do with the planting space so decided to scrap them for this year. We still have some beetroot pickled from what we grew last year anyway. In it’s place we put several brussel sprout plants; I’ve never grown them before but wanted to give them a go now we have more room. I think I will plant some lettuce and maybe some spring onions around them for the summer. The beans are still looking a little washed out, I think it’s the constant wind up there. We may have to look at putting up some sort of wind break. The newer growth looks OK though so we’ll see how they get on in the coming weeks. The peas are being munched by the birds though! Seeing other people’s plots online, it feels like ours is a bit behind – maybe because we didn’t have the greenhouse earlier in the season to get things started. But it’s good to see the potatoes and onions coming on well and I’m sure everything else will catch up.

A quick allotment tour…

Last night I headed down to our allotment to check on things and give the greenhouse a water. I thought I’d show you what we have going on so far. We started making the beds in February of this year and planting commenced in April. We have just 5 beds so far (the raised beds in the top left of the photo are someone else’s) but have fenced off a patch the same size again which will be filled with beds quite soon. As you can see, the central bed here is full of first early potatoes and doing well. I expect we can harvest some soon, as a few plants are showing flowers. Peas, beans and Swiss chard have gone in the bed to the left of that. The chard is looking great, but the beans are looking a little washed out.

I’m not sure why, possibly as it’s quite exposed at our allotment so are feeling the elements or maybe the soil conditions aren’t completely suitable.

On the right hand side of the allotment are onions, beetroot, parsnips and a few more potatoes that over spilled the first bed! We are incredibly lucky that the wonderful friends that allow us to use this field also keep horses (as you can see), so we have a ready supply of rotted horse manure to hand which has formed the main structure of the vegetable beds. Unfortunately, some of it is rather too well rotted and has collected a lot of seeds where it was sitting, which have now burst into life! On the plus side, we believe the weeds to be edible but they have out competed a lot of my beetroot seeds. The parsnip seem to have managed quite well though, and now everything’s a little bigger, it’s much easier to distinguish between the weeds and intended crop. I hope that with some constant weeding this year we will see much less of them next year! I’ve never grown parsnip before, so any words of wisdom are greatly appreciated!

The bed at the bottom of the first picture has a bit of a mixture in at the moment. I started with 2 raspberry bushes, one summer and one autumn fruiting variety. On the opposite side of that bed is a new rhubarb plant. We seem to be suffering quite badly in this bed with dock so have mulched part of it with cardboard. There is a courgette plant and a couple of small lavender plants. I don’t intend for the lavender to stay in the veg bed, but it needed a home! I want lavender dotted around the allotment because a) I love it, and b) we love bees! There doesn’t seem to be a particular shortage of bees around us but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t still try to encourage them. Ashley would like to get a bee hive set up at some point… I like the idea in theory but w certainly need to do some research before jumping into that one. Do you have any experience in bee keeping? Does a bee hive need daily attention?

There is another smaller bed just out of view in the first photo, that has blackcurrant and redcurrant in. It is also acting as a nursery bed for a few more lavender plants. We have a fairly established bed of blackcurrant bushes at home, we will move them down to the allotment this autumn I think. They are getting on well and it would be daft to move them now and lose what will hopefully be our best crop to date!

In the greenhouse at the moment I have several tomato varieties, some broccoli and Brussels sprouts that are waiting for a home on the plot, and some chilli and sweet pepper plants. One of Ashley’s next jobs is to build me some benches to go in there! For now, an old vertical grower (the mini greenhouse type) that has lost its cover and an old pallet or two are serving as shelving.

Well, that’s our little allotment! I hope you have enjoyed the little tour!