The hottest day of the year

Sunday was the hottest day of the year so far, and Jeremy was happy to entertain David for a while whilst Nat did some DIY, and I managed to escape up to the allotment for a few hours - lovely weather for it! I got loads done, which was sorely needed. First, I finished weeding the carrots and parsnips that I'd done roughly the other week. On the right here are 'before' and 'after' shots.

In the foreground, you can see the parsnips - about half a dozen or so have come through - not bad for our first year, as we hear that they're notoriously difficult to get to germinate. I had to look up what parsnip leaves look like, so that I didn't weed them by mistake - these all have the same leaves, and are in a neat row, so I'm pretty confident they really are parsnips.

I then went back to the beans and gave them a good watering, as it's been so hot recently. They seemed pretty happy even before I watered them, so hopefully they're developing good root systems.

Working back again towards the gate, the squashes and courgettes look very happy without any more watering, so I just hoed round them all to keep the soil clear.

The final job for the afternoon was to start on the brassicas at last. I took with me half of the Chinese Cabbage and half of the Pak Choi, and planted them in the brassica area. I discovered that an ants nest had developed on the greenhouse staging, in and around some of the seedling trays. Some of the ant colony ended up being relocated the the allotment - the rest are still in situ, but I've shuffled things around so that the ants eggs are now all under empty trays, not in the ones with seedlings in (hopefully!).

Having planted out the seedlings, it was time to reconstruct the brassica cage to stop things eating them. I saw a rabbit in our allotment while I was up there - I didn't see exactly where it went, though. Hmm. We also want to keep the cabbage white butterflies off, or the caterpillars will decimate the crop again. The cage is currently functional, but one corner needs a couple of screws to keep the wood in place properly, not just balanced as it is now.

What next? Well, at the far end of the allotment is, of course, the fruit cage. Mark told me at the weekend that he'd planted strawberries there again this year, and they're looking much happier than the ones we put in last year. The rest of the fruit cage is pretty overgrown with (mostly) grass, though, so there's a fun job for some point soon. Some of the raspberries are ripe already, and it's be a shame to just let them rot because we can't reach them. After this year, Mark reckons that we should dig up the whole raspberry patch and re-plant the canes, as they've spread over the years and definitely aren't contained within the lovely neat row of wires any more! We could also dig up the grass and other weeds while we're at it, making it more maintainable in general.

Beans and bees

Since the last update, we've planted out all the runner beans and most of the French beans. More sensibly than last year, used canes to support them, rather than string. This photo was taken about half-way through planting out - we now have 2 1/2 rows of beans.

The rest of that bed is squashes and sweetcorn. We were going to try to "three sisters" planting method (squash, beans and sweetcorn), but apparently sweetcorn doesn't grow high enough quickly enough in this country to support the beans, so we're just on "two sisters" instead.

We're got a few carrots appearing now in the next bed over. The weeds had set in remarkably quickly, so I cleared them out again to give the carrots a chance.

After a tip-off from a fellow allotment-holder, I investigated the garlic (it'd started to go a bit yellow in places), but found out that it was still too early. Still, the mini-bulb provided a nice meal for 2 last night.

Some newcomers to our allotment are bees! Mark has decided to take up bee-keeping, and the hive is in our orchard area, so we've hoping for lots of fertilisation from them, and hopefully plenty of honey, too. Barny may even have a rival for the produce show this year, unlike last year!

Finally, here's our well working nicely. We're using an old watering can as the bucket. First we drop it in on its side, so it fills up through the usual hole on top, then right it and pull it up with some long string that we keep attached to it (see left of photo). The can has quite a few leaks in, so could probably do with replacing, but it does the job of getting the water up a couple of metres, which is the main thing.

The well has been very nice to have this year, rather than trekking down to the pump. Unfortunately, yesterday I discovered that some local wildlife had somehow got past the well cover and ended up at the bottom of the well, so I switched back to the pump. I'm not sure how we're going to get them out...

P.S. I've been playing with the look of the blog - new background!

Spot the difference!

We had lovely weather today, so spent a lot of the day outside. Nat & Jeremy went up to the allotment for a while; Jeremy planted out loads of the beans (more on that later) and Nat mowed everything he could think of, particularly the paths and round the orchard.

Meanwhile, I sowed the next lot of seeds - mostly brassicas (purple sprouting broccoli, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, pak choi and Chinese cabbage (yes, I know the last two should be the same thing, but they look different on the packets, so we'll see what happens...)) and then some "cutting celery" and goji berries (just because I had the packets). See if you can see what's changed in the greenhouse after all that!

So, about those beans... after much to-ing and fro-ing, we finally worked out that what I thought were "Purple Queen" French beans were, in fact, runner beans. I was thrown by the fact that the beans themselves were purple, as I'd remembered the "Purple Queen" ones to be. Well, you live and learn... still, it meant that we had runner beans ready to go!

Seedlings

All the trays in the greenhouse are now showing signs of life. With frosts predicted overnight for the next few days, however, it's still not time to plant them all out.

Here, clockwise from the left, we have celeriac, salad leaves, French beans and squash at the back, then sweetcorn, more beans, tomatoes, chives and some other herb, possibly oregano. And more sweetcorn in the middle at the very front. To the right of what you can see here is a propagator with basil and another herb, possibly coriander. Finally, on the other side of the greenhouse are yet more sweetcorn, beans and squashes.

Sprouts

... not the Brussels kind, but there are definitely some sprouts in the greenhouse from the 'Purple Queen' dwarf French beans, the lettuce/salad leaves and from the sunflowers (I forgot to mention them last time - we're finishing off a packet from last year; I also forgot to mention the chives.). Now, providing I keep remembering to water everything, I'm sure it won't be long before we see even more signs of life!

Digging and sowing

Nat's parents are up for a couple of days, which means that there have been enough spare hands to look after David and also do some allotmenting. Nat's dad has dug over lots more of the ground, particularly the first bed, where the brassicas are going.



He also filled up loads of seed trays and cellular pots with compost, ready for planting seeds in. We then went from this ...




... to this, this afternoon. The trays are now all back in the greenhouse, which has been wonderfully tidied, thanks to Nat's mum. There's just about enough space for all the trays on the greenhouse staging.


So, planted/sown today were: French beans, dwarf French beans, courgettes, squashes, basil, coriander, oregano, celeriac, lettuce, tomatos and sweetcorn (in toilet roll inners).

There's a separate pile of seeds to be planted directly at the allotment: rocket, spinach, peas, carrots (2 varieties) and parsnips.

And finally, the seeds to be planted in seed trays next month are: broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, more tomatos, chinese cabbage, pak choi, celery and goji berries.

Spring flowers

Spring is finally here, and the allotment has responded with the bulbs starting to come into bloom at last after the long winter. On the left above are the first row of tulips to come out, and the hyacinths. On the right, you can see the rows of daffodils just coming out as well. Another week or so and it'll really look wonderful, especially when the small multi-headed daffodils are out.

Nat and Jeremy have been hard at work for the last few weekends digging over the various vegetable beds ready for this year's crops. It's really looking good now - here's the bed that the potatoes are going into, along with the onions , carrots and parsnips. As photos go, it's not very exciting, but the soil is looking lovely and clear, which is the main point. :)

Now, unfortunately, there are rumours afoot that the parish council may have some plans that will affect the allotments - details are non-existent at the moment, but there's a meeting a week on Thursday about it, so watch this space...