Self Suff-ish-ent

I’ve been reading back over the first few posts on this blog from a year ago when we first took on the allotment. I’ve just paid for the second years rent on the plot and have been reflecting on how we’ve done, what we’ve learnt and what we want to do in our second year.

First of all I want to remember the reasons for getting the allotment in the first place:

• We wanted to be more self-sufficient. We’re having a really low key foray into self sufficiency really. Our chickens are bantams so are not great layers. We do now have 12 hens (although some are this years so haven’t started laying at all yet) which means we should be self sufficient in eggs for most of the summer next year. We are definitely self sufficient in not needing to buy any more fertlized eggs as we have two cockerels, the older one has sired several chicks including some of our newest batch. The allotment has done similar for us. We are self sufficient in garlic for the coming year thanks to a bumper crop and we didn’t buy potatoes for several weeks during the summer. None of our other crops were sufficient to not need topping up and I suspect a plot the size of ours will never yield enough vegetables to sustain a family of four (even if some of that family aren’t big on eating vegetables ) but I like the idea that I can nick Tesco’s tagline whilst needing to use their shop slightly less…. every little helps!
• To get healthier. This was an exercise / outdoorsyness wish and I can hand on heart say this happened. I cycled to the allotment twice most weeks during the ‘watering every night’ summer months, I’ve done loads of digging and weeding and other such bending, stretching and lifting. I’ve been standing making rainbows with the hose in the evening sunshine, cleaning out mud from under my nails, cycled home bedecked with a string of garlic round my neck and known the satisfying ache of muscles weary from working on the land.
• Educating ourselves about where our food comes from. Raising and breeding chickens has given all our family a new respect for meat, concern for the conditions our animals are kept in. We understand the life cycle, how animals are killed and prepared for food, the biology and anatomy of a chicken and about breeding, hatching, birth deformities, cross-breeding and inbreeding, the mating process, growth and development and so on. The same has happened during this year at the allotment. We know about seeds and pips and bulbs, how plants grow, above ground and below ground, what time of year to sow and harvest, when crops are ready, storage, dealing with pests, failed crops, knowing what conditions different crops require. We’ve seen onions that bolted, leeks that didn’t grow, carrots that didn’t germinate, beans that got blackfly, beans that were eaten by rabbits, sweetcorn that suffered a lack of sunlight, spinach that just wouldn’t die even when I hacked it off at ground level, the tenacity of weeds, the delicacy of parsnips, plants that die back after one season, plants that will come back again next year. I realised earlier this year while walking round an open air musuem with the children that not only could I identify various crops just by their plants (broad beans, potatoes, carrots, leeks, onions, strawberries) even before there was fruit or veg on them, but the children could too. Gone are the days of thinking vegetables come cleaned, trimmed and in polystyrene trays from the supermarket.
• Eating more vegetables! This was for me as much as the children as I tend to be vegetable-phobic! We did grow mostly stuff I already liked so I didn’t necessarily try new things but did eat more freshly picked vegetables than I would have done previously. I would hope to increase this next year to trying more new things.

We have put several raised beds in on the plot and plan to put more in. Our neighbours who did have a compost heap taking up space at the end of our plot have now moved it. We have a big compost heap and a compost bin on the patch and save kitchen waste at home to add to them.

I’ve talked already about what has and hasn’t worked on the plot so there’s no real need for a round-up of that again. Aswell as clearing the weeds and debating the idea of green compost for the cleared areas over the winter we also need to plan what’s going where next year to maximise the space we have. I have a lot of reading to do and would really like to draw up a proper crop rotation plan and schedule of what needs to be done when.

It’s been a great first year!

This was where we started:

but during the summer we had it looking like this:

 

We’ve had a couple of camping trips during July which has taken us away from home and therefore the allotment. We spent a whole week away in early July during which time my Mum took over watering duties but the rest of July has been so wet that watering was the least of our worries at the plot. Infact it was finding dry spells to get up there and do some weeding that posed a problem.

Today we had a good few hours up there and have cleared over half the allotment. The onlons and garlic were either harvested already or the rain had ruined the last chance they had of coming to anything and they had started to rot instead. I’m very happy with the crop we’ve had though and they are currently hanging in our garage drying off

I’d already cut down the broad beans a few weeks ago and today decided the peas had had their day so we dismantled the canes and netting and put it aside ready for next year. We picked off the last few peas, which happened to be a perfect amount for our dinner this evening and congratulated ourselves on a good first crop which we’ll double the volume of next year, learn about what to plant alongside it and also find some better early protection against pests for them.

Our sweetcorn was also being eaten so despite it not quite being as big as I’d like we decided to pick it to eat it ourselves rather than leave it for the mice or rabbits who are currently decimating it. We had enough for the kids to have a cob each straight off the plant, another each to bring home and a large portion each for dinner to go with our fresh peas. There are a couple of small cobs still up there which we’ll leave to see if they grow any larger. Another success that we’ll be planning on improving more for next year. Several of our neighbours had great success with sweetcorn in cages or nets so I think we’ll be following their example next year.

 

We dug up two large sections and pulled all the weeds up. There’s a lot of weeds thriving at the moment but we just dug them up and piled them up ready to collect in sacks and take to the dump. We’ve previously made the mistake of putting weeds on the compost heap which is now rife with them re-growing. We’ve now dug over and cleared the area which had onions and garlic and the area which had potatoes. We’re debating green manure, just covering the areas over with something weeds can’t get through and what over crops we could put in now. We’re also considering more raised beds and trying to think what would make good pathways around them. Wood chip is looking like a favourite idea judging by what others have used there.

 

We have more weeding to do and some more digging up so that all that will be left is crops which remain each year - asparagus, fruit trees, strawberries and herbs. The pond could do with some clearing and the compost heap needs some attention. We also have a plastic composter coming (free from the local council) which will take over while the stuff on the heap composts down.

We put some chitted sweet potatoes into an empty raised bed to see how they go and have leeks ready to go in too. I want to put some more carrots in and some of the later summer sowings like pumpkins and squash. We’re aiming to get up there again for a few hours one evening this week to get the second half licked into shape so we can get cracking with the next seasons’ stuff.

We’re coming to the end of our first half of the season of our first year.We still have autumn harvesting things to come but a lot of our first and early crops have now finished.

Garlic The October sowing of onions and garlic did really well. We have aboutg 50 bulbs of garlic hanging up in our garage drying, which will mean we are more or less self sufficient in garlic this year. I think we spent about a fiver on the sets to plant so that’s very good. The spring sowing really hasn’t done so well. I think the weather has been opposite to what they needed really - Spring was very hot and dry and summer has been very wet so we’ve been working against the seasons really. The wet summer has meant we didn’t get the extra crop of the garlic leaves too as they rusted. The idea is as the first few leaves start to yellow you cut the leaves off and can use them, chive-like in cooking. They have a lovely garlicky flavour and are perfect for chopping up as herbs. This means the last couple of weeks growing energy goes into fattening the bulb rather than growing the leaves and you stop watering them too. Sadly the rain has continued to water them for us so the bulbs are really quite little. Overall it’s been a good crop and I guess the chance of a spring sowing is a good back up plan if the autumn one isn’t doing so well. There is one row still left of sad looking stalks which I will dig up in a week or two, but I suspect they are miniature bulbs which won’t be much good for anything.

Onions are much the same as the garlic. The autumn sowing did pretty well and we have some red onions hanging up drying out including a couple of beautiful big glossy ones. The white onions seem to have disappeared and I think lots of the early shoots were eaten by pests so we may find evidence of the bulbs when we dig the area over. The spring sowing all bolted and flowered with one single tall strong shoot meaning all the energy went into making a flower rather than big onions. I’ve dug them all up now and again will concentrate on an autumn sowing with a spring one as security only if needed.

Potatoes We did mostly second earlies which was possibly not great planning. We did harvest some early to use as salad potatoes and our daughter and I today dug up all of the shallow potatoes. I suspect there are more deeper down which we’ll leave in the ground for now and dig up as we need them. We’ve had pretty good crops of potatoes both from the allotment and the patio planter bags. Next year we’ll do some first earlies to have as new / salad potatoes and some main crop too for later harvesting. A very healthy crop though with no blight and the only unusuable ones being a few that weren’t deep enough in the ground and were green.

Peas  We’ve had a good crop of peas although we’ve had to share them with pests which next year I’m rather selfishly hoping won’t be happening. We’ll also be planting a second row next year as we could easily have consumed double what we had this year.

Broad Beans Only A eats these so we had more than we needed really despite the black fly issues. I’ve chopped them all to ground level today and next year we’ll only plant 3-4 plants rather than a whole row and a half of these.

Carrots We’re on our third go at carrots so far.The first try was some plug plants of a dwarf / globe variety which were really not worth bothering with. The second try was from seed in a raised bed. I broadcast sowed them with the intention of thinning them out once they were seedlings but only two ever came to anything. We slightly prematurely picked them today out of curiosity and very tasty they were too but hardly a crop! We’ve today broadcast sown another raised bed with the rest of the packet and have a plan to sow some more into sacks or plasic containers here at home to see how they go.

Lettuce and other salad leaves These all did very well and were very nice. The chickens enjoyed rather more than their fair share as they were plugs rather than seeds so were all ready together and at a full raised bed were rather more than we could manage. I’d sow from seeds next year and stagger them more to crop throughout the season instead of all at once.

Still to come: We have some things that remain a ‘work in progress’. There are still sweetcorns, tomatoes, parnsips, runner beans and peppers which are looking good so far. We also have the things such as strawberries, raspberries, apple tree, asparagus which are in situ but in their first year so not due to give us much if anything this year. We seem to have missed the boat as far as the jostaberry tree went as it was full of fruit but the birds got to it before we did - ah well, maybe next year!

And to be getting on with… I want to get some more carrots in as mentioned above, also some more parsnips and some leeks too. I’d like to get squash and pumpkin in and I have some sweet potatoes chitted ready to plant up aswell.

I have several books about companion planting ready to look through borrowed from the library and a burning desire to get my hands dirty pulling up all the weeds that are now get-able at as we’ve pulled up potatoes, garlic and onions.

We’re trying to get to the allotment daily at the moment to keep it watered during a very hot, dry spell of weather. This won’t happen next week as we’re on holiday. Like everyone else we’ve stopped trying to weed between crops now, the crops will be over soon enough and the weeds can come up when we dig over.

We have learnt that our ‘live and let live’ attitude towards the birds and rabbits hasn’t paid off and we’ve lost a lot of crops to them, some like our runner beans before they even began For next season I want to learn as much as I can about companion planting , there are plenty of <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.co.uk%2Fs%3Fie%3DUTF8%26x%3D0%26ref%255F%3Dnb%255Fss%255Fw%255Fh%255F%255F0%255F15%26y%3D0%26field-keywords%3Dcompanion%2520planting%26url%3Dsearch-alias%253Daps%26sprefix%3Dcompanion%2520plant&tag=monsterandtee-21&linkCode=ur2&camp=1634&creative=19450">books on amazon</a><img src="https://www.assoc-amazon.co.uk/e/ir?t=monsterandtee-21&l=ur2&o=2" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /> which may also help with this.

We’ve also been looking at the arrangements that have worked for our neighbours which include four sided and roofed fruit cages and more basic arrangements such as a ring of chicken wire around beans. I suspect we’ve not been quick enough off the mark in harvesting some things such as strawberries and jostaberries.

But to the positives! We’ve been eating our own peas, broad beans, potatoes and salad leaves and they taste lovely, cost next to nothing and are hugely satisfying to have grown ourselves .

We have loads of garlic bulbs hanging up in our garage drying which should keep us going through the winter

There are still some to dig up. I dug these as the leaves had rust and I was worried about the crop being effected. This is the Autumn sowing. The spring sowing is still in the ground as last week as the first few leaves had turned yellow I snipped off the green top leaves which I brought home and used like chives, chopped up in cooking. I’ve stopped watering them now and the idea is the remaining energy goes into making the bulbs bigger rather than growing the leaves. 

Our sweetcorn is looking good. I read today that we can hope for one head to ripen on each, two would be great and three would be fantastic. I had no idea they would be that sparse actually so next year will plant way more as they are a firm favourite. 

Crops such as onions which I spaced according to the packet instructions could probably have been much denser looking at our neighbours crops. Some of ours bolted so I expecting our crop to be fairly small onions although the ones I’ve dug up so far have all been a perfectly acceptable size. 

Our broad beans were covered in blackfly. I did spray them with the hose each night and sprayed the bean pods off when we picked them but we have lost some to the blackfly so maybe we’ll look at something to protect from that next year. Washing up liquid is supposed to be good sprayed on so that might be worth trying.

A big success has been planting sweet peas along the fence. They look and smell gorgeous and we’ve had a house full of them for weeks as we pick them every day to prevent them going to seed and keep them coming. 

This last week we’ve started to think about harvesting. The potato sacks on the patio were looking a bit sad with their leaves browing and drooping so after consulting the trusty internet we pulled three out of five (the other two are still looking fine). An excellent crop of lovely potatoes was the result so we’ve been enjoying them boiled, roasted, baked and mashed this week along with fresh herbs from the garden and some of the leaves and lettuces from the allotment.

Up at the allotment I had a very enjoyable 10 minutes ruthlessly cutting down a row of spinach. I’d not wanted to plant it in the first place as only one of the four of us eats it but we’d had plenty of space back then up there so put it in. Either it bolted or we simply let it carrying on past when we should have harvested it but it was very tall and blocking the light from the sweetcorn behind it. I took to it with my secateurs and it is now lying down yellowing .

My seedlings - parsnips and carrots are looking good although they are in need of some weeding in their raised beds and possibly some thinning once I’ve identified what is and isn’t carrots and parsnips in there. The peppers and tomatoes we’ve put in the other raised beds are looking good too.

My garlic from the autumn sowing is ready to pull and infact I did pull one of the rows this evening before I remembered I was on my bike rather than in the car. I managed a very crude plait of them and brought them home strung across the front of my bike in the style of a French onion seller - very continental!  The onions are looking good but can stay in awhile longer.

 

My peas - I have normal and sugar snap are looking good although I suspect we will be fighting birds for them and wonder if next year we need to consider a cage for them. The poor runner beans we put in have almost all been eaten so we either need to have a second go with reinforced protection or give up on them - I suspect we’ll have another go. 

 

I’d like to learn about companion planting for next year and possibly look at some pest protection measures such as cages too. My hippy attitude towards sharing has had to be rethought as the pigeons and rabbits are greedily taking way more than their share. Brave and rather stupid as we quite like both rabbit and pigeon, particularly with allotment grown potatoes and sweetcorn

The strawberries are also suffering - the hanging baskets seem to have been the venue of some sort of woodlice summer camp and the two runs under cover need the tunnels taking off so we can have a proper look at what’s happening under there. 

The broad beans have been roundly attacked by blackfly and other than moving the lone ladybird I’ve seen at the allotment this year off the jostaberry bush and onto a broad bean with an encouraging ‘feast little ladybird, feast’ we’ve done nothing yet to tackle this. On the recommendation of a friend I blasted them off with the hose this evening which was satisfying and effective, but I’ve no idea whether that is a long term solution. I’ll probably go up there tomorrow and find them all wearing wetsuits and laughing at me!

We’ve had a bumper crop of sweetpeas from the alllotment and the garden and as they need picking daily to prevent the plants going to seed we’ve had fresh flowers all round the house smelling sweet too . The lavender in the garden is doing well and I need to research when to harvest that too as I’ve already done a couple of batches of baking with it but after trying some bramble and lavender jam I am desperate to make some myself later in the year and need to ensure I have sufficient homegrown supplies. We have chillis from last year ready for my chilli and strawberry jam which I think we are on the last jar of from last year so will be needing to replace very soon. I suspect it will be PYO strawberries rather than GYO this year for that though.

So I have some work to do in terms of weeding, harvesting and pest prevention if possible. I need to do some reseach about harvesting and storing stuff and I want to have a plan as to what happens next in the spaces I’ll be clearing from harvesting. 

Finally I want to share a warming thought from this week which came about while walking round an open air museum with the children which had various historical dwelling buildings complete with authentic kitchen gardens. I was very impressed that the children were easily and correctly identifying vegetables by their leaves and plants including potatoes, carrots, beetroot, onions, garlic, broad beans and peas. I wonder how many young children could do that. Actually I have to confess that 6 months ago I couldn’t have done that so part one of our reason for wanting an allotment - to learn more about what we eat - is certainly ticked off my list

We’ve not had such a good spring chicken-rearing wise this year. After our unsuccesssful incubator experiences all five of our brown hens went broody. This is most common during their second and third year is most common for broodiness. We initially tried to persuade them out of this by shutting them out of the henhouse, getting them wet and regularly lifting them off their self made, but empty nests.

Eventually we gave in and let them sit on some eggs - I think they had 8 between the five of them. Two hens were in one house and three in the other and they played a sort of relay game with the eggs, digging underneath each other to try and wiggle the eggs over to themselves. 

Eggs that have been incubated and hatched by hens can be less of an exact science than incubator eggs as the conditions are less consistent and rely on external temperatures, however they are usually stilll within a day or two either side of the 19 days bantam eggs usually incubate for.

The henhouses were getting pretty disgusting having not been cleaned out for several weeks so when we were close to 4 weeks I decided the eggs weren’t going to hatch and shut all the hens out of the first house to clean it out. I put the 5 eggs the two hens in there had been sitting on between them to one side and gave the house a good clean out, putting all the chicken waste soaked bedding to one side to take to the allotment for composting.

My daughter came out and was keen to break open the eggs to see what had happened inside as she has often done before with unhatched eggs - it’s a really interesting way of seeing the stages of development of chicks. I warned her they were likely to be smelly and possibly a bit gruesome and to break them away from the chickens themselves.

The first one was simply a rotten egg - broken yolk that had clearly not been fertilised. The second was bloody but all liquid so had been fertilised but not gone past very early stages. The third was worthy of a picture although it’s not very in focus or clear unfortunately:

You can see the beginnings of a chick, surrounded by veiny threads and a jellyfied mass rather than the yolk and white of an egg.

Unfortunately the fourth egg was not so interesting and as my daughter started to break it open it began to cheep! We quickly realised it was a live chick, as was the fifth egg. Having broken them open early we had to rapidly decide what to do. The incubator indoors would need a good 12-24 hours to reach it’s proper heat so we put them back in the house and put a hen on top of them hoping she would continue to sit and incubate the eggs and the chicks might continue hatching on their own. This was unlikely of course and sure enough the hen rejected the eggs, as did the other two hens we also tried and within an hour or so the chicks inside were both dead.

We left the three eggs in the other hen house for a further few days incase there had been some mix up in our date calculations leading to the seemingly very long incubation but they didn’t come to anything and when we shook them a few days later they both rattled with liquid so had not developed. 

All five of the broody hens very quickly came out of their broody states and we are now back to full laying capacity and we’re getting four or five eggs from our 7 hens each day again.

 

We would still like 2 or 3 more hens although we are happy to wait and the children are quite interested in the idea of rescue battery hens. There is some friction between one of the hens and the cockerel at the moment though with him being very aggressive towards her so it’s probably not the time to mess about with the dynamics of the pecking order by introducing more birds just now.

Neglected the blog a bit lately. Fortunately this was not reflective of the allotment as if I’d neglected that everything would have died!

 

It’s all looking wonderful up there and we’re starting to quite literally enjoy the fruits of our labours as the time for harvesting draws near.

We have been visiting several times a week, often just for half an hour of an evening to do some watering or drop off some waste for the compost but a few things have been added and some weeds removed.

Starting with the front of the allotment the childrens’ areas are going well.They both have their own fairly random looking way of running their plots although it seems to make sense to them.

Our son’s includes a mini compost heap, a small wildlife pond, various piles of stones, some herbs and a couple of plants including pea, broad bean, potatoe and some flowers.

Our daughter’s also has a pond and a pit she has installed to capture pests. This comprises of a big hole, covered with leaves and sticks and baited with tasty morsels she selects when we do the weeding. She’s yet to catch anything but she enjoys checking .

 

Beyond the childrens’ plots are my bulbs - onions, both red and wine and various varieties of garlic. Some were Autumn planting and some were Spring. I have kept on top of the weeding until now but it is now too tricky to get between the plants and they are established enough to withstand the weeds anyway. The garlic were planted from individual cloves and the onions from sets (bulbs). I have watched with interest at the differing levels of growth and learnt today that the flowers which are forming on the top stalk of some of the onions are not a good thing. It means they have bolted - grown too quick and will probably have one of those green shoots through the middle of the onion. I’ve read a bit and it is too late to remedy it now by breaking off the flower and indeed there is nothing that could have prevented it. I notice various other onions around the allotments are doing the same and it is an indication of the warm, wet, sunny spring we had. I’m happy to see some nice thick stalks and some good sized bulbs growing alongside the bolted onions though so am hopeful for some good crops too.

 

Next is a row of spinach which I suspect we have let go too long. I think it needs harvesting now, both as it is starting to go past it’s prime and because it is causing shade over some of my sweetcorn which is the next crop along. The picture above is less than a month old but they are about 6 times that height now!

Next is my triple row of sweetcorn. These are doing well so far although I am keen to get the spinach out of the way to maximise their sunshine exposure. They should start to shoot up soon and will need to be well watered. Although they will grow to above head height they stand alone unsupported. They need to pollinate each other hence growing in a clump rather than just a row and some gentle shaking should aid that once they are more established.These are my babies as sweetcorn was the crop I most wanted to grow on the allotment .

The next section is split widthways with five raised beds on one side and our potatoes on the other. The potatoes are doing fantastically - starting to flower, lovely tall green plants and with no signs of blight. We’ve probably given a bit too much space to potatoes and we have grown about 4 different types (we also have some growing in pots at home too) but having been lucky enough to get a small harvest of last years potatoes inherited from the previous plot holders while we were doing our initial dig over the plot last autumn we were converted to the difference in home grown potatoes to shop bought ones.

The raised beds have done well for us so far with a couple now on their second crops. The first two contain seeds of parsnips and carrots which I broadcast (ie chucked great handfuls of) and will need to thin once they come through. We already have a show of seedlings and that is quite exciting as the only thing we’ve grown from tiny little seeds. 

The next bed did have carrots but they were a tiny, early, globular shaped variety which have not grown very well and seem rather gimicky. We’ve pulled them up and half will be suitable for bite sized carrot mouthfuls for our daughter, who is a big carrot fan, the others will go down well with our chickens .

The next bed has been amazingly successful, along with half of the fifth bed (the other half was also given over to the rubbish carrots) with leaves - lettuces and other more exotic salad leaves. I’ve been picking the leaves and we’ve been enjoying them in salads.Tonight we pulled the lettuces up and have given half to my parents as our first sharing of a crop .

In place of the carrots we have planted one bed with tomatoes and one with peppers (two varieties of sweet, one of chili). I’m doubtful as to how well either crop will do outside but we’ll see.

Next comes our pea netting on canes. Half is sugar snap, half is peas and they are being eagerly awaited by all of us. We’ve planted some marigolds in with them to deter pests and so far it seems to be working. 

There was an unplanted bit next but tonight we put up 3 cane wigwams and planted in some runner beans plants. I do have some seeds which I should soak and plant up aswell as these were small established plants.

Next is our jostaberry tree which is positively groaning with fruit and we’re looking forward to trying. Next to that are a handful of herbs but that is a small area we are thinking of putting another raised bed in eventually.

Three rows of strawberries are next. One with a mesh tunnel, one with a poly tunnel and one naked. This is very experimental and so far the mesh is a clear winner with 2 strawberries already picked and enjoyed (is there anything sweeter than that first British strawberry of the season?).

A couple of rows of broad beans which have been amazingly differernt depending on where they are in the row so presumably how much sun they see. We have already had several pods off the bigger ones and although I don’t eat them myself I was assured they were delicious .

Two raised beds of asparagus next, our investment planting as they are not for eating for the first two years but are doing well. Finally at the end we have our apple tree, a couple of raspberry canes and around our wildlife pond an array of sweet peas which we are picking daily to bring home and 3 hanging baskets also growing strawberries.

We’re learning loads, already making plans for crop rotation and next years planting but are enjoying the regularity of evenings up there to water and the promise of more crops to come.

 

We had a family day at at the allotment and got loads done this weekend.

The potatoes have been earthed up as much as they’ll go and will now be left until they have flowered before being ready to dig up and harvest. We did a tiny bit of weeding around them but they are hardy enough to not be too bothered by weeds now and it’s hard to work around them anyway

We put a second row of canes up next to the first row, stretched net across it and made the netting structure more sound. The peas are starting to grow towards the netting and we don’t seem to have had too many casualties to pests just yet.

Our strawberries in the ground (we have more in hanging baskets along the fence) were not so lucky and had been well and truly lunched on though so we moved our fleece protectors across and put them over the strawberries

I did some weeding around the garlic, onions and spinach. The spinach is ready to harvest really, as are the variety of leaves in the raised beds. The idea of them is to pick some off and more will grow.

 

 

Our son spent some time constructing his own mini compost heap with black waterproof matting, some sticks and the kitchen waste we’d taken up with us that day.

 

is our current mantra. We have busy lives and don’t want the allotment to become one more thing on a list of things we feel we ‘have’ to do. The idea is for it to be a relaxing slice of life to be enjoyed. Soon enough we’ll be reaching a point where we have to get there pretty much every day to water crops during the summer so in order to start getting into that sort of discipline we’ve been up there several times this week.

The first really was just ‘popping in’ to drop off some bamboo. Having looked at the prices of bamboo canes, and even more pricier the plastic alternatives we found a friend who has loads of the stuff growing in his garden instead. We chopped down several canes and brought them up to the allotment. Bamboo is fast growing, easy to look after, quite attractive in the garden and well worth growing if you have the space if only to grow your own renewable supply of canes for your beans and peas!

Yesterday we called in again to plant in a raspberry and a blackberry and some more asparagus that we’ve had waiting to go in. We also gave the plot a good water and vowed to return today for a longer period to get a bit more done.

So armed with tea, bottled water and some food we headed there for a good couple of hours this afternoon. I had my first ever go at putting up some canes and attaching some pea and bean netting to them using some ties. Slightly daunting actually when stood faced with a pile of canes and a roll of netting but I managed it and feel a possibly slightly disproportionate amount of pride in it

 

I planted in a row of sweetcorn. Quite close together and they need to cross pollenate and I’ve since discovered they would have been better in a block rather than a row but we might try and plant a second row alongside them to create that block as there is space and you can never have too much sweetcorn - corn on the cob, eaten raw and freshly picked or cooked with plenty of butter and black pepper, cut off the cob and cooked or even popped to make popcorn, the possibilities are endless .

 

Our son built a little cane wigwam on his plot for his peas to grow up while our daugher helped me with some weeding around the onions and garlic. We then spent ages turning over the nicely rotting compost which reduced it down again in size and gave us loads to look at. Aswell as being brimming with ants, worms, beetles, flies we also found it fascinating looking at how different things rot down from kitchen waste to dug out plants.

 

A friendly robin hopped around us all the while we were doing that and even landed on the fork handle although we didn’t manage to get a picture of him.

Some of our spinach has been eaten but the culprit has left behind damning evidence I am presuming it is the same visitor who has eaten the full row of brocoli that is no longer there too.

 

We finished by sprinkling some fish, blood and bone around and then giving the entire plot a really good water. The hose doesn’t quite reach to the end of the plot so the last row of broad beans and the couple of raised beds with asparagus in need to be watered with the watering can. The children took it in turns to hold the hose or use the can.

 

Back at home later we checked progress on the various things growing in the garden at home. We have containers with more potatoes and a mini greenhouse with various seedlings. We’ve been really lucky to come to the top of the long waiting list for an allotment so we can get started on a larger scale but it is perfectly possible to begin growing your own in a small garden, in pots on the patio or balcony or even in a window box.

 

….are a lovely place to be. The long shadows as the sun starts to go down cast over your healthy looking shoots, the rainbows the water spray from the hose makes as the droplets dance in the sunshine, the birdsong and sound of metal hitting stones as you dig over, or plant in or remove weeds, the smell of the wet earth as you turn it over and the promise of shoots peeking through the ground, blossom on the fruit trees and leaves starting to yellow on the onions.
 
We were met with a surprise in one of our empty raised beds of a couple of triffid like plants that have sprung from nowhere! After accusing each other of having planted something there we dug them up to discover that even in our thrice digging and putting a raised bed in there must have been a potato from last year we missed that had taken seed and grown again. And very large and healthy looking the plants were too but we have enough space given over to potatoes so we dug it up. Interesting though to see one with the tiny new potatoes growing from the roots and another with the half rotted away potato it had seeded from still attached. Amazing things, potatoes.

 

The first section is filled with onion and garlic. I spent a fair bit of time having a really good weed of that area. Another lesson learnt is to not plant in such close rows that you can’t get between them easily for next season. Sitting and weeding is far less taxing that standing with feet carefully placed between leaves bending over with the fork. We do have a hoe and it is good but with the onions and garlic so close together I have taken the plant off at ground level at least once with a slip of the hoe. The ground is fairly hard so they come up much better with a small fork. Aswell as being cosmetically pleasing to be weed-free the plants above ground won’t get choked and the plants below ground won’t lose all their nutrients to the greedy thriving weeds so it’s a job well done.

 

The next area has a row of broccoli and some spinach. We had a few cauliflowers to put in so they went in the gaps.

The next area is a row of raised beds and the potatoes so we covered over the potatoes again. I think this will be the last time they get covered over now before we leave them to grow. In covering the shoots over with soil we will hopefully get a bigger, better crop of potatoes. They now look like a row of fresh graves though!

One raised bed has lettuce and other salad leaves, one has carrots and today I put more carrots into another one. I think the remaining two will have parsnips in them or maybe some other root vegetables.

 

Next is an area that had potatoes in it last year so we’re using for peas and sweetcorn this year. I put in a double row of peas and a single row of sugar snap peas as both are firm favourites for all of us. We’re still in debate about how to use canes and I suspect I have oversown the area really but as we’re happy to live and learn from all our experiences this year we got them in and will see how we go. We had a net tunnel which we wanted to use somewhere, partially as an experiment to compare with and without the tunnel so that went in over the row of sugar snaps and we’ll see if there is a difference between the two rows of peas. The chief reason is protection from pests who will come along and nibble.

 

There is a gap for more peas and sweetcorn ready and waiting.

Next is an area we had put some herbs in but having decided space is at rather more of a premium than we first expected it to be and given we have a fairly comprehensive herb garden at home and are more likely to harvest herbs as and when we need them for cooking we will probably dig them out and bring them home again. We are keeping that end of the allotment mostly fruit.

We have the inherited jostaberry tree which is looking promising with buds and blossom, then a couple of rows of strawberries. We also have our strawberries in baskets along the fence. We have two raised beds with asparagas in although that will not be anything we get a crop from in this first year it is probably the thing I am most looking forward to eating when we finally do get it. We’ve got some raspberry canes, some rhubarb and of course our apple tree at that end. We also benefit from being the end plot with the fence along which brambles grow so we will be enjoying blackberries from that too.

We also put some dwarf broad beans in and everything is really starting to look nice and full and thriving. We finished up with a good watering session - our son really came into his own here!