Spuddie

Tremendous fun on Sunday.

Spent Saturday helping at the rugby club for a TourAID tournament with teams from Botswana, India and West of Scotland.

Sunday, after an abortive two hours trying to start Slice-n-Dice I put him back in the shed and took Hacken-Slash for a spin. Mowed all of the main path with a Hayter Harrier, which means I collected the trimmings, so that took a while as it was only the second cut of the year.

Then went to work with Hacken-Slash, planting potatoes, managed four rows, still have to do my maincrop. Driving a computer does not prepare the arms for drawing out and earthing up.

Planted out my stored PigletWillie Banana Shallots to either divide up or go to seed, whichever.

Cut a good feed of Purple Sprouting Broccolli, which went down a treat with roast pork and roast potatoes with gravy.

The builders doing the terrace, different lot from those who did the extension, had finished the heavy stuff, so I was finally this weekend able to get into the greenhouse, possessing as I now do a terrace, with steps down to the lawn and no longer hosting a portaloo in front of the greenhouse door.

April Redneck

Spent nine to five at the allotment yesterday and ghave a red neck to prove it.
So what did I do, well no actual personal allotment gardening.
As three plotholders had given up I showed four prospective tenants vacant plots, splitting one into two, all are signing up this week, including one fit and active youngster of eighty three.
Mowed the main path and some side paths.
Admired the cowslips I planted last year flowering away in the car park / eco-meadow.
Cleared the Site Agent (my) Shed of all the crap the previous site agent had accumulated, he being one of the people who had given up this year. It is amazing just how many supermarket plastic bags were in there, I mean when did Sainsburys stop doing beige bags? This clearance took the best part of four hours and I now have a good concrete shed with some roof repairs needed, but I picked up appropriate stuff off freecycle on Friday.
Shared out everything of any use between the eight or so plotholders on site at the time as a present from my predecessor.

The power!

Of a rotovator should not be underestimated.
Got Hackenslash out today, most of his vital fluids had leaked out, so I refilled his chain case and topped up his engine with good oil and we set out to rotovate.
Did most of plot 17 and by rpior arrangement did a rod of Gaynor's plot for her.
My soil was rotovatable and Gaynor's was superbly so, on there Hackenslash almost swam, rotors out of sight except at the top of their rotation, just went six to eight inches down on 17.

















The supervisor gave her grudging approval.

Two shots of the fruit terrace, showing how cold it is on the site, it sits in shade, in a frost pocket with an open east/west tunnel park which funnels the prevailing wind through.
I walked through Green Park in central London on Wednesday and their daffodils were in full bloom, not eight to ten inch high sprouts like mine.




































Went home just as it started to rain.......

Got there.

After the rhino played for the "B"s today at London Welsh, with a similar result to the national teams, he got two tries though, little high speed battering ram, anyway, I went up the allotment.

Damm cold, so I finished one side of the fruit terrace and left it at that before I got too cold.

Creme brulee.

Yesterday I hit the sales.
Bought a bag of 25mm fencing staples and four chesnut fence posts from my local fencing supplier.
Four bags of seed potatoes, a canister of Bordeaux powder for dilution and a 75% off nice candle for her indoors from Van Hagues.
Some packets of onion seeds and a Sulphur Candle for the greenhouse from Harlow Garden Centre.

Then I went and fitted the four posts to my fruit terrace for the original raspberry row and for a new as yet unplanted row. Used some of the staples to fit a second higher wire to the existing posts and a pair of wires to the new posts.

Rhino is still barred from contact sports following his broken arm on 3rd November, cast now off, but today I went, sans Rhino, to watch the B team play Welwyn at home, they lost 22 - 5.

Back at home I weeded, de-suckered and dug over another inter-raspberry-row area, so I have now done 5/8ths of my fruit terrace.

Why creme brulee, well that was the ground conditions today, a thin crisp frost over the sticky mud, which is what defeated me today by sticking to the spade like limpets.

Two years in forty-eight hours.

Went to the allotment again today!

It's ok blog readers, pick yourselves up and have a cup of tea.

Cut out last years canes on the three remaining rows of last years raspberry planting, just leaves the original row from three years ago which is a bit strawberry infested with some weeds also.

Removed the suckers between the rows, that is two gaps, then use some to fill in blanks in the rows, heeled the rest in in my raised bed, good friable soil in there.

Dug the gaps over,found some bindweed roots in four places so will need to have a glyphosate hand spray available next year, unwind bindweed, lay bindweed on ground, spray bindweed.

Dog preferred sitting on the damp grass the other side of Karl's allotment to watch the playground, over sitting on the cunningly constructed insulated doggy perch with less of a viewty 100L plastic bag, doubled over brillopadtype carpet underlay.

Now what will be the best way to dispose of the now unwanted strawberry bed? I have one established down in the sunlight and want to remove the one on the fruit terrace to acommodate another row of raspberries. Problem is the terrace is very heavy clay, I had to scrape the spade clean every three spits or so as otherwise the fourth spit stayed stuck to the spade. Can't beat an old handleless cheapo pressed sheet steel hoe for this job.

Out with the old

Well with the old dead bits on the herb patch, which today had its annual trim and as per usual has left a reminder in one of my fingers. shouldn't complain, it reminded me to blog.

Also worked on the fruit terrace, cutting out the dead on a raspberry row, dug out the suckers on one side and inserted them back in the row where bits had died. Then dug another eighth of the fruit terrace, one quarter done.

Green housing.

Today I tidied up the greenhouse and the outside gow bag house.
The frost had finally killed off the peppers and tomatoes.
So I used the secatuers and snipped them into a pop-up canvas tidy bag, then I took out the canes and put them on the supports in the roof to dry out. Put all three grow bags outside to get really cold so I can add them to non-potato non-tomato growing areas next year as soil conditioner. Weeded the in-ground beds in the greenhouse and emptied and redundant pots in with the weeds to the tidy bag. Ended up with a nice full bag which was emptied into the old coal bunker I use as a compost bin.

Now all that is needed is a nice frost and builder free area to move my onions to, so that I can light a nice sulphur candle or two in the greenhouse.

Faint remembered thing!

Today I remembered that I have an allotment, had some difficulty recognising it, finally realised that the brown oblong thing with green and brown things sticking out of it was mine!

Also remembered that my blog is about gardening, of which I have done odd bits since July, my how time flies. so what have I done since then:

• got a day where I was able to glyphosate spray plot 18's weeds, which have (mostly) died off.
• the tomatoes and peppers in the greenhouse have done well and are now due for final harvest and removal before we get a real hard frost as the greenhouse is unheated.
• had a pathetic squash harvest of three usable fruits, none much larger than eight inch diameter.
• harvested my "Pigletwillies" with quite a variety of shapes and sizes, they are in storage for re-planting next year for a harvest and hopefully some seeds.
• harvested a poor to reasonable onion crop.
• watched the Kale and PSB grow nicely. Picked the first of the kale today and had it with roast beef and all the trimmings.
• decided that the weather this year has really stuffed up things that normally do ok, such as carrots which were useless, sweetcorn ditto, french beans ditto, squash especially ditto.
• as a committee member of the allotment association I have obtained thirteen notice boards to errect at our sites. So far I have put up two experimental ones at my site, trialing metal versus wooden posts, wood gives a sturdier result and put up two at John;s site on the other side of town.

Alot of my time has been taken up with preparation for a house extension, which is now in full swing with the ground floor walls up and steel girders laid in on Friday for the first floor walls to go up. Amazing how much stuff you find you own when you need to clear terrace, garage, shed, rooms etc for builder access.

I was anticipating only being able to squeeze odd hours in at the plot over winter and having to pick up the mess in spring with mechanical resources, but the rhino broke his arm (ulna fracture) last saturday in a school rugby match and is off rugger for six weeks at least, so that could mean sunday gardening. Mind the silly boy said consistently that it did not hurt much and subsequently played three practice sessions and another school match before ending up at A&E due to a Westie biting him hard in the leg on the way to the match, which he played with a bandage round his leg. So in A&E he asked about his arm which had started to hurt alot more during the match and an x-ray showed a lovely break.

Rhino and I went and watched his teammates play a really hard match, which they lost, against Harrow. On the way home we got a new bathroom light switch, annoying when the cord snaps off inside the switch, which I fitted when we got home. Then I went to the plot and:

• took down the firework display ads from my notice boards.
• pruned my two espaliers.
• pruned my currents and gooseberries.
• dug one eighth of my fruit terrace over roughly with a spade to prepare for a good dung mulch.
• admired the growth on the raspberries and some useful looking out of row suckers.
• weeded and hoed my coldframe.
• weeded and hoed my raised bed.
• took down and stored my bean poles.
• cleared weeds from around my hopeful looking brussells.
• dug up a half row of spuds.
• harvested a nice wadge of curly green kale.

Hope to do more next weekend.

At last, an update.

My surgery incisions have finally, after a post operative infection in two of them, healed sufficiently for me to take an active interest in gardening things again.

Last Monday I did manage to do all the strimming and mowing, just in time for the annual site and plot judging. Though how well they could judge in the rain remains to be seen.

Inbetween whiles I have picked raspberries and strawberries and noted the phenomanal growth the weeds are achieving this year. My sweetcorn is almost submerged in weeds and has grown poorly, my carpet mulch is working well, as usual, around my squash, which have hardly grown at all since being planted out. The chickweed and others between the potato rows have grown to the same height as the haulms. The climbing french beans emerge from the weed growth like broadcast masts from thick fog to shuffle their way to the pole tops.

Finally felt up to some proper gardening today, weeded my cut flower patch, a shamefully small single square yard and all 90 odd of my "Pigletwillies" (Banana shallots grown from seed supplied by the inestimably helpful Pigletwille on GYO forum). Some of the Pigletwillies have vanished, one looks to have been dug out by a fox in search of something, some are huge, none seem to have gone multi-bulb yet. Garnered about a daleks worth of weeds which I left to dry in the sun, however it has rained again this evening, so heigh-ho. Looking on the bright side, at least I have not had to water stuff much this year.

Moved the square of carpet I had chucked down onto an unplanted corner along to cover the next bit, revealing some convulsed white snakes of bindweed which I will allow to "green-up" before treating them to a little feed of glyphosate based weed killer. Also need to get some more spare carpet out to contain the other weeds as I do not think I will be able to dispose of them quickly enough to prevent them seeding.

When I did the strimming I topped off plot 18 ready for some glyphosate, but have not yet had a day that combined lack of rain with sufficient lack of wind.

Despite good pickings I have had more strawberries rot on the plant this year than I have picked, but on the plus side the raspberries have been superb, combining heavy fruiting with good cane growth ready for next year.

I have shamefully to admit to buying in some kale and cabbage plants from a garden centre to try and at least have some winter stuff from the plot. Not sure if I have left it too late to sow some leeks, but that is the next thing to try in this direction.

In the greenhouse today I tied in and de-shooted my tomatoes, reapplied slug control as two peppers were suffering, planted out some more peppers and watered at deluge levels as the borders were wuite dry. Also repotted the scented jasmine which was looking tired outside the front door , until the dog knocked it over yesterday and broke the pot!