Transparent really.

Friday 12th March.
Another day off work to garden, but this time with sufficient showers to prevent allotment digging, well not prevent exactly, but enough to have made me soggy, muddy and fed up.

So I did the greenhouse spring clean, scrubbed all glass inside and out with Jeyes Fluid solution administered via a 2.5L Hozelock pump sprayer. A long and tedious job on and 8' x 12' glasshouse.

Removed one broken pane, that had a missing corner, the replacement broke in the same way about two minutes after I put the clips in. Then I worked out that this was due to the glass in that section all being skewed slightly leaving the corner unsupported, after adjusting all the panes and clips the second replacement is still OK. Another couple of panes had slipped past their clips leaving a narrow slit, adjusted the clips with a couple of pairs of pliers and moved the glass a little before reinserting the clips.

During the week I had bought a "Stewart" heated propagator from Wilkinsons, a two standard seed tray size for £28, it and my original single tray size are now sat happily warming a variety of freshly sown seed on top of a large sheet of polystyrene on the greenhouse bench. I also bought a set of RooTrainers, a single cage, which have had Parsnips sown in them.

Saturday 13th March.
Went compost shopping and bought three 120L general purpose compost bales and "four for three" 25L bags of topsoil . The topsoil was delivered straight to the allotment, where it was later used to top up my bluebin retaining wall, hopefully to grow nice carrots as opposed to the strange ones that my clay topsoil produces.
Also bought some bags of Charlotte, Desiree and King Edward seed potatoes, which are now chitting in the frost-free shed.
Rounded off the day by, clearing the herb cum bee patch of dead growth, digging up the rest of the Jerusulem Artichokes, starting another eight foot strip of digging and then having a bonfire as all the dry waste was in the way of the digging strip.

More nice weather today.

So after watching my son's team crash out of the Herts U16 Rugby Cup 13-12 in the first round I spent the afternoon on the allotment.
The lighter coloured bit in front of me is what I dug on Thursday and Friday all the way across.
More people on site today, I'd missed the morning rush and they were all doing the Sunday afternoon post lunch nap.
They were the loosers I think as the sun was very warm and I dug with my back to it today.
The darker hillocks of Horse's doin's is what I did today, with an hours help from my son at the end, where he got in the way for the last four feet of digging and was very useful with the wheelbarrow to distribute the manure.
Damm black plastic bags do not last on the plot for storage purposes, a bird peck or fox investigation pierce the skin and you try to pick it up and the hole just runs round the bag, leaving you up to at least your ankles in it holding an empty black plastic rag.
My furry supervisor has become too accustomed to central heating over the winter and despite me following up her Thursday and Friday shivering by putting on the thicker of her two doggie coats she still sat and shivered in my direction.
So I wore an old fleece sweatshirt as a reverse bumbag back warmer and lent her my thick padded sleeveless workmand jacket, sticking her head out one armhole.
Finally a warm and contented furry supervisor, who tucked her head towards her bum and went to sleep.

At last...

Some sunny days when I've not been at work and the ground has not been a quagmire.
Thursday 4th March, sorted out the plot numbered posts the council had bashed in on each plot. Funny I count thus, 17, 18, 19, 20, they count 17, 18, 18, 18, 20 and omitted some divided plots, so spent a couple of hours wandering round with a sledgehammer, then rang up for some exta numbered posts. Dug and manured halfway across plot 17 on an eight foot strip. Talked to Alan about topping off a thorn tree in the boundary fence at the top of his plot.
Friday 5th March, found the extra posts in a pile, so bashed them in, then Alan arrived, so we dealt with the tree, amazing how much light a fifteen foot high thorn tree can block out. The public footpath outside the sence no longer has a tree elbow poking into it, Alan has more light and won't impale himself on thorns as he clears the old compost hillocks at the top of his plot.
Then finished my eight foot strip, all bar the last ten feet was relatively easy digging as it was potatoes last year and I leave the ground rough from harvest. The last ten feet had had shallots in it and was solid greasy stick to the spade clay.
In fact at various points across the plot, mostly in the dip between last years rows of potatoes the tip of the american style spade would bring up yellow chalky clay!
I gues double-digging would greatly improve my plot, but I'm not up for that, except in the bean trench, so it will be a long process.

Shameful really, but so what.

Two days shy of a full month and here I am typing my latest timely blog update.

Until the rain two weeks ago my allotments had set like the proverbial cement, little old 20st me jumping up and down on the blade of my spade and more likly to bend it or force my boot in half than to actually get it into the soil.
So what have I done in those weeks, apart form non-gardening stuff.
Well, I harvested a good crop of Chilli Peppers from the Greenhouse and the majority are now festoned around the hot water cylinder in the airing cupboard and going wrinkly.
The Tomato plants in the Greenhouse have resumed growing, with fresh green shoots and teeny-tiny red fruits where the last flowers to set had not really grown away, thought at least one had fresh flowers today and the Greenhouse is wholly unheated.
Today I relocated the Sweet Winter Jasmine from the Greenhouse to inside the French Windows, here's hoping for some sweet autumn fragrance.
Plot 18 yielded up a decent number and mixture of Winter Squashes together with some Sunflower heads. In order to store them I had to spend a bit more on my shed, adding a set of shelves across most of the rear of the shed, so it now looks more like Hagrid's garden minus the HippoGryff than a workshed. Today I gathered in all the Blue Hubbard, which have me puzzled as they are defiantly and wartily Dark Green, some tending to Orange with a Grapelike bloom, any road they were vandal-visible as the 1 degree celcius Tuesday night had worked its dark and mysterious magic on the foliage.
Now that the soil is more amenable to digging today I dug a half-width strip across plot 17 about six feet wide after I'd wrestled all the dying octopii from Plot 18's Squash patch into the compost bins and bonfire pile.
The Workshed now just needs one end and some detail round the door coating in Sadolin Black to look acceptable from the outside and a great deal more sorting and ordering and placing and organising to look like a workspace inside.
Still I finished one long drawn out project this weekend, we got notice boards for all the Allotment Sites in 2007, I installed four over the last week, the last one yesterday, that entire job took an average of two months per board. In mitigations, it was impossible to get to any tools or "stuff" while we had the builders in and dealing with my late mothers estate after her death took a tad more than five minutes work, but it still seems to have taken an age.
Finished a newer project that was sprung on me a few months ago by Yahoo. They went and decided to get rid of GeoCities, their free web-hosting site and guess where I'd put our association website.
So after pottering round for many weeks trying to find a FREE web-hosting service that the association could use I finally found one that BT is providing as a community service and tonight in one straight off sitting I've resurrected our website.

Gardening v Rugby

At the moment gardening, at any rate blogging about gardening is loosing steadily to U16 rugby administration. Gardening has been done, but not as much as I'd ideally like to do.
All Potatoes harvested, most Tomato plants just about finished, Chilli Peppers mostly red, Sweetcorn eaten, Autumn/Winter digging well under way.
Here is plot 17 and the steady progress made on digging has reached a line from the top of the raspberry canes at mid left and straight across following the weed growth.
The nice fresh horse manure is courtesy of my good friend Robert and I have also neatened up the path edge which had meandered considerably over the years.

On plot 18 some weeks ago I had to employ Derris dust on the brassicas to deal with Cabbage White caterpillars, the odd looking barrowload is squash and sweetcorn, topped off with sunflower heads. I have chopped down all the sunflowers as they were overshadowing the ripening squash and some had fallen across the path to my shed, all the leaves went in the compost bin, followed by the cut to fit sweetcorn plants.
Today I paid a flying visit to the plot and spent my gardening time picking over all the onions that have been drying in the shed at home. Some losses to rot and a few where the neck is going to succumb to rot, so they went for early consumption.
This shot is my Banana Shallots var Piglet Willensis all neatly rowed up after loosing the loose skins.
Also packed away the fourteen Crown Prince squash that had been curing on the garden table and laid out another batch from the allotment, together with (at last) some Butternut squash that had emerged from the dying squash leaves unscathed by rot.
All new squashes harvested yesterday and also got a large number of minature pumpkin type squash, can't remember the variety, but breakfast teacup sized, fluted fruits and three that looked the same, but instead of bright pumpkin colour were deep dark green. Some dark green Australian squashes are awaiting harvest.
These two shots are for Johnboy on Kitchen Garden forum, they show how the seed-bed ( left in ground from 2007 to seed) Banana Shallots have divided, each bulb growing a fresh bulb under the brown-skin next to the flower from this year.

Extreme close-up showing where the flowerstalk broke off from the new bulb.

First ever Raspberry Vodka sieved and bottled to clear. Second roasted Crown Prince squash today with roast chicken and the 80% uneaten roasted squash awaiting its conversion into Squask, Bacon and Chilli Soup featuring Onions, Shallots, Potatoes and Garlic. The same fate as last weeks one, yum.

Zoom Zoom Spud.

Sunflower have either zoomed for the sky or snapped off, tallest is about eight feet and yet to bloom. The large bloom looming over the dog is over six feet tall and dripping nectar.


The squash have spread magnificently and hiding under the leaves are a number of steel grey Crown Prince.
The later planted Hubbard do not yet seem to have set decent fruit, but I'm not going to search and end up trampling the stems.



The onion patch has now been cleared and hoed.









This is a sample single plant of Charlotte spuds.
I have now harvested six of my eight potato rows, five Charlotte and one Desiree, sadly the biggest and best Desiree, almost without exception, had occupiers, multi or zero legged occupiers.
Dog and I spent all day Wednesday 18th and Tuesday 19th August spud harvesting, well I did, she hid in the shade most of the time, where I joined her when I got too hot. Took a while as I was having to clear the inter-row gaps of weeds before digging.
Two old fashioned metal dustbins with cheap potting compost now contain the three barrow loads of potatoes and I'll consign today's harvest to a pop-up nylon fabric weed bag/bin and order some paper potato sacks from Edwin Tuckers.
Just two 30' rows to dig now.

Scotland & Weeds.

Last week I are mostly bin being in Scotland.
Very nice in Lundin Links, went and climbed Largo Law, an extinct volcano plug down the road with the top about 290m above sea level. Strange up on top, like wandering round on a human molar tooth, several high points and a channel across the middle. The farmer whose land it is in seems to have directed access to the steepest face, but a damm fine view all round and an OS trig point on the highest bit. The Ordnance Survey mapsite shows it neatly here.

Yesterday I are mostly bin harvesting and then processing greenhouse Tomatoes into frozen sauce base with undivided Garlic cloves.

Today I are mostly bin harvesting onions and shallots.

Started by clearing the coldframe of bolted Cos lettuce and an undercrop of creeping weeds, before digging it over.
A week away and weeds had flourished so well that the crop was half hidden, so weeding as I harvested I spent a nice afternoon in the sun.
The Banana Shallots (Pigletwilliensis) produced a level barrowful which filled four of those blue latticework plastic supermarket trays in the workshed and the rest of the various Onions produced a heaped barrowful which filled four wooden trays in the workshed.
Breathing in the workshed is now a trifle difficult if you do not like your air strongly onion flavoured.

As I have the rest of the week off work I hope to do much more at the allotment, so wait and see.

Tea was:
Sweetcorn from plot to pan to plate with butter and sea salt.
Streaky pork slices, chunked and pan fried before adding to the sauce and heating through for fifteen minutes and serving with fresh Charlotte chips.
Sauce:
Two red Chilli Peppers from the greenhouse, two undivided Garlic cloves, a bird-pecked Catshead apple, a huge Banana Shallot, six small Tomatoes from the greenhouse, one medium Patty-Pan summer squash, four mushrooms, all diced and fried in a generous glug of Olive oil, a squeeze of tomato puree and a glass of water

Pick-n-mix bar.

On Friday 31st July my intention to spend the whole weekend was intercepted by a request to assist with an un-scheduled "make do and mend" at the Rugby Club. So Saturday 1st August I welcomed the new month in by digging out missing sections of paved paths, mixing concrete and filling in the holes with concrete and paving slabs. Finished it off with a convivial viewing of the All Blacks getting stuffed by the Saffies.
Sunday 2nd August up the allotment for a mega-picking of Purple French Beans, two carrier bags full, gave some Alan and more to three neighbours at home.
Also picked:

• twenty-four Patty Pan Squash lurking under the leaves, where there were also a number of immature Crown Prince Squash.
• enough Calabrese from the second planting for three to enjoy for tea.
• Potatoes dug a carrier bagful of Charlotte, sorted the largest and smallest into seperate bags for use later in the week, then used the intermediate sized ones by following a recipe posted by Primrose at Kitchen Garden Forum with amendments, I used fresh Rosemary from outside the front door and fresh Garlic from last weeks picking, a large marble sized buld that had not "cloved", delicious.
• the first outdoor Tomatoes, just a handful mind.
• two Cucumbers, from the now rather sad and devasted plants, leaves all shrivelled up.
• a 2.5lb Cos Lettuce.
• six Sweetcorn cobs.

In the herb patch the Elecampane is reeking of honey scent and I counted six different types of bees on it, as well as Hoverflies.
Got a compliment from Verity on my bedding Dahlias which are covered in flowers today. The Asters are looking good, but the Gladioli have suffered from the wind and rain.
The weeds have thrived and I pulled quite a number.
Greenhouse Tomatoes are picking consistently, a handful every other day, which is good as my beloved does not really want to eat much more tomato than that. I suspect I am maltreating these plants in some way, perhaps my cordon pruning is too restrictive as many of the flower trusses are mutating into new stems at the tip.
Picked my first Greenhouse Chilli Pepper today, a hot green finger one to go into a chicken dish for tea.

Off computers a bit......

Off computers a bit at the moment, sometimes after working at a screen all day I end up in a mood for days where I just can't be arsed to peer at a screen again in the evening, so apologies for the lack of updates.
Raspberries are now all picked out and the nets packed away, just as well because some juvenile Blackbirds had discovered the weak points last week and were always in the "cage" each time I went up the plot, funny not avian interest until the crop was over the peak, even on the unnetted rows.
Calabrese, the secondary shoots did appear, but on cooking they were VERY woody at the cut end, so just as well I'd pulled the row and picked the shoots as I put the rest of the plant into the compost bin. The second planting is just coming on, but is smaller than the first.
Potatoes continue to be very enjoyable, steamed and buttered, mmmm. Dug some last week and my beloved cooked the lot instead of an appropriate amount, so I ended up carefully slicing a dozen decent sized steamed cold spuds and sauteing them, mmmmmm mmmmmmm.
Leeks, the seedlings are established, but with some losses that either didn't like the transplant, or got pulled by the birds.
In the herb patch the Wintersweet has been pruned back hard as it was flopping out four feet in all directions and swamping other stuff. The Elecampane has finally started to put out its rich honey scent as sufficient flowers open.
Talking of flowers the bedding Dahlias are now a vibrant slash of red and yellow across plot 18 and the Asters are starting to flower along the main path end, as are the Gladioli in several locations.
Garlic was harvested this weekend as the tops had died off, a disappointing crop, nothing even reached golf ball size, despite being in well tended barrels with no competition, good loam to feed on and careful watering as needed. The surviving Elephant Garlic, all three of them, are still growing strongly.
French Beans are picking strongly, nice and easy as well with the purple pods, got seven pounds in the freezer from one picking.
Greenhouse Tomatoes are now picking, got fourteen Sunday evening when watering.
Got another load of Horse manure from my friend Robert Saturday 18th July and I emptied it along where the first row of Potatoes had been. Bloody foxes went through it in detail and played in my onions, pulling half a dozen up.
Spent most of Saturday 25th July weeding the top quarter of plot 18 among my leeks, piles of weeds. also sowed some follow on salad stuff.
Feeling a bit more computer friendly, so hopefully a better update next week.

Don't mention Raspberries.

No really please don't, I've got a real glut at the moment, picked 16lb on Sunday 5th July and another 20lb on Saturday 11th July.

Saturday 4th July was the second "make do and mend" day at the Rugby Club, I helped install a drain to stop the patio flooding the clubhouse via the fire door during heavy rain, then watched the Lions make up for their first two dismal performances against South Africa.
Sunday 5th July I weeded all of Plot 17, dug potatoes for tea and picked; mangetout sugarsnap peas, cuccumbers, lettuces, purple french beans and raspberries.
I got Chris & Alison to help themselves to all the ones down by the coldframe, then got Terry & Sue to pick the uncovered row up on the fruit terrace, that left me just the four netted rows and they yielded 16lb.
Mary was asking about some un-picked fruit on a couple of plots, so I offered her my redcurrents and some gooseberries, she left with a mixing bowl of each and the promise to me of a couple of jars of jelly and jam.
The redcurrents looked like polished jewels lurking in the bushes.
This is how the onions and shallots looked after I had finished.














Saturday 11th July I spent two hours picking fruit.

Then I uncovered some of the brassicas to weed them, nice easy job as the soil hasn't set hard, although there were some impressive cracks.
Then I noticed that under the next set of protection my calabrese was somewhat more advanced than I had thought.

Take a look at these two.

I harvested about fifteen of these, gave one to John who couldn't quite believe his eyes, three to Bob & Tracey, two for Sunday dinner and ten for the freezer. Left some smaller ones to bulk up a bit and it looks like there might be sideshoots.
Harvested half a carrier bag of purple french beans, some for Sunday dinner the rest went in the freezer.

Dug two potato plants, which gave some small spuds for my tea, everyone else had already eaten, with a good amount for Sunday dinner.

Managed to lure Mary back to pick more redcurrents and gooseberries, another mixing bowl of each, amazing how laden the two bushes of each are this year.