September Update

It was with much trepidation that we finally went back to the allotment today...
During our loooovely two week holiday in Thailand we had cleverly forward planned and arranged for Charl and Jon, expert horticulturists, to pop up in keep an eye on things. We were thrilled to see that they had done their best to plunder as much as possible, and we only had a glut of runner beans to contend with on our return.

However, since getting back we have been slightly less well organised. Our weekends have been spent attending a wonderful wedding in Belgum and massacring an effervescent fig tree in Oxford, and as going up on weekday evenings had not even occurred to us, its been even longer than we'd hoped since we were last there.

But as ever, we were pleasantly surprised to see how hardy our plot has been to our blatant neglect. The beetroot that were only just seeded when we left are now definitely established nicely (we even managed to harvest one that was doing far too well compared to its siblings).

French beans and runners are continuing to be amazingly successful and we harvested about 3 kgs today, despite us already taking about three times that so far this year! Unfortunately, the growing frame has taken a bit of a bashing. Need to do a better job when we re-build it next year.

But the champion of the trip was the monster 'courgette' that we found. Must have been about 50cms long and weighed over 1.1kgs. Totally unexpected compared to the tiny 15cm jobbies that we'd been getting off it so far.  I'm not sure what the difference between a marrow and courgettes are, but this one was definitely upwardly mobile.

Cabbages are still looking like cabbages, but as we both dont really like cabbages, we left them where they were. Note to self: dont plant as many cabbages next year.

A summer summary

Yes, it's been a long time since we blogged. We have no excuse.

July and August are exciting months in the allotment holder's year. Here's some of the food we have harvested since the last post.

1. A load of Red Duke of York potatoes. Delicious and very good for mashing.



2. A broccoli and a cabbage. Andrew made the cabbage into coleslaw. I haven't had a chance to taste it yet but he says it was delicious. The broccoli was amazing. We shared it with Murphy: he supplied a steak and ale pie, we supplied the vegetables. We have lots of broccoli, cabbage and cauliflowers almost ready to go.



3. Beans. Lots and lots and lots of them. Dwarf French and runner, grown from the seeds Jill gave us. They are so delicious, and it's very exciting hunting for them and picking them. You think you've found them all and then you discover loads more. We shared some of the french beans with Murphy and I cooked some of the runner beans for Emma when she came round for dinner.



4. A courgette. Here's a picture of it on the plant (with another one growing in front of it). I picked it today, so I can't tell you how it tastes yet. We bought this courgette plant from the plant stall at my school summer fair. That's why there's only one of them. We'll try to grow more next year. I'm quite excited about the concept of a courgette glut.



Things we have learnt over the last few weeks:

1. Beans are easy to grow, fun to pick, delicious to eat, and therefore generally the perfect allotment crop. We'll be growing lots more beans next year.
2. Strawberries don't do very well if you don't water them.
3. Brassicas are very attractive to all sorts of pests, particularly slugs and white cabbage fly. They require an awful lot of work. And then, in the case of cabbage and cauliflower, you remember that you don't really like them anyway.

Bean caning this evening

Popped up this evening on my own to install some much needed support for our rapidly growing runner beans - they've already shot past the 3 foot canes we'd plonked in as a temporary measure.

Lessons learnt when installing cane structures:
- look at the canes before you leave the shop. Skinny ones are no good! - Bigger is better!
- Do not assume they will all be of equal length.
- Stepladder or box would be useful...

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Our first harvest!

The last few weeks have been very good on the wedding, engagement party and housewarming party front (none of them mine, by the way), but pretty poor on the gardening front. It's quite hard to have an allotment and a social life, it seems. The weeds and the pest don't really take account of this though and have well and truly invaded us. Our beans are covered in aphids, our cabbages have been chewed up by slugs, our gooseberries (every single one) were devoured by some unidentified trespasser and the whole plot has been taken over by weeds of every kind. We've got a lot of work to do. You can't just leave an allotment to get on with it, apparently.

However, we have had some success! On Sunday night we ate our first meal using produce that we grew ourselves. Broad beans and pototoes (along with some other, non-homegrown items. Absolutely delicious! Here the food is, before and after. Yum.

The allotment owner's perfect birthday present

It was my birthday last week. My wonderful parents gave me a Roberts solar powered DAB radio. The solar panel charges the battery while you listen, so you can get hours of unplugged listening pleasure. Perfect for an afternoon on the allotment, which is annoyingly short of electricity.

So, I gave it its maiden outing yesterday. Andrew was at work, what with it being a Thursday afternoon, so the radio was the perfect companion. A sunny afternoon listening to Mariella Frostrup and Eddie Mair, what could be better? I decided that Radio 4 was the most suitable allotment radio station. Somehow it didn't seem right to listen to anything aimed at the under 50s.



While on the subject of perfect birthday presents, it wouldn't seem right not to mention the amazing present that Andrew built me. My beautiful bike, also an allotment owner's dream possession. Actually, I can't speak for any other allotment owners, but it is MY dream possession.

Here it is, isn't it beautiful?



Yes, I do realise it doesn't have any pedals, before you ask. They're soon to be added!

Allotment Quiz: Name that brassica

There's a little part of our allotment that we haven't dug over yet. It's mainly, of course, covered with weeds, but we've got three plants growing that look a lot more vegetable-like, and less weed-like, than the others. Despite a look through some of my gardening books, I have no idea what it is.

Can anyone help us? Here's a picture:




Anyone who can help us will be high on the list to benefit from our first harvest.

Photographic evidence

For any that didn't believe me, here's a photo of Ben doing a stirling job of weeding around the broad beans and peas.


Here's Ben and Andrew finally achieving success with the pesky downpipe. It wasn't as easy as it might look. Ben and our watering can made an excellent rain machine.

The winners of our greenhouse poll are:

Tomatoes! Congratulations, tomatoes!

Doula and Tom, our very experienced allotment neighbours (more on them soon) gave us three small tomato plants. However they gave them to us with the warning "it's impossible to grow tomatoes here. They get the blight. Grow like trees and then drop over night". A double-edged present, perhaps.

Here's some info on the blight http://www.gardenersworld.com/how-to/problem-solving/tomato-blight/

We're going to give them a go, anyway. We've got some tomato seedlings we've been growing in Andrew's garden too. We'll grow them in the greenhouse, which will hopefully limit their exposure to the airborne spores. We're a bit reluctant to use lots of chemicals on them, we've been pretty much organic so far.

Any tips for keeping them blight-free, gardeners out there?

The good and the bad

The recent lack of posts has been caused by an unfortunate coincidence of me not having a camera and Andrew not having an internet connection. So I'm afraid this will have to be a pictureless post until we get Andrew's photos onto my computer somehow.

Last weekend was our first free weekend in ages and so we managed to get up to the allotment not just once, but twice! It was a weekend of ups and downs:

Bad thing: nettles. HUGE nettles. They've taken over the allotment (well, the paths around it) in the last couple of weeks. OUCH. I'd forgotten how much nettle stings hurt. Luckily the allotment is also surrounded by dock leaves so I managed to prevent too much pain. Andrew unfortunately didn't take advantage of nature's cure for nettle stings and ended up with a painful rash all over his arms for a few days. The plus side: Andrew's aunt Jill tells us that nettles make a good fertiliser if you soak them in a bucket of water for a few days then use the water on your plants. We're trying it out.

Bad thing: Dry soil. Our soil is so dry!! And with just a little watering can, it takes an age to keep the vegetables from going thirsty. The plus side: our lovely allotment neighbour Carol bought a new hose and has given us permission to use it whenever we want. And it's a 'kink-free, extra long hose'. Brilliant.

Good thing: sunshine, lovely sunshine. The hottest weekend of the year so far. The down side: The factor 30 wasn't enough to stop me getting sunburnt.

Good thing: Andrew's brother Ben turned up to see the allotment and ended up spending the whole afternoon helping us out. He did loads of weeding around the beans and peas. demonstrating particularly excellent weeding skills, and then he helped Andrew sort out the guttering on the shed. When we put the shed up, the guttering was the last thing to go up, and by that time Andrew's dad had reached "I'm tired, let's just get this done as quickly as possible" point. So the guttering ended up being, how should I put this... not exactly perfect. Water slid down the roof and right over the top of the guttering onto the ground below! Not really fit for its purpose of saving water. If we'd had a water butt (which we didn't) it would have stayed empty. But now, after a few hours hard work from Craig brothers 1 and 2, and thanks in particular to Ben's excellent DIY skills, learnt at his father's knee I think, we have a fully functioning gutter that flows down into our lovely new water butt (yet another present from Mum and Dad Craig). The down side: There isn't a down side. Ben can come and help any time he likes.

Delivery

It was a bank holiday.. It was always going to be bad weather. So why the surprise when, true to form, it doesn't stop raining for 24 hours?!

Oh well. These things are to be expected, and our plot could do with the water anyway - over the last few weeks the reality of our "very well drained" soil has hit home, with the unworked beds turning into piles of dry dust. 

As there wasn't anything growing on it when we arrived we decided some time ago that what we really needed was some nice manure to mulch in. Apparently it's good at putting nutrients into the soil and also retaining moisture and the like. 

We'd spoken to Jill (who helps with the admin and runs the tiny allotment shop) about this when we first started, but hadn't got around to getting any yet.

So, with much trepidation we phoned the poo man, had a strained conversation on volumes ("Erm.. I'm not sure.. how much do you think we need..?") and after some deliberation became the owners of 10 bin bags full of premium horse shit. 

Woohoo!

Phil arrived with it in the back of his Fiat "Poo-nto" (his joke..) the next week. 

So we've now dug most of it in, only one bag left.. I'm quite surprised at how quickly it's disappeared actually. You can tell which bits have had it too, just by the colour of the soil. At least I think you can. You probably can't. 
Anyway, I think we need more.

Also, the poor neglected, desiccated pear isn't dead after all! We have shoots! Hurrah! Sure we'll have no fruit this year, but hopefully it'll settle in for next time. 

More fruitiness

Last weekend Andrew went off on a trip to Homebase to get some pea seeds. He came back with five strawberry plants. He did also get the seeds, don't worry. More of those on a later post which will germinate in 10-14 days.

Back to the strawberries. Here's Andrew planting them. Doesn't he look the part in his sun hat?


We planted them under some black plastic we had lying around. Apparently it's best to plant them under something, to keep the moisture in and to keep the strawberries off the soil so they don't rot. I don't think we chose the best thing to plant them under though, something porous would have been better. Not that it's rained for the last week so that probably wouldn't have made much difference. They used to always spread straw under the plants to do the same job. Hence the name of the plant. According to Sue, Andrew's mum. We believe her. She's usually right.

On the subject of fruit, our raspberries have finally started to bud. Thank goodness. I am very much looking forward to raspberries. I want to try making raspberry jam.

Behind the raspberries you can see our gooseberry bush which seems to be doing very well. Gooseberry jam, anyone?

Reproduction in action

Here was our apple tree a week ago. Growing a few nice buds, see.










Here it was today. Look at the lovely blossom!!











A few weeks ago I was reading my gardening book when I stumbled upon the fact that apple trees need pollinating by similar trees. I teach pollination to my 6 year old pupils, this really shouldn't have been such a shocking revelation! But when planting the trees I hadn't really given much thought to fact that we would need other trees near by for reproductive purposes. A brief chat to Charlotte and Jon revealed that the other trees that came with the apple (see my previous post about trees) would be suitable for pollination.
For a second I thought my problem had been solved, until I remembered that our pear tree wasn't doing quite so well...

Not a bud in sight, as you can see. Poor old pear. No chance of that pear reproducing this year. (We're leaving it in to see if it does any better next year). I began to think that our poor old apple tree would be without progeny too. Two barren fruit trees, how sad.




Luckily, today I realised that I had no need to worry. There are a couple of apple trees in nearby allotments which should do the job fine.


And to prove the point, I even spotted a big fat bee getting down to the job in question:

Greenhouse post no.2

More photos of our lovely greenhouse, this time with a roof and cupboards.

The long-awaited greenhouse post no. 1

This story should be told from the beginning. It is the story of a very resourceful man with some excellent carpentry skills and even better scavenging skills.

On the day of our second ever trip to our allotment, we popped in to Andrew's parents to pick up our tools (we keep them there as my 6th floor flat doesn't have much room for anything, let alone spades and forks). We mentioned to Andrew's dad that we were thinking of building a shed, or even perhaps a greenhouse... We talked a little bit about twobyfours and other things that I didn't understand and then left for a days hard digging.

Two weeks and two holidays (me to Poland, Andrew to Chicago) later, Andrew had a phonecall from his Dad.
"I was driving past a house that was having its windows replaced. I thought I'd take the windows home with me, they might be useful for your greenhouse". We popped round to find a whole house-worth of windows in the Craig back garden. And a glass door.I wish I'd taken a photo.

Two more weeks, and Steve had transformed the windows and some pallets that he'd found somewhere, into a beautiful greenhouse and shed combination, with built in cupboards. I shouldn't have been surprised. Steve has built three sheds of his own in his garden, all mostly out of bits of wood he has found. Amazing. Sheds bought new from B and Q cost at least £100. Greenhouses cost loads more. We are very grateful!

A few weeks ago, the Craigs and I went to the allotment to put the shed up there. Actually the Craigs put up the shed, and I stood around being a bit useless, and handing people the occasional hammer or nail. Here are some photos of the building process. All we need now are some locks for the doors and some plants.




Photos of the finished building will follow shortly.

The unforeseen hazards of allotment keeping

1. Backache
2. Perpetually dirty fingernails
3. Callouses (Andrew has these already, from climbing, but they are new to my previously soft, smooth hands)
4. Ants. Ants!! There are hundreds of them. We need to work out how to get rid of them. Suggestions welcome.
5. Mud/soil/dust. Everywhere. Literally everywhere. The car is full of it, my handbag has a fine coating at the bottom, the pockets of all my jeans have a light dusting inside. I found a load in my bed the other day.
6. Backache. It deserves another mention because it hurts while you're digging and also when you wake up the next morning.

Bean there...

Harriet mentioned last week that we'd put some broad beans in - we'd grown them in the relative safety of my kitchen while the ground was still cold, so they had a bit of a headstart before they went outdoors. 

As we started to sow them we realised we didn't have any seed trays (rookie mistake #1), and were at a bit of a loss what to do until Harriet remembered that she had done something similar with the kids. So, using a glass and some old newspaper, we fashioned some paper containers to plant the beans in.  

They seemed to do surprisingly well and so after only a couple of weeks were absolutely enormous! Well... for seedlings anyway. 

Had to take a bit of a guess on when to plant them out, but Mum's copy of  "the gardening year" said March, so March it was. They were planted alternately in two rows about 20cm apart, and were given cane and string railing to help give them some support as they grow. Planted them with the paper pots attached to give them some extra mulch too.

It was all going so well! Beans big, beans planted out, bean accessories attached, Job done!

Now we just sit back, right?

Apparently not... on the last visit to our plot the poor things seemed to have taken a bit of a bashing, and had withered somewhat; the leaves had serrated edges (nibble marks?) and looked quite limp and grey.    

Think it was most probably due to the shock of being thrown from a nice warm kitchen into the harsh reality of the outdoors without any time to harden up.

Lesson learnt! 

International Fame

My friend Ian mentioned our blog on his blog! An Australian blog, no less. So now we have two, yes two, real actual readers (Ian and my Mum!) Not only that, but we inspired Ian to write his own gardening post on his hitherto gardening-free blog. I like to feel we're starting a gardening-blogging revolution. This time next year, we'll have.... um... three readers. With any luck.

Fruits

We now have a gooseberry bush and some raspberry canes. Here's the gooseberry.

We bought it from a garden centre in Enfield, which was on a long road lined with garden centres. Pretty much every shop was a garden centre. Or a pond shop, or some other garden-related retailer. Strange. We were trying to find one that Andrew remembers from his childhood. We ended up going to the one that was easiest for me to park in. I wonder how other visitors decide which garden centre to go to...

We went to this garden centre on our way to a party in Cambridge. We gave our friends Andrew and Ben a lift home. I forgot the car was full of stuff and they had to sit squashed up with cardboard boxes, wellies, seed trays and gooseberry bushes. I don't think they minded. The gooseberry, however, got a bit squashed.

Broad Beans

Here are our broad bean plants. We've put in two rows of plants that we started growing indoors, and then two rows of seeds. Next weekend we'll put in some more rows, and then we'll have a nice long-lasting crop of beans, rather than them all being ready at once. That way, we won't get bored of broad beans. That's the idea anyway.
We have canes and string to build supports for the beans to grow up. We would have put them up on Saturday but I left the string at home by mistake. Hopefully the beans will still be ok without the supports for now.

Trees

My very generous Pops bought us four fruit trees, a plum, a pear, an apple and a cherry. We don't have room for four trees on our plot. Not if we want our vegetables and our soon-to-be-installed greenhouse to get any sun. So we decided to keep two and give two to Charlotte's friends Bruce and Lucy. We chose to keep the apple and the pear, because we thought the fruit would be less likely to be eaten by the birds. It's not like we can spray the birds with water from our kitchen window like Charlotte and Jon do! Do you think we made the right decision?

The trees were supposed to be kept immersed in water from the minute they arrived in the post until you put them into the ground. Unfortunately (I'm not sure this is the right word as fortune had nothing to do with it; we just didn't get round to it) this didn't happen to ours. Instead they spent two weeks sitting very dryly in Charlotte and Jon's hallway. I'm not sure how important this bad beginning is going to be for our poor fruit trees. Hopefully we can make up for it.

Yesterday I went and picked up the two trees. I took them to the allotment and left them sitting in water overnight. This morning I went back up and dug two holes, leaving plenty of room below and around the roots so they've got lots of room to grow. I chose the place where I thought they'd block out the least amount of sun for us and our neighbours: the northern edge of our plot, infront of a non-window part of next door's shed.

I sprinkled loads of fish blood and bone into the hole and onto the soil I was about to put back into the hole, filled in the hole, and watered each tree with about 8 litres of water. I tied a bamboo cane to each one to offer some support against the wind, but I'm not sure it'll be enough, we'll have to see. Apparently the trees need to be watered every other day. So far we've only been going to the allotment at the weekends. I really hope it rains this week or I might have to make a few trips after work. Don't want those trees going thirsty again.

Straight lines and right angles...

...or perfectionism vs sloppiness

When we first got our allotment, I drew a plan, carefully scaled down, of where each of our 10'x10' beds would go. When we started digging, we carefully measured 10 feet in both directions. Or at least we thought we did. And we thought that was good enough. When we started to dig our second and now third beds, they didn't seem to match up with the first, no matter how many times we compared them using our bright blue string. After much confusion we eventually realised that our first bed was not a square, as we'd thought, but a rhombus. To make matters worse, our second bed was even worse than a rhombus: it had wonky sides . And not a right angle in sight. It was very confusing. After literally minutes of thinking, we realised that we'd gone wrong right at the very beginning of our allotment adventure. The boundary we'd (not very carefully) staked out with bamboo canes at the top of the plot to divide us from our neighbour was not perpendicular to the long sides of the plot.

Once we realised this, Andrew decided that it didn't really matter if all of our plots were rhombuses. He said the vegetables wouldn't mind the absence of right angles. I tried to go along with him but after a few minutes I gave in to my inner perfectionist and insisted that we re-do all the measuring, do a bit more digging, and make sure that our plots had right angles. They aren't squares, they are rectangles. That's fine. At least all the paths will be straight. Andrew forgave me eventually. It was only an extra hour's work.


Here's Andrew making sure the sides are perpendicular.

A few more photos

The first week

Last Saturday we spent the afternoon digging over a 10 x 10 foot plot. This will be where we sow our broad beans. We tried what we thought was double digging, but actually it wasn't! But this turned out to be a good thing as the soil is very clay-y and we wouldn't want to have brought too much of the clay to the surface. Apparently.

Today the ground was too muddy to do too much digging, so we straightened up the path and edge of the allotment. Andrew is very good with a mattock. I'm not.