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!