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?