Back to the plot!

We have been very lax so far this year, having hardly been to the plot at all, but we both went down today.

While I went off to the committee meeting, MrUrban dug up our Jerusalem Artichokes, sorted out the bed they were in and then put some back for this year. So we have quite a big bucket of JAs to eat our way through.

After the meeting finished I got to work on some weeding and tidying and MrUrban sowed some pea and bean seeds in biodegradable pots. That worked quite well last year, so we decided to do it again. I think they are Borlotta, Pink Lady, Runner, Purple Dwarf, and Broad on the bean front and Starlight, Ambassador and Kelvedon Wonder for the peas, like last year.

I had a good wander round the plot too, to see how it was all doing. The strawberries look happy enough, and the runners we took off and potted up in the Leanhouse are doing well too - even a flower on one of them. The soft fruit bushes have lots of healthy looking leaves and shoots too.

The fig trees in the Leanhouse have tiny little fruits starting off which is cheering, I hope we will be able to look after them and get them to ripen. I'm not going to bring them out of the Leanhouse yet as I think there could still be frosts which would do for those fruit.

The only other thing growing is purple sprouting broccoli, but it is a bit small and sad looking. But between the 3 tiny plants we may manage one batch of Stilton and Broccoli soup eventually.

yesterday and today (and tomorrow)

Weeding, weeding and more weeding mainly.

You can now actually see between the rows of strawberries, and the rows of onions.



And the Jerusalem artichokes aren't having to fight with the docks.

The squash have got some room round them too now. And they are starting to form fruit, I'm very excited by the yellow ones and the round ones.

And I got the sweetcorn in, a block of 3 by 3 up next to the Kale, garlic, carrots, and turnips.


We got a load of flower seedlings into pots too. Tomorrow I need to get the salad out from the leanhouse, it is too hot for it in there and it will bolt if I'm not careful.

ship shape in the evenings

The light evenings since the clocks changed have made a big difference to our workrate.

The first job came from a windfall. The community group that has a plot on our site is doing a load of work at the moment, they have had some luck with funding and resource allocation, so will be making a big push to sort out the space we have given them, with our help. This means a certain amount of clearing of their plot, one of which has a lot of gravel in it. Our Secretary made sure that they weren't considering just throwing it away and we are now working at moving it around to where it is needed.

First lot he moved to a big boggy area on the main path, and then a second batch we wheeelbarrowed away to our Leanhouse™ to make a floor for it. It is particularly boggy there (one of the reasons for siting it there - the soil was too damp to use as a bed) but now it has a ground sheet down and gravel on top, to keep the weeds at bay, make it look a little neater, and improve drainage. There is still plenty of gravel though, so we will have to get some other uses for it going. Probably communal paths.


This also coincided nicely with us retiring some metal shelves from use at home, so we reconfigured those as Leanhouse™ staging, putting the shelves on the wrong way up to form shallow trays. They are the perfect size for grow bags and seed trays. They cost us a few pounds about 10 years ago, so we are definitely getting our money's worth!


They are almost full now a couple of days later, we have mixed salad, peas, beans, broccoli, kale, chard, lettuce, all sorts of stuff just sowed or as young seedlings, in there.

Also in are the potatoes, we have gone for Arran Pilots and Desiree this year. We used compost from our functional bath, the Bath o' Salad, to go in the trenches, and then refilled the bath with new stuff ready for lettuce seedlings, which are now in.

And then last night we did a bit of spring cleaning rather than planting. We had put the last of our home produced compost in an old broken bath which was sitting there and looking unattractive and taking up room, so I dragged out a black compost bin and transferred it all to that. The cracked bath is now in the skip. Once that was gone we rediscovered a metal arch underneath it, so that has now been installed in the middle of the 'flower' bed ready for sweet peas to climb up.

And the old strawberry plants have been transplanted from their overgrown bed to a nicely cleared new one. That leaves up clear to do some serious grass removal in that bed in preparation for the squash going in.

All in all it is coming together, I reckon a couple more evenings and we may have it in a fairly neutral state, with all the beds ready to go.

zoned out

I have been reading a bit about hardiness zones today. I hadn't really come across them before as they are a US thing, created originally by the USDA, but I had seen reference to them recently on quite a few American garden/allotment bloggers on Blotanical, often in people's 'about me' section of their blogs.

So I decided to look it up. This article at Wikipedia is quite informative, it seems zones can help you work out what plants you can grow, and I found out I am in Zone 8, which puts me on a par with Washinton or Seattle. This of course only relates to minimum temperatures though, and doesn't relate to days of sunshine, length of days, dates of last frost etc so in rather variable and northern Great Britain it may not be so great a guide. It seems that although in hardiness Zone 8 we are in Heat Zone 1 or 2 which means only a handful of days a year over 30°C.

And according to very helpful feature at Garden Action, which alters the timing advice in their articles to use your own location settings, my last frost date is early May and my first frost date is mid October, so there ain't that much outdoor growing time for tender plants!

The RHS Hardiness guide is also useful in the UK, this puts plants into categories of how hardy they are; in their plant selector you can select how hardy you want a plant to be and what kind of situation it will be in and they will suggest things.

Most of this is stuff I knew about but it was good to take a few minutes to go over it again and take it all in. I'm certainly glad we have the greenhouse and leanhouse™ as it extends our season so much. For instance although it is cold, frosty, going dark at about 6pm and occasionally snowy here we had our first salad of the year the other day. It is just about warm enough in the the greenhouse that the rainbow chard has started to grow a decent size of leaf to eat!

Frosty Windy New Year

We went down to the plot for the first real amount of time since the New Year the other day. There had been high winds earlier in the week and our fence had been knocked over (which pepette kindly told us about through this blog) so we firstly fixed that. Not much else had been damaged or whisked away by the wind, and the only damage was caused by a bit of corrugated plastic from someone another plot landing on our broccoli and sprouts. Fortunately our broccoli and sprouts were rubbish anyway so we haven't really lost anything there.

We got the stove going pretty quickly which kept us warm while we were there, which was enjoyable.



We have bought some seeds from Garden Organic and some seed potatoes and jerusalem artichoke slips. We plan to get a little heated propagator for home to start off some things, and to start off some others in the greenhouse soon. When it is a little bit warmer. For now I think it is a matter of clearing up some of the beds (pulling out the rubbish broccoli) and covering some with plastic to try and warm them up.

So those are the next jobs, and the fixing up of our shed floor and a bench, and the LeanHouse™ and a bench for there too.

Helloooooooooo!

I haven't posted for a while, but I promise we have been doing some stuff at the plot.

Most things are over, but some tomatoes are still going (in the lean house), chilies are ripening, and various kinds of salad are going (also in the lean house). The Christmas Potatoes are also coming on well, and I'm quite excited about them.

So, what have we had?

The last courgette before the frost was more of a marrow, I took it to my Mum's and we stuffed it with couscous and topped it with goats cheese, which was lovely:



We took up the rest of the potatoes shortly after the frost too, they are fantastic, a beautiful colour and flavour:




I made a thai potato curry with some tonight:



I'm also ripening some of my 'heritage' tomatoes at home at the moment, I have them on the windowsill in plastic tubs to try and make the most of the light. I've left some ripe ones in with them in the hope the ethylene they give off will encourage ripening:



The main kind are Lemon Tree ones which are such an amazing shape, really like lemons!



We are now looking forward to getting a few jobs in the winter. The Lean House needs ends, and we need to sort out a few beds. I'm looking forward to having the stove on and drinking coffee in a crispy frosty allotment.

Back after the break

After a lovely holiday in the Netherlands we came back to find our plot in good health. A kindly neighbouring plot holder had been roped in to water (and eat) the tomatoes and they were all doing very well.


Many things have sprung into life or attained monster proportions. Peas and bean plants are getting to a good size, one of the courgettes is well on the way to becoming a marrow, several of the lean-house™ tomatoes are a good size, and the cucumber had run away with itself and has become enough for a whole meal rather than an addition to salad.

Some huckleberries have also ripened and flowers are starting to appear on the squash.

And . . . we have some leaves appearing on the 'christmas' potatoes.


The seeds I put in for turnips, radish, spring onions, and beetroot have come through as well, I just hope the weather will be good enough for them to grow to a decent enough size. The radishes should be quick enough.


The seeds in the greenhouse are doing well too, the rainbow chard is looking pretty already.

Plans for Autumn

Our seeds have arrived from the Organic Gardening Catalogue so the next few days before we go on holiday will be spent sowing seeds so that they have hopefully have germinated by the time we return.

The beetroot, radish, and turnips will get sown direct into the beds (I will harvest the beetroot and carrots that are in at the moment), but the spring onion, endive, swiss chard, and lettuce will get sown in trays for later transplanting outside. I'll probably only be able to do that with one sowing unless we have a very mild autumn, but after that I hope to be able to continue with lettuce and endive in a cold frame or the lean-house™ through the winter. I already have some little gem lettuce going which I'm going to put in all the gaps that are emerging as things get harvested. They aren't quite big enough to go out yet, but they are getting there.

I'm also considering a fig tree, I've been wanting one for ages and I don't think I can stop myself any longer. The choice is now Gardening Express or Guardian. I had some lovely witch hazels from Gardening Express, so maybe I should go with them. Hopefully the tree will come with small fruit already on it.

<edit> Just noticed that you get 15 free Purple Alliums with the Guardian, so that might swing it!

Wash Out

Well it was throwing it down today so the work day and BBQ didn't happen. So we now have a freezer full of burgers ready to go for a couple of weeks time when we will try again.

However, even with the rain, we managed to get something useful done today. Our seed potatoes arrived for our mimi 'christmas' potato crop, so we got them in rubble sacks and an old compost bag.


These are sat in the lean-house for now, I didn't want them to get completely drowned before they had even started going in the bags (although the bags do have drainage holes pierced in them it really is far too wet today).

We also took out the remaining broad bean plants, as they were covered in 'rust'. This is fine in itself at this stage in their lives, but we have just put some dwarf bean plants in nearby and didn't want it to transfer to them too, as they are only small. Some of the beans were quite young so I've left them in their pods and will just slice them up and throw them in a stew, rather than opening them up and being rewarded only with a couple of beans the size of dried lentils.


And today I also brought home a courgette and courgette flower. I keep reading about deep fried courgette flowers, so that is what I'm going to do with this one, I'm looking forward to trying it out.

Strawberries and Heatstores

The tomatoes seem to be doing well in the lean-house™ , quite a few flowering and some have some fruit too.
Also in there now are some strawberry runners which we have potted up. We have left some to just root themselves in the existing patch but we want to have another patch as well, so nine have come out to get moved later in the year when the bed becomes free.



As you can see they are sat on bricks. We have added these as a drainage aid and heatstore to the lean-house™. We had to dig a trench to put the back wall in (to get it level and to get the right slope on the roof) this has been filling with water a bit so we have moved some of the rubble that is on the plot into it. This means we can then sit plants on top of this without them having to get soggy bottoms. Hopefully this will act as a heat store too, and keep the night-time temperature up later in the year.


We haven't put the ends on yet, but the temperature is still pretty god so we are going to leave it for a while.

New Potatoes for Christmas and Tales of Other Veg

I wanted to get some Ransoms (wild garlic) which started an order with the Organic Gardening Catalogue and turned itself into an order for various things to grown from late summer through til the end of the year. On the list are turnips, 'spring' onions, some fast growing beetroot, rainbow chard, endive, some long spicy radish, and some lettuce to grow first outdoors and then in the Lean-house™ later on. That should keep us going through the winter.

We also want to grow potatoes for Christmas. I know that if we put some second earlies in now they should be good in time for Christmas (some ready as early as October), but getting hold of the seed potatoes was quite tricky. A wild goose-chase to somewhere with no stock via the Telegraph, a cancelled order somewhere else, and then finally Dobies seem to have the goods.

We plan to grow them in bags, maybe on one of the beds that is having some down time, some maybe in the lean-house™ to keep them warm. Then hopefully home grown new potatoes on Christmas Day.

then and now

A little post to just compare where we are now with where we were when we got the plot this February. It is nearly 6 months now and I came across the 'panoramic' pic we took in the early days, so I took another from the same position the other day. The 'now' is at the top in case you can't tell!


I guess it might not look that different to someone who isn't there most days, but it just seems like such a huge difference to me. I had forgotten what a huge overgrown mess it was. The ground was covered in layers of carpet and metal and wood, all grown through with weeds.

And on the 'architectural' side we have moved the compost heap from one side of the site to the other, put the fruit cage in, covered the roof of the shed, created and edged beds. And of course all the sowing and planting, and the recent addition of the leanhouse.

I'm feeling quite proud of us today. We just have to make sure we keep up the good work.

lean-house™ 2

We now have all the walls and roof cladded. We just need to put walls and doors on the ends, but we need to build wooden frames for that and our drill ran out of power again.

But it is sheltered in there so we moved in the tomatoes that have been getting a bit crowded in the cold frame. Because of the bars on the ceiling we can run strings from the tops of canes or grow bags up to the ceiling to stabilise them, which is great.

So we have 15 tomatoes (5 varieties) and 4 aubergines (2 varieties) in there now. I hope they like their new home.

lean-house™

The leaning greenhouse ( leanhouse™ ) is coming along. The batteries on the drills are getting past their best, so we can only do a bit at a time, but it has a bit of plastic on it now. We can clad it bit by bit though.

We are going to fill the trench that the back wall is in with the brick rubble we have, that should act as a bit of a heat store and help with drainage too.

new greenhouse

Well all the plans from the last time I posted changed as we inherited (or re-inherited) some things which moved the greenhouse on.

A while (6 years) ago we designed an exhibition that had some 'leaning posts' - tall upright metal posts with padded cushions, so that people could lean back and watch an overhead projection screen. After the exhibition they went on a tour round various storage spaces and theatre companies and have now ended up back with us. So, greenhouse time!

It took us a day to load them and a load of wood onto the van and to the allotment (thanks to Sarah, and to Bard in the Botanics for the help). And then today we started building. We have ten of these posts and they are 1.5m wide and 2.3m tall. We are going to use 3 for the front and 3 for the back, and 3 for the roof. No idea what we will do with the 10th one.

They are going to go next to the current shed/greenhouse combo.



The walls are in and the floor is levelled, so just the roof to go.



We are going to clad it with transluscent correx. If we can convince a delivery company to send stuff to an allotment (tomorrow's task).



I think it is going to look great, the metal is powder coated in a teal blue which is quite good. And their will be loads of room for all our tomatoes, which are languishing in the cold frame at the moment.