More salad in the bath this evening. Rocket this time to add to the lettuce and endive.
The greenhouse is looking quite lush, plenty of tomatoes, peppers, chillies, and squash.
We are going to put the squash out (into what was the strawberry bed last year) in a couple of weeks time. We will build another of the tunnel cloches for them to keep them safe from the late frosts.
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.
The compost is now where it needs to be for this year.
Keep your eyes on the compost ladies and gentlemen as I shuffle the BINS
This time shallots. They are drying on a old metal grid thing in the greenhouse.
and also the peas are now giving up a harvest every few days, here they are with the broad beans behind them and the onions in front. The bed behind is the potatoes.
The peas are lovely and sweet, and the potatoes (Arran Pilots) have a fantastic texture.
We have also planted some purple beans, and some more courgettes, in the random hope of having later season stuff. About 5 mins after I had planted the beans the Gardener's Question Time tip for what to do now was 'plant beans to try and extend the season', so I live in hope. They are in a bit of guttering in the bath (previously Bath'O' Salad™) so that they should be a bit easier to transfer once the time comes. I think we will put them against the east fence (the one behind the peas in the previous photo).
So, is this my parsley?
It is coming up where my parsley seeds went in, but so were quite a lot of round leafed seedlings too. I pulled out the round leafed ones and left these. Please someone tell me I've done it the right way round?
These are planted in the bath o' salad ™ which is doing really well. It was on the plot when we got it, we drilled a few holes in the bottom to help it drain and then half sank it into the ground. It has cut and come again spicy salad leaves and some small parmex carrots.
It has been a while since I got my act together and posted information here, but I have been keeping a diary, so here is what happened in March.
We have got a host of seeds going. Sweet peas and little round parmex carrots were first - both are now out in the plot after a spell in the cold frame (if you can call a window frame leant up against a shed that). Next the potatoes went into the top left bed - pink fir and arran pilot. The potatoes went in the first bed we laid out in the top left corner of the plot.
We built another bed below that - left middle. Then the beans and onion sets went in - we have broad beans, red onions and shollots. We put a brick path between these two as we uncovered another pile of brick.
Radish seeds, beetroot seeds and carrot seedlings went in the top middle bed. This one is a raised one with a brick wall at the front and also, we discovered as we started to dig in it, a wall in the middle under the soil. We took that one out with the help of a sledge hammer.
By this time a rhubarb plant that had been hiding in the grass under where we had put the windows as a cold frame had responded to its nice new warn envirnment and shot up. We now have a freezer full of rhubarb - good job I like it.
Our spicy salad seedlings came out and into the bath we have set into the ground in front of the shed, along with some more of the carrot seedlings and some dill and parsely seeds.
The only thing that seems to have survived from the previous plot holder is some purple sprouting broccoli (apart form the rhubarb and I don't think that counts - rhubarb just exists). It was looking a bit sad, falling over and with yellowing leaves, so we put supporting canes in, weeded round them and pinched out the growing tips to see if it would do anything.
Aubergine, tomato and chilli seeds went into the greenhouse, along with lobelia, aquilegia, marogold, chive and basil seeds.
They all started to germinate (apart from the tomoatoes), although there was only one chilli and one aubergine.
We went crazy in the garden centre and bought strawberries, 3 different tomato plants, a chilli plant, and an aubergine plant. I'm not convinced I'll get anywhere with the tom and chilli seeds so I have relegated them to the staus of an extra bonus on top of the bought plants.
Gert, the longest serving plot holder (40+ years), collared us and gave us some of his cabbage seedlings, he had done well with them and didn't want to discard the thinnings so is sharing the wealth with anyone who wants some. He is 80odd years old and has 4 plots all joined together and about 5 sizable greenhouses, I'm sure we will be able to pick his brains when needed. So we now have: late, early, and red cabbages, and some cauliflowers too.
Michael the allotment secretary had been growing on some gooseberry bushes for someone who no longer needed them, so he gave us one of those. We could have had all 6 but we didn't really have the room. He tried to give us red currants too, but again no space. Shame really. The fruit cage is quite full now.
After all that we left for a week to go and demolish my Mum's shed over Easter and build the new one she has bought. We didn't know what to expect on our return - hopefully not a wilted dead plot. We fashioned makeshift drip watering systems for greehouse stuff, and sat the tomatoes in trays of water. We had some shade fabric from a project we had done, so that went on the greenhouse windows in the hope that things wouldn't wilt in the promised hot weather.
Below is a plan of what we have so far, the big bed on the right was there, so was the compost heap and shed. Most other stuff we have done ourselves. If you clcik on it you get a big version where you can see the text:
