Tasty Tuesday

we popped to the allotment tonight to strim the unruly grass and were rewarded with this little lot 😀

28 days later

… And they’re still alive! 

Yet again the blog updates have been quiet for a while, mostly the fault of a holiday in May and then C’s extreme hayfever in June. Both events meaning the poor plot has had a neglected couple of months – not ideal at this time of year. Luckily our it seems to enjoy neglect and everything has continued to flourish without much attention – oh apart from the carrots who don’t like our heavy clay soil. I planted three rows of them in one bed and two carrots have germinated – one orange and one purple. Let’s hope carrot fly don’t get them before they are big enough to pull up. 

So here are some pictures of how things are looking on the plot just now – you’ll have to excuse the long grass but the hayfever means we can’t cut it for another week or so. 

 General plot shot.  

Asparagus bed  – year one

  

The confused autumn raspberries that are already ripening on some plants. 

  

Peas and beans plus sunflower which is shy and hiding away from the camera.

  

The potato bed which is way behind where it should be. We dug one plant yesterday to check on things and there was only one very small potato there. Oh well they’ll be worth the wait when they finally decide to show their faces. 

  

The beetroots

  

The sweetcorn

   

So like I say it seems the plot quite likes the neglect! Hopefully now we have things in some sort of order and we have less on at the weekend we can keep on top of things and start enjoying it again – getting there to find giant weeds and knee high grass is completely overwhelming and the dread sets in a little. Hopefully that’s the end of that though! 

We did manage a small harvest yesterday some radishes – some resembling turnips they were so big! – and some overripe strawberries which have been turned into jam today. 

 
   

A seedling affair

Well what a productive weekend we have had on the plot. Things have been planted and things have been built so things are definitely progressing. 

Yesterday was the day we planned to transfer some of the seedlings from the cozy greenhouse to their new home on the plot. Unfortunately not all made it to their new home as I tripped and fell while carrying two trays worth out to the car and they got run over (luckily I didn’t but I do have two very cut and bruised knees – will tie my shoe laces next time …) 😩. 

Once we got to the plot we set to work building wigwams for our peas, sugar snap peas and French beans and then getting the seedlings in the ground. We clipped one giant net around all three wigwams to keep those pesky pigeons from scoffing the lot. We also planted some corn, radishes, onions, beetroot and parsnip seedlings and netted them too.

We also managed to get four pallets from our local shop yesterday so after months and months of moaning to C that I would really, really, really like a pallet compost bin, he made me one! 

I should have taken a before and after pic because this area was just a huge mound of turf we’d taken off the tops of the beds when we first took on the plot. It was really untidy and slightly spreading out towards the path between our plot and the next one. With the new compost bin it looks so much tidier. 

Whilst C was hard at work I was chatting to friends who had come to visit us. I did finally plant some seeds with the help of this little lady. 

I got quite excited to see that the apple tree that was given a severe haircut in the autumn has started to produce fruit. Appreciate it will be a while before we can eat this, but it’s nice to see none the less.

It finally feels like we are getting there with the plot as it starts to look like a ‘real’ allotment. We’re quite proud of our achievements so far 😀

Seeding, weeding and feeding.

Well it’s been quite a while since the last update and that really is down to being exhausted after a hard day on the plot and not having the energy to type! So this is now a monster update … 

The seeds I planted at the end of March have all been sprouting nicely in the greenhouse, plus I’ve planted another batch since. As there are only two of us I’m trying to plant the seeds little and often so we don’t end up with too many gluts when the time comes. On top of those seeds I listed in the last blog post, I have now also planted: 

Peas

French beans

Sugar snap peas

Sweetcorn 

Mini sweet corn 

Courgettes

With the lovely sunshine everything is growing well which is really exciting. 

  

We have been busy at the plot getting it ready for the seedlings to be planted out. We have very heavy, clay soil so have been trying to improve it by adding sand and top soil to it over the last month or so. It is looking a lot more friendly, so lets hope the seedlings like it. 

We have planted the root bed now with seeds direct into the ground. I also have some onions, beets and leeks to add to it that were started in the greenhouse. Because we’ve planted carrots at ground level we’ve covered the whole bed in enviromesh to try and keep the carrot flies out. 

The potato bed is full now with our three varieties of spuds – casablanca, charlotte and king edwards – and the casablancas are appearing above the ground which we’re excited about. You just can’t beat freshly dug spuds for tea!  

The only other crop that has been planted at this stage is the asparagus. We bought 12 one-year old crowns which arrived two weeks ago. We’ve planted these and are hoping they will be happy in their bed. We prepared it as best we could, but asparagus are famously fussy so they may or may not appear. We have our fingers crossed they will, even if we can’t take a full harvest of them until 2017 … It’s a marathon not a sprint! 

  

The fruit trees have been in blossom for a couple of weeks now and look lovely

   

 

In between all this hard work our allotment association had it’s first BBQ of the season. They have them every quarter or so and so far we’d always been unable to go. However this one was on a Sunday lunchtime so we took a well earned break.

C enjoyed it very much as there was prosecco handed round to celebrate one couple’s 50th wedding anniversary. Well it would be rude not to! 

  

This weekend we hope to plant out some of the greenhouse crops so it will be nice to see those empty beds starting to fill up and looking more allotment like! Hopefully I’ll have the energy to update once everything is planted, rather than waiting another month and writing another monster update!

It’s all got a bit potty

Back in February I got excited and planted some onion, peppers and chilli seeds but since then life has got in the way and I haven’t planted anything else. On Saturday  I decided that had to change so I flicked through all the seed instructions and set to work. 

It seemed there were lots of things that can be planted now and I had a lot of seed trays so those two things together meant for a monster seed planting session.

My mum and dad bought me a plastic covered  greenhouse-type thing a couple of months ago so I got C to put it together for me so I could pop all the seed trays in there to keep them cosy. 



So in terms of what I planted, there are: 

Basil

Broccoli

French Beans 

Leeks

Lettuce

Onions

Parsnips

Radish

Shallots

Spinach beet

Tomatoes

And then because our garden and allotment will both benefit from some flowers:

Cosmos

Gerbera 

Nasturtiums

Sunflowers

Now I just need them all to sprout …. Come on spring sunshine. 

Chitty chitty bang bang

Our seed potatoes arrived about two weeks ago so we’ve been keeping them in our cool dark hallway since then. Today was the day I planned to start them chitting on our kitchen window sills. But when I checked in the sack the excited little fellas had already started chitting themselves!

Thankfully not all of them had started so hopefully we’ll be okay to hold out on planting them for a while yet.

Digging, done.

Today we reached a milestone on the plot, all beds are now dug and ready for seed sowing and plant planting when delightful spring appears! Digging two beds in one morning does mean both Mr P and I are currently crashed on the sofa in front of our little wood burner, exhausted and with tight back muscles BUT it’s all worth it. Thrilled to have five beds to plant in, plus the raspberry bed and strawberry and asparagus bed.

Good job 🙂

Dig, Chop, Dig, Chop, Dig, Chop

I’ve been a bit lazy of late, both in terms of the plot and the blog. The truth is after all the digging in the summer, the thought of another batch of digging wasn’t that attractive. However yesterday I found some new found enthusiasm and started the Big Dig, Part 2.

Two of the beds we dug in the summer were looking decidedly full of weeds and a lot like they hadn’t really been dug, so I lovingly dug both of these over again. I am hoping we’ll get a heavy frost soon to help break it down. As we are in East London we have clay soil and my word is it heavy and boggy in places at the moment.

In between digging over these beds I started to dig the sixth bed on the plot, taking advantage of the soft and squidgy soil. In the summer I avoided the grass removing stage of the digging as this was Mr P’s job. However he was busy cutting wood yesterday (more on that to follow) so I had to do the grass removal. Now I see why he was so tired after a day at the allotment in the summer, grass removal is hard work. Who knew!? I managed to do about half of the bed so will need to finish this off at the weekend, weather permitting.

So, while I was busy digging away Mr P had other jobs on his mind. We have a small log burner at home so he was delighted when among the wood chip deliveries we’ve had at the site recently, he found an almost endless supply of logs. Add to this his new petrol chainsaw I bought him for Christmas and you can probably guess what he was up to … chopping up wood.

Weirdly it’s like we’ve resorted to some old fashioned domestic division of labour: I hunt and gather fruit and vegetables to feed us and he makes fire to keep us warm.

Many berries

It’s been ages since the last blog post mainly because we’ve been busy doing other things and the allotment jobs got a little neglected. But this weekend we’ve planted the first of our plants for next year – raspberries and strawberries.

We ended up with double the amount of raspberries we planned as a kind allotmenteer had some canes she’d dug up that needed a home so we now have a whole raspberry bed with 24 canes 😄 Fingers crossed for a bumper crop in our first year.

I think I need to write a ‘To Do’ list for allotment jobs and start drawing out our mini plan of what’s going where so come the spring we are nice and organised and ready to go with our first full year as allotmenteers.

In a pickle

Not satisfied with the harvest from the allotment on Sunday, CP set about making green tomato chutney when we got home. We thought is would be a good way of using the huge amount of green toms we have in the garden and some of the apples we picked from our tree at the allotment.

Fast forward four hours and you have chutney made, in jars and ready to store or hand out to people as gifts.

On a roll with his preserving skills, tonight CP decided he would pickle the beetroots we dug up on Sunday, so he set to work. He was so speedy I did’t get a chance to take any progress photos, so here’s the finished article!