new year, new planting

Yes, yes, I know. I have sorely neglected my blog and this is my first post of 2010. To be honest there hasn't been a lot to write about as the weather, until a couple of weeks ago, has been so appalling. And there have been other things which have taken precedence, hence an extended period of radio silence.

Anyway, I'm back and pleased to say that a couple of weeks ago it was dry enough to get on site and do some digging and planting. Last year's brassica bed was cleared out, turned over and seed potatoes planted. We've planted 2 varieties each of 1st earlies, 2nd earlies and main crop. We actually ran out of room in the bed so the rest of the main crop - Mayan Twilight - were popped in the greenhouse for planting up at a later date.

The image below shows the brassica bed after it was cleared and turned over.

Also managed to lift the last of the snowball turnips which are fantastic in stews or as an accompaniment in their own right. Managed to dig over the root veg bed after harvesting the turnips, so all in all a good afternoon's work.

Fast forward two weeks and today found us working hard on site again. The garlic patch has been tended and all the plants are looking really healthy and seem to have survived the harsh start to the year.
We somewhat overestimated the number of seed potatoes required this year and ran out of space in Bed 2 (which had been planted up a couple of weeks prior). So we've utilised Bed 1 which was supposed to be the permanent bed in order to plant the remaining main crop spuds. Also sowed beetroot and parsnips in alternating rows in an attempt to introduce some inter-cropping. The theory being the beetroot will be ready well ahead of the parsnips and we'll be able to plant something else between the parsnips when the beetroot have been lifted. Time will tell! Below is a shot of Bed 1 (garlic patch in foreground) and Bed 2 which is completely over to spuds.

Bed 3 (to right of the picture below) is till jam-packed with onions and shallots so Bed 4 has now been designated as this year's brassica bed. This crop rotation business can be quite challenging !!!!

So today has proved to be another productive day and we're looking forward to being able to plant up cabbages in a few weeks' time once the seedlings have come on. There is lots going on in the greenhouse at home and I'm keen for things to start growing in the ground!!

autumn planting

Well, the holidays are well and truly over and we find ourselves back into the usual work & school routine. Things are shaping up rather well at Site 2 with the beds filling up rapidly.


To date we have sown / planted:

• Jerusalem artichokes


• Peas


• Sprouts


• Broccoli


• Cabbage


• Cauliflower


• Swede


• Broad beans


• Spring onions


• Onions


• Shallots


• Garlic


• Potatoes


• Carrots


• Parsnip


• Beetroot


• Red currants


• Gooseberry

There's still some room left in a couple of the beds so we're deciding what to fill them with. Considering some more potatoes at the end of the root veg bed - it may be slightly late to get them in for harvesting this year so I need to consult my books.

view of our half of the plot this afternoon

planting up on Site 2 (at last!!!)

Yesterday, while the men were installing the wooden frame greenhouse, I was able to get on with some planting - yippee!!! On the cards were:

• Jerusalem Artichokes in Bed 1 (permanent bed) right at the back to act as a screen. These have been transferred from Site 1 so fingers crossed they'll take ok


• Bed 2 is designated for brassicas this year, so have planted up sprouts, purple sprouting broccoli and cauliflower. Also set up a net cage around them as cabbage white butterfly are prevalent on the site


• Bed 4 is for root veg so the spuds ("Nicola") have gone in and, if I've got my calculations right, should be ready to harvest just in time for Christmas Day


• Also planted up a clematis to grow up the side of the shed

All in all it was quite a productive day. Didn't manage to sow the spring onion (need to do soon as just slipping past the ideal time to get the seed in the ground) as the netting took longer than I thought. But hey, time has its own pace on the allotment :D

(clockwise from top left) Beds 4, 3 and 2 with all paths in and chippings laid down

brassicas all protected (hopefully) from butterflies and slugs and any other little chompers

jerusalem artichoke

bed time

Wow it's been a tiring but productive day up at Site 2 today. We really cracked on with levelling and marked up all our beds and Cloddigger started boarding out. The plot is looking fantastic now. But oh my goodness we're both paying for it now after 3 hours of raking, picking up stones and rubbish, hammering and sawing. Still it is so worth the effort. We had a lovely comment from one of our allotment neighbours who stopped by to see how we were getting on: "Looks like you've got Ground Force in", he said, "Nice to see the plot coming together so well". How lovely was that?

Mum planting up cabbage, Dad and Cloddigger boarding out



All our beds are marked out and mostly boarded - just need to get some more timber cut to finish them off


My Folks' half with beetroot planted in the nearest bed and cabbage in the next bed


Just need to decide now what to plant up first. Going to consult with my planting calendar to see what is suitable to go in the ground now...

mini roof garden

We're keen Gardeners' World viewers and particularly like the "30 Minute Make" section of the show. This idea for a mini roof garden on our tool shed is courtesy of Gardeners' World.

The make is really simple although took somewhat longer than 30 mins - mainly because everything had to be done from scratch, e.g. cutting up correct lengths of wood, trimming the plastic lining, etc. Cloddigger also had to reinforce the shed as the weight of the planting medium started to cause the roof to bulge slightly.

All the materials used to make our version of the mini roof garden have been recycled. The timber came from a couple of sources; pine from an old cupboard door (look carefully at the picture and you can see the door handle still attached!) and an old teak fire surround. The interesting thing about the teak is that there was a smallish off cut left over so it was donated to Woodwose Carving. Click here to see the post about "Gilgamesh"

The mini garden has been planted up with a mixture of different varieties of sedum - some from plants already in our garden which were split into smaller plants, the remainder from the bargain plant shelf at a local nursery - interspersed with marigolds and other plug plants and even a couple of Tumbling Tom tomato plants. The hope is that the sedum will eventually carpet the whole of the mini garden.

the mini roof garden runs the whole width of the tool shed (approx, 6') and goes back 2'6"

the only change made recently is the addition of a layer of grit surrounding the plants to discourage snails from chomping the marigolds. The picture below shows a close up of the plants pre-grit

learning the hard way

Because allotmenting (is that a real word?) is so new to us, we tend to get very excited about the smallest amounts of growth in the plants and I've taken to recording this achievement on a weekly basis by taking photos of everything. I then upload these on the laptop at home and compare this week's photos with last week's (how sad am I?)

Last weekend I was a bit puzzled. Potatoes are going great guns, as are the onions, beans, peas, carrots (so much so they needed strict thinning out), even the sweetcorn and spring onion both of which were only planted a week before. However, the lettuce were looking very sad indeed. They had been in 3 weeks now and didn't appear to have grown a millimetre - very strange. We had been very careful with their treatment; well nourished bed, fleecy cloches to protect from the wind and frost, regular watering. It just didn't add up.

Anyhow, Cloddigger decided to consult our allotment guru (Deb) who was able to reveal that lettuce are "top feeders" - I thought this applied to marine life, but anyway - therefore spread their roots just under the surface of the soil rather than sending down a big tap root. The penny dropped.

When we planted them up we had kept them in their little cardboard blankets to, so we thought, give them a bit more protection. All we'd actually done was effectively bonsai them, DOH!

So BIG lesson learned there. Will make sure that the next batch of lettuce are extracted from the cardboard tubes before committing them to the soil.

Ah well, its all a learning curve.

"Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence" (Abigail Adams, 1780)

lettuce hope something grows

At home in the greenhouse (aka the conservatory!) we have been propagating seeds and bringing on plants before planting them up. We had over-sown lettuce thinking that they wouldn’t all germinate and ended up with loads of seedling lettuce. They looked ready to plant out so we decided that we’d plant some up in vegetable bags on our decking at home and plant the rest on the allotment.

We prepared the lettuce bed by digging out trenches and filling them with well rotted garden compost before transferring the young plants into the ground. We had brought them on in cardboard tubes found in the centre of toilet paper rolls – not only does this reduce cost but is a great way to recycle the cardboard (which The Council does not accept in its recycling boxes). Each lettuce was kept in its cardboard tube when planted into the ground to protect the roots from damage and frost. The cardboard will soon rot down into the soil so there shouldn’t be any worries about the roots not spreading.

As our plot is rather windy and exposed to the elements, I decided that the lettuce needed a little extra protection so I installed some bamboo arches (cheap to buy from local hardware store: 3 for 99p) and covered them in garden fleece creating a warm cloche. The fleece will allow moisture to get through so that the plants don’t dry out while protecting the young plants from the worst of the wind and cold.

#7 – lettuce planted and bamboo arches installed


#8 – garden fleece finishes off the protective cloches

planting up

With all our area dug over, grass and weeds removed we were ready to begin planting! This was a very exciting time as it felt like we were about to do something real and creative. First off, we created a long mound in which to plant the potatoes. Beside this we planted several onion varieties and then sowed the carrots.

Bear in mind that we are complete novices at growing vegetables, especially in an allotment setting, so we invested in an extremely useful and easy to read publication: “Practical Allotment Gardening” by Caroline Foley (available on Amazon http://www.amazon.co.uk/Practical-Allotment-Gardening-Caroline-Foley/dp/1845172523/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1241554268&sr=8-1 ). As newbies to allotment gardening this is an ideal read full of practical advice and great projects. No doubt our library of allotment books will grow through time, but this particular one is likely to become well-thumbed as we use it time and time again.

#3 - potato "barrow" with onion bed to the left. A sun flower is planted at the head of the barrow.


#4 - carrot bed fully prepared and ready for planting up


#5 - a view of complete area dug over and paths set out