Signs Of Life

Stop press, hold the phone. We have life of the fruity variety. Thanks to the warm spell we've been having recently the stuff in the greenhouse has really come on, namely the tomatoes and the strawbs.

We're starting to see the first of our tomato crop appearing. Above is the Shirley variety coming through. We're also seeing the cherry tomato plants start to fruit as well so the plans beginning to come together (the coriander in the tub's not looking too bad either).

On a less positive not, the pumpkins I planted a few weeks back have not exactly thrived. In fact they've gone downhill pretty disastrously. For some reason unknown to us, all the leaves have yellowed and curled up. From my limited garden knowledge I'm assuming this is because the leaves are getting wet and fungus is probably setting in. Therefore, my attempt at a fix was to remove the worst affected leaves from the plant and to put something underneath the plant to keep it up off the floor. It may or may not work but we won't know unless we give it a go. You can see the discolouration on the leaves in the pic below:

Just to add, the one at the top is mine and the one at the bottom is my daughter's

The slug trap Squirty put in last week(under the green cover in the middle of the bed) has now been topped up and seems to be doing its job as the brassicas don't seem to have been attacked again and we now have a slimy residue in the slug trap which I assume means we have payback. Boo-yah molluscs.

Our potatoes have also shot up in the past week. We didn't have enough soil in the beds to stack up over the spud plants so we bought some new compost and piled it on. We also went around picking the flowers off the top of the potato plants in order to stop them wasting energy on flowers and to get them to concentrate on the tubers.

We haven't bothered to turn the compost in as we might disturb the growth that's already occurred, instead we've dumped it on top of the soil in the hope that the rain will leech the good stuff into the soil.

In other news, here is the rest of the good stuff:

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Murder, Murder! Someone Call the Allotment Police

It's a sad day for the allotment. I arrived today to find that our local slug population have decided to test our brassicas out. They've done a pretty good job of decimating the plants and we are suitably unimpressed. I'm thinking we need to get some protection around these in the vain hope that they'll come back.
I've loads of empty plastic bottles at home so I reckon we'll make some cloches from those to support them a bit. Also gonna be getting some cheapo lager in to create a slug trap for the pesky buggers.

the murder scene

My main bit of work this week was clearing the open bed at the very back of the plot to make a bit of a flower garden for my daughter. I threw the rule book out when it came to looking cool in order to clear this patch. In order to avoid getting nettle stings all over my hands, I invested in a pack of marigold washing up gloves and went to work. I wish I had a before picture for this part of the allotment but I didn't think to take one first. Here's the end result though:

You can see the rhubarb to the left. There's also some cornflowers at the very back. I bought a few random packs of flower seeds and sowed them all over the shop with some deliberately placed sunflower seeds towards the front. Now it's just a waiting game.

Our pal Michael has given us another gift today (the guy is a legend!). He was showing us round his plot and we got talking about his gooseberry bushes and how easy they are to grow on from cuttings. Then he offered us one as he's got loads. Not being ones to turn down freebies, we got the plant and took it back to our plot. I'm not expecting miracles out of it this year but it's gonna be doing us proud in next year. Here he is:

Also happening this week, we did a little tidy up in the greenhouse as the shelving was starting to lean forwards (a little too far for my liking) but it's amazing what a rolled up bit of newspaper can fix! The tomato plants are still coming along a treat. A couple of them are starting to curl up a wee bit and we're not 100% sure what the deal is. We're gonna keep them watered and hope that they sort themselves out. If anyone out there knows what the problem is, just drop us a message on the blog. 

And to finish, here are the other bits and bobs and how they're looking:

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Slow and Steady

Well, another week at the allotment and more to contend with.

This week we have gone about the following:

• Thinning out the radishes
• Thinning out the sprouts
• Planting out the onions, broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage
• Putting some protection from birds over a couple of beds
• Planting out a couple of Pumpkin plants
• Potting on some Pak Choi

It's been a busy week this week and we've accomplished a fair bit. We've started another 2 beds. One for the Pumpkins (which is for a race I'm having with my daughter) and one for the cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower and onions. Our allotment neighbours Ken and Pat gave us a little tip on this bed. They handed us an ice cream container full of lime and told us to put it generously into the holes for planting our brassicas. Then to firm down the soil once they're in. Apparently the lime helps to feed the soil and to help curb club root (we shall see!)  

               

Man points were earned this week with a brief appearance of the old hammer and nails. We'd been told that birds like to land and rip out onions when they're not fully settled in. Apparently it's a bit of fun for the birds but just an inconvenience for allotment owners. So we got an old bit of plastic garden lattice and cut it to size with our secateurs. We then nailed these over the top of our onions and our strawberry plants to minimize trouble from the inquisitive local birds (not the drunken women stumbling out of the pub next door) 

The greenhouse is coming on a treat too. We finally got round to thinning our sprout plants and moving them into pots ready to go in the ground when we get some space. It was as easy as picking out the biggest strongest looking ones and putting a couple into a pot . We just used some soil from one of the back (currently unused) plots to fill the majority of the pots and topped them up with shop bought compost as our compost isn't ready for use quite yet.

Here's an arty panorama of the greenhouse. You can see (among the mess) the tomatoes coming along nicely on the right and also in the two black pots at the back left. We've just been giving them a bit of Tomorite every week when watering to give them a bit of a boost. 

The radishes needed a bit of work as we'd sown them a bit close together. We just went about picking out the weaker looking (rubbish) ones and popped them in random pots in the greenhouse as spares.
They're visible below in the two rows to the right of the bed. The beetroots are there on the right but they're so tiny at the mo, you can barely see them.

The broad beans are doing pretty well too even though we've not done anything to the  other than sow the seeds and water them. Should be a nice little crop as long as the slugs don't decide to stop by.

Got our brassicas in too. In this bed there are cauliflowers, broccoli and cabbages along with onions at the opposite end of the bed.

Everything else is pretty much just coming along nicely without any major events. Pics below:

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Hot in the city tonight

Finally! The sun has put his hat on and come out to play.

Things seem to be on the up this week, so much so that I've been down 3 days out of 5 to water stuff. Now that's commitment.

On my first midweek trip down I was greeted by a couple of gifts from our pal Michael. He was nice enough to leave us a tray of 20 sprouted cauliflowers and something labelled 'Primo' but I'm not entirely sure what they are. Possibly broccoli, I don't know. 

He'd also gifted us some form of tool that cuts plugs out of the soil for planting seed plugs. 

There were also a couple of potato growing sacks that I'm assuming were also from Michael but they could have blown over from someone else's plot. Either way, what a legend!

Gifts, gifts, gifts

Due to the improved climate things are happening a lot quicker in the old greenhouse. The sprouts are looking even better as you'll see below so that means Xmas is covered:

Due to my allotment buddy having a day at the rugby, I popped along on my lonesome (boohoo) to Homebase. They were doing 15% off everything, so 6 strawberry plants for under a fiver seemed a pretty good deal. I grabbed those plus a few more packs of seeds.

I ended up getting beets, radishes, broad beans and runner beans to sow out. 

The strawberry patch now looks like this:

The seeds I mentioned were sown directly into the soil seeing as the worst of the cold weather seems to be behind us. 

I think I've done a pretty 'professional/impressive/other superlative' job on it too, with the aid of 2 canes, a length of twine and a hoe.

In these 2 beds from left to right we have:

• Beets
• Radishes
• Runner bean 
• Broad beans

I reckon now that we're on such a roll that these are 100% going to come through and be successful. Time will tell...

Other greenhouse highlights for any horticultural pervs are below:

Leggy tomato plants 

A cheeky sweetcorn poking his head out

A young, sweet pepper plant

Another tall, slim, sweet pepper sprout

Onions showing their tops off

The herby triplets teasing us with their small shoots

Leeks, chives and other unknowns hangin' out by the pool

My beatuiful chilli seedling finally showing us what she's got

Finally, a little rhubarb blushing coyly

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