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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Hold the phone, shizzle the bizzle, we have life

Just a quick post.
Didn't go yesterday due to other commitments but had to go down today. 
Opened the greenhouse door and saw this wonderful sight:

The sprouts have only gone and sprouted! Finally a small bit of a reward for the work we've been putting in. Yes you have to look really closely but they are there.

Not really a long stint today though. Just stuck a couple of buckets over the rhubarb to force it (on advice from Ken & Pat next door) and the main job of the day was planting the spuds. We ended up with 4 rows of potatoes spread over 2 beds. In total, we've got around 30(ish) potato plants in the ground so we won't be going hungry this winter! 

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Brainwave central

Things have warmed up a wee bit this week. So much so that things have started happening in the greenhouse.

You can't quite see it here but trust me, a couple of the onions have started to sprout which must be a good thing:

Then we have my ultimate gardening brainwave. There are going to be days where I (or John) can't make it to the allotment (read: can't be bothered) but plants are going to still need watering. How to overcome this(without spending cash on watering spikes)? 

Look no further. I managed to craft drip feeders from a bottle and toilet paper. 

I made a small hole in the cap and cut the bottom off the bottle. I then crammed toilet paper into the bottle cap to slow the drip even further, shoved it into the pot lid first and filled it with water. Seems to work, so it takes away the guilty feeling of not being able to get down once in a while for watering duties. 

Bad-ass watering system

 

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Now we know why the wheelbarrow was left behind

I'll have a bit of that

Had a bit of a score today. Popped into the onsite shop to enquire about getting a load of topsoil to add to the raised beds. We need to get something in there to help break down the clay structure of the soil and thought that turning in some new topsoil would help. Anyway, I digress, we asked about it and were told that there was a massive pile of the stuff at the front gate that was free for the taking. It was supposed to be for the plots that got hit with flooding but as it had been there for over 2 weeks it was fair game.

We headed back to the plot, grabbed the wheelbarrow and ran to the mountain of topsoil to get our fill. We got shovelling the good stuff into the wheelbarrow and started back to the plot. Something wasn't right. It seemed heavy. I mean REALLY heavy. Surely these guns could handle this meagre load of dirt, there must be something else up. There was. The part that stops it being just a 'barrow' was flat. 
Anyway, cut a long story short, we borrowed our other allotment neighbour's, Ken & Pat's wheelbarrow. It didn't take too long and we covered 3 of our beds with the stuff for free! 
Here's a pic of one to show you how it ended up looking.

Looks like we're going to leave the outdoor stuff for a week and hopefully next Saturday it should be ready to start planting in.

I lied.

We did manage to plant 4 strawberry plants in the smaller bed at the front of the plot. Dug some holes, lined with compost and planted those babies:

We've also managed to get some more things started in the greenhouse. 
The list of hothouse items are now as follows:

1. Tomato plants x3
2. Tumbling toms plants x2
3. Coriander pot
4. Basil pot
5. Oregano pot
6. Sweetcorn
7. Leeks
8. Sweet peppers
9. Peas
10. Onions

Mighty onions

Majestic toms

All sorts of shizzle

If you look really closely you can see a solitary pea shoot

Other than that, nothing's really rearing its head yet but there's still time.

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Chillis, chillis, why do you forsake me?

No pics in this post as it's just a quickie to say the chillis are playing silly beggars. Not one has popped its head out of the soil, which is annoying. Previous years growing used to leave me with nowhere to put all the chilli plants I managed to germinate but not this year. The weather has played me for a fool :(

Fingers crossed something happens but I'm pretty pessimistic about it.

I did salvage some sweet pepper seeds from a pack myself and the wife cooked with earlier in the week. They have now been planted in a propogator and left to germinate. Let's hope they do better than the chillis! 

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