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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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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