Fort Brassica - Mk 2

You'll perhaps remember Fort Brassica last year?  An attempt to keep (heavy self-censorship in operation here) pigeons off the brassicas.  Well, a bit of a curate's egg.  Good in parts.  It certainly kept the pigeons off and the basic design is sound.  Unfortunately I used bird netting on it which, while it kept pigeons out, allowed cabbage white butterflies through.  They did what they do and my cabbages were decimated anyway.  I think that's called "Good plan, didn't work".

So this year it's all a bit more refined, or refained (as we don't say up 'ere in 't North).  Same basic design but using butterfly netting.   

A-ha!!!  Let's see the little beggars get through that.

And the first batch of leeks have gone in; 

 

I always feel I'm making progress when leeks go in (it's my North-east roots kicking in).

And finally, here are the grapevines looking.....young.  

 

But they're definitely growing, and there's no shortage of water for them at the moment!

In a packed programme this morning I.....

•  Cut the hedge

 

• Strimmed (strum?) everywhere, for the 4th time this year

 

• Erected the bean pole framework (note the terribly sophisticated cross-bracing, all held together by lashings of string - but no ginger beer)

 

• Transplanted the runner beans

, and

• Hammered in some posts to tie my raspberries to (Ouch!)

All in all, a pretty productive morning.  There's still lots to do of course but it felt as though it was going in the right direction.  I'll not burden you with the "Do Next" list except to say that it's still too long but shorter than the "Do When You Get A Round Tuit" list.  Curiously elusive, Round Tuits.

So what is it with Climbing French Beans?

Mine aren't climbing.  Worse, they aren't even getting out of bed.

Two sowings this year, a total of 128 beans sown.  Germinated?  1.  That's ONE.

This is very odd.  The Runner Beans were slow but have eventually delivered a good quantity of plants.  Normally, though, the Climbing French are faster, positively leaping out.  This year they've clearly seen a warning notice "Attention - ne pas germer" and taken it all too literally.  Ils sont tres en retard.  Je pense qu'ils ont besoin d'un coup de pied au cul.  N'est ce pas?  Or re-sowing again (for the third time; it's getting to the point where they'll be too late to deliver a crop).


Harrumph.

Six hours

That's how long I was at the allotment today, and it sure feels like it.  I was beginning to feel a bit oppressed by the sheer volume of jobs, and it was certainly starting to look in need of attention.  So that's what it got today.  Some before and after pictures below but it amounts to:

• Leeks (starting to flower) and Wallflowers (starting to stop flowering!), both out
• Every section, apart from the garlic and onions, hoed and left to dry out in the sun
• Strawberries weeded
• Raspberries weeded (Lordy what a job; I had to do it on hands and knees between the rows because it was the only way I could see what I was doing!)
• Bean patch dug over, ready for bean poles to go in

Strawberry bed looks tidy (you couldn't actually see the plants and it was full of #**#**# nettles)
 

Raspberries too
 

So what is the next pressing task?  How long have you got?

• Onions and Garlic to be weeded
• Bean poles to go in
• Beans to follow them (they've finally germinated - both lots; you couldn't make this up!)
• Carrots, Beetroot & Spring Onions to be sown (clear the bed again first!)
• Leeks into nursery bed before 'proper' planting
• And piles of other stuff I can't remember.

 And in case you were wondering about the 10 Grape vines planted in March.  Every one of them has 'taken'.  They burst their buds through the green wax coating some time ago and they're now starting to come into proper leaf.  I'm [reasonably] confidently expecting them to start growing more vigorously any time soon and they will of course need a framework of posts and wires to grow up to.  Ooh er; another job!  In the meantime here's one, looking very pleased with himself, and another 5 of his mates shrinking into the background a bit.  You wait; they'll have taken over in no time.

Can't remember how I managed to do this AND go to work.  Can't remember how I ever found time to go to work!

And finally, in a fine piece of forward thinking and planning, not only do I now feel in need of a pint but I have one sitting in the fridge waiting for me.  Attaboy!!

Chard Report

I showed you a picture of the Rainbow Chard last time, looking eponymously colourful.  I can now report that we have eaten some of it, as an accompaniment (ie. in) Wilma Wilbury's famous fish stew.

Hmm.  I don't think either of them were improved by the experiment.  It looked very colourful, and I do like colourful food.  But..... as we say down here, there were nowt to it and it were 'ard as wood to chew.

Don't think I'll be growing that again, except perhaps (NO; just won't be growing it again)

And, aside, The Other Half, have now been and the path looks reasonably tidy again.  But it's still A Nissue (of disproportionate effort on my part and none on theirs) and I fear we aren't out of the woods yet.

There's tidy

Well, it is on my side at least, after a morning's strenuous strimming.   

Needless to say there's been no action from The Other Side.  Pah!  Don't think they've been there this last three weeks.  If it were down to them the communal path (that's communal, as in shared, both parties for the use of) would be waist high.

Wallflowers seem poor this year (probably drowned)

but on the plus side the Rainbow Chard is being, errm, colourful. 


We don't actually like it that much but I grew it just for the colour!

And what is it with beans?  This year, just like last year, I sowed my Climbing French and Runners a couple of weeks ago, possibly three weeks ago, to get 'em up and ready for planting out in full vigour in early June.  And where are they?  Nowhere to be seen, just like last year.  I'm going to have to re-do them, and then they'll be late.  Just like last year.  Are you seeing a theme yet?  Cos I am!!  Is anyone else having this problem?  Cos I'm getting a bit fed up with it.

Lush!!

But not in a good way.  I guess I shouldn't be surprised, given the amount of rain we've had (this Spring - so-called - is just Pants).  This is the entrance; it's a bit "Secret Garden" at present!!

 

and the path to the shed.

 What is the collective noun for Lovage?  A Rampart, as here.

Even the leeks are getting in on the act and bolting towards the sun, or where it was last sighted some days ago.

I fear it's gone beyond sorting out with the strimmer and needs heavier tackle.  Bring on the lawnmower; it's got a bigger engine!!

Compost de Papa

Last year I bought two Daleks from the Council, squat black Dalek-shaped compost bins. Tucked away unobtrusively behind the shed,

for the last year they've swallowed all our household compostable waste + grass clippings, raked up leaves etc. Despite being full to the brim several times they've quietly gobbled it up and asked for more.

Today I emptied the first of them. I got six big bags of lovely brown well-rotted compost

and enough leftovers to top up the 2nd Dalek and start the first off again with this year's rations. I guess this means that next Spring I can look forward to even more lovely jubbly compost. And it's all free; it's all stuff that would otherwise have been thrown away and gone to landfill. What's not to like?

And in case you're wondering about "....de Papa" the shed they're tucked behind is known, indeed labelled, as La Cave de Papa.

I'll not show you what's in it but be assured it looks and feels like a cave!

Never, Ever, At All........

.......have I used a hosepipe as early as 27th March. But the site water has been turned on, it's hot and dry-as-a-bone, and I'm paying for it. So why not?

Long story short, first find the tap. Our water connections are set into metal boxes sunk into the ground with hinged lids flush to the ground surface. There's a deeply-buried little brass tap and a separate threaded connection for a hose connection fitting. Over winter these boxes fill with silt & sediment which has to be dug out and all the fittings cleaned. Last year it fell to me to excavate it. Guess what, this year....it fell to me to excavate it.

Mind you, the year before last some bar-steward pinched my lovely brass hose connector out of the box - I guess there's no chance of THEM stepping up to do some excavating??? [Stop rambling - Editor].

Long hose short, it takes two 50 metre hoses to reach the bottom of my plot. That's a LONG hose (100 metres in fact!). But it worked and five of my six butts are now brim full of lovely clear water. My sixth butt (What is this man? Some kinda brown-rice, hippy, freak? How many butts does a regular guy have?) has a leak in the bottom (Ha! Well, where else, eh? It ain't gonna have a leak in the top) and needs repair. With concrete.

Titter ye not. Look out for a further post soon on how I've concreted my butt.

Pooped!

And so would you be if you'd:

• strimmed all my still-way-too-many paths
• emptied last year's compost bins and started this year's
• started rehabilibilitatatatatating the ancient greenhouse foundations left behind by the previous tenant.

Taking these in order:

The paths look a lot tidier, and that therefore makes me feel I've done something worthwhile

The compost bins; oh, the compost bins. Last year's bright idea was to use two old wheelie bins as compost bins, tucked away neatly at the bottom of the plot, quietly decomposing & making lots of lovely compost for this year. Which, by and large, they did and kept it all tidy and clutter-free. So what's the problem then? Getting the chuffers out again, that's the problem. I bet you've never tried moving a wheelie bin (one of which, by the way, no longer has wheels) brim full of rotted down compost, aka earth. They were VERY VERY HEAVY.

But not any more, and I shan't do that again. I'll draw a veil over the effort involved, suffice to say that Archimedes' principle of the very long lever was re-invented, along with various words probably not known to Archimedes. How many hernias does a chap need? The rotted-down compost is spread out and the remnants have started a new heap, all by themselves and without encouragement by me (I was too pooped by then and I think the remnants took pity on me).

And then (has he no limits - or sense?) I started on the eyesore at the bottom of the plot. This was clearly once a greenhouse and shed. The foundations of the greenhouse, and a central path, are still there, and there is a clear shed-shaped area next to it. Part of this year's plan is to clear it all, grow a catch-crop in the former greenhouse beds and rebuild the greenhouse, with a new shed, in the autumn. To be fair, that was last year's plan too but events just got in the way. Retired now; watch this space.

But today was about ripping the chuffing brambles out. It was hot and ideally I needed to be wearing as little clothing as possible, commensurate with public decency (shame!), but if I'd done that I'd have been ripped to shreds by the brambles. So it was hot and sweaty work.

It has, though, put me in a good place for next weekend because:

• much of the clearing is done, and;
• it's exposed all the rubbish which needs to go the skip we're having next weekend.

We're having a site skip! Skippity, skippity skip!!! One skip for 90+ allotments, for two days. I don't want to look a gift skip in the mouth and I'm genuinely pleased it's coming but I bet it'll be full to overflowing by lunchtime on the first day. Hey Ho; early start next Saturday!

Well, they're in

The vines that is.

No prizes for planting them in a straight line but, hey ho, I can train them later.

And apparently the green wax covering is normal; the vine will shrug it off as it grows. We'll see.

No vampires here....

....at least not after transplanting 100 Garlic plants today. I'm rather pleased with them.

And the Lovage,

And the Blackthorn (fingers crossed for lots of sloes again; the sloe gin is yummy)

And the Sorrel. I hadn't realised that Sorrel (Oxalis acetosella) is a perennial but on the evidence here it looks pretty indestructible. It certainly livens up a salad but the received wisdom is to not eat too much of it because the oxalic acid in it can exacerbate a tendency to kidney stones. Beware!

I wasn't expecting a big box....

....and, sure enough, I didn't get one.
This is the box with the grape vines in it.

They're bare root so of course you can pack a lot in a small space.

And because they're bare root they're correspondingly cheaper than if you buy pot-grown (which cost arms-and-legs if you want more than one or two).

They're doing a passable impression of a candle at the present because they've all got the 'top end' (forgive the technical language) coated in thick green wax. Don't know what I'm supposed to do about that. Marshalls have [un]helpfully enclosed a growing guide which describes pruning your grape vine but says sod all about planting it and what to do if it turns up covered in candle wax. And in the growing guides on their website there's a similar lack of info about grape vines. Come on, Marshalls; how hard can it be???? Not good enough.

Howsoever, I'm just gonna plant them at what seems like a sensible distance, which happily coincides (Ha!) with the space I've got available for them, and assume that as they burst into growth they'll fling the candle wax off with wild abandon, as you do.

I should have got their supporting framework (see, I'm not a complete know-nowt on this) in place by now, but I haven't. It'll all have to be done post hoc and after they're planted. Post hoc, eh? Get you, simple Northern oik, showing off. Post hole would be better.

More pics when I've planted them. Try to contain your excitement.

Tidy Territory

I've been tidying my edges.

I do like nice sharply-defined edges, and if you do them at this time of year it's easy to keep them sharp for the whole season. All the soil you cut away from the edges goes on to the main body of the plot to make it deeper and more easily worked.

It also helps to cut back the ever-increasing width of the central path. This path is a communal resource shared with the other plotholder who uses the communal gate. Curiously, maintenance of the communal path (ie. strimming, regularly, sometimes weekly in the height of the season) seems to be done only by me. So reducing the width of the path extends my territory slightly and reduces my maintenance load because there's less to strim.

Is this becoming an Issue in my mind? Yes, just a tad. And, petty though this may seem (is!), I've given up strimming 'their' border and now opt to do only mine and leave theirs unkempt. Such fun.

And on the other side of the plot, I've reduced the width of the path simply because it's too big. It's always been too big and hasn't been cultivated in the 7 years I've had the plot. And of course it needs strimming too. The whole thing is just wasting too much space; I do need a path there, just not so much of it. So digging it today was very satisfying, not least because, untouched for at least 7 years, it needed a pick-axe!

I love gardening with a pick-axe; the weight and heft of it, the sharpness of the blade, the swing of it, the way the weight of the tool does most of the work for you, the way you can't stop it once you've started the swing, and the raw excitement as it whistles unstoppably past your toes to bury itself in the earth. You only need to miss once.

But the hidden theme here is that I'm also carving out space for the imminent arrival of the Grape Vines. Marshalls have emailed to say they are on their way. We're in a state of high excitement in Wilbury Mansions.

Without a doubt....

....the season has opened. March 1st (St David's Day) has passed and as my ties with the Northeast become progressively weaker so my Welsh connections grow stronger. Leek soup and lots of daffodils. There's tidy.

Actually, thinking about it, leeks are a nice linkage between the Northeast and Wales. Emblematic of both areas. And I never fail to grow leeks, and have never failed in my growing of leeks, if you see the subtle difference between those statements. Anyway, enough of this rootsy stuff (rootsy! well, it is an allotment blog!); this is all by way of introducing a surge of activity to to get the Great Plant Factory up and running again.

The greenhouse has just been ticking over during the winter, as they do, with a paraffin heater to keep the frost out. But it was also home to a big batch sowing of winter salads made in mid-November, as well as over-wintering Geraniums and vernalising Garlic. All those salads survived the heavy weather and have begun to grow a bit faster, so today they've all been ripped unseemly from their comfy beds and transplanted. They'll be feeling it a bit today and will need a bit of nursing through an imminent cold patch but this is the earliest I've ever been with a viable salad crop. The trick, which I traditionally fail at, will be to maintain successional sowings throughout the year. Ask me again in Octember.

So here it is (Merry Xmas, everybody's having fun - oops, sorry, tripped over a timewarp there). From front to back there are Radicchio, assorted Petunias & Fuchsias, Spicy Green Mix (Spicy Green Mick's Sustainable Oirish Curry, bedad), Winter Gem lettuce, Mizuna & Rocket, in the so-this-season pink pots, followed by Trailing Gerontiums, Lobelia, Impatiens and yet more Geraniums in various gay hues, mostly red, as well as the dozen or so which over-wintered successfully. Yes, we (strictly speaking, I) do like Geraniums.

And on the right-hand side, behold the overwintered Geraniums and a reek (the new collective noun) of Garlic, fetchingly out-of-focus.

Quietly holding centre-back position is of course Dinosaur Tree - my Wollemi Pine - who has come through the winter completely unscathed (well, he did miss the worst of the cold by taking shelter in the garage). I'm very proud of him and looking forward to seeing what he does this year.

Meanwhile, in Seeds Corner, I opened the batting with Tomatoes (x6 varieties), Chillies, Leeks (Seville - baby variety). They're all in the conservatory or a heated propagator in the garage. Phew, time for a quick G&T, methinks.

LATER - supping it now. Ahh.

It feels.....

.....as though the season has opened. In truth, all I've done is spread some manure around all the fruit bushes and more generally. But I was doing it in shirt sleeves, in bright sunshine and feeling good about it.

This is what the blackberries look like;

I do like a nice straight edge.

And all the raspberries have a nice little hat of manure. Tasty! Actually, it's so well rotted down it doesn't look like manure any more, just like really fertile soil, which should percolate down to the roots by the combined action of rain and worms. Just remember that when you're eating raspberries this summer.

Not much action.....

.....on the blog, because there's not much action on the allotment, it being cold and wet and snowy etc.

But it's still producing Leeks


, and the Rhubarb is coming back
- don't forget the Wakefield Rhubarb Festival (24th to 26th Feb in, funnily enough, Wakefield).

Despite snow still on the ground and it being pretty cold it feels a bit as though the year has turned a corner; it feels poised and ready, just waiting for light and sunshine. I'm about as prepared as I can be at this stage:

• Garlic is up and growing in the greenhouse
• Shallots and Onion sets are bought
• seeds are all bought
• Raspberries are pruned
• Blackberries are pruned and tied in
  

Bring it on; I'm ready!!

Base over Apex

That's what happens when you're pushing a wheelbarrow down a slope, the slope is "reet clarty" and your feet go from under you. And you lurch sideways through the raspberry patch and come to rest sitting in the contents of the wheelbarrow. Yep, you guessed it. Manure.

Hey Ho.

Done it now!

Those of you who have been reading this blog for a long time will know that it's masthead has had the aspiration to become a vineyard almost from the beginning, along with a stern Memo to Self to get on and actually buy some vines.

The plot itself could hardly be better. It faces due south, gets all the sun, is sheltered behind by a bank of huge trees but is open enough for plenty of air circulation. And it drains freely. What have I been waiting for? Not sure, actually. But I do believe, without in any way being a fatalist, that things happen when it's the right time for them to happen.

Well, today must be the right time because I finally did something about it.

10 Rondo red grapevines are on order from Marshalls, for delivery in late Feb to early March. I could have got 25 for not much more money from another supplier but that would have tipped me over the edge from being an "allotment with vines" to a micro-vineyard. Perhaps a bridge too far at this stage! And the Council would no doubt have had a view.

Anyway, that's another strand of allotment life to report on in 2012. More later.

2011 - Good Year or Disaster?

On balance, a Good Year.

Things I'd been on the point of giving up on finally came good.

So who was in the Hall of Fame? Step forward proudly:

Plums, Sloes, Onions, Asparagus, Strawberries. Leeks were good too, but then they always are.

And I finally gave it all some much-needed manure. Need some more now!

And who was in the Hall of Shame? Slink forward with your heads hung low:

Peas, Beans (a pretty mixed year for everyone I think), Cucumbers (what were you thinking of, Cucumbers?; pathetic) and Kale. I really miss not having Kale (yeah, I know, get a life) but a combination of me sowing it late, it germinating slowly and Cabbage Whiteys feasting on it meant it never made it through the summer.

But 2012 will be better. It's gotta be; I'm retired now. No excuses; Onward and Upward!!!