What’s in the Trug?

Well I say ‘trug’ but actually I’m far too tight to buy one of those nice wooden trugs and no one has taken the hint and bought me one yet. So it’s actually a plastic tray left over from the local fruit and veg shop.

So what’s inside?

Leaves
I picked a big bag of lettuce leaves from the Little Gem and Romaine Ballon, with a few beetroot leaves for variety. We’re getting through a few bags a week, so that’s saving a fair amount of money in itself. It also keeps far better than anything we buy and the salad spinner we were given as a wedding present almost 12 years ago now is finally paying its way!

Herbs
There are three different herbs: a small amount of dill for Mrs D to pickle the gherkins with, some parsley and a huge bunch of coriander that was looking like it was about to go to seed. I’m growing a variety that is supposedly a cut and come again variety (Calypso), so I’ve hacked it back and will chop this lot up and freeze it with a small amount of water to put into curries as and when we need it.

Vegetables
Hidden under everything is a couple of pounds of Charlottes from two plants. I picked a small number of broad beans, hopefully just about enough to go with tomorrows tea! There’s a couple of gherkins, a couple of beetroot and a solitary carrot!

Fruit
The strawberries are still going strong and I picked another couple of punnets, although they still need careful picking over to spot the holes and chunks the birds and mice have had. I’ve been sharing the gooseberries with the birds – we’re not big fans of the gooseberry really – but I did pick some in the hope inspiration will strike. And if you look really carefully in the strawberry punnet on top you’ll spot a couple of blueberries (Nui).

Flowers
Finally, there are some cornflowers and carnations for the wife, which stops her from getting annoyed with me when I say “I’m just popping out to do some watering” and come home an hour and a half later! Well it’s dry out there ;>)

The polytunnel… It lives!

Finally it’s up and covered! Still needs some tidying and a few bits tweaking, bit it’s ready for plants!

Stepping back a bit, it’s been hard work and not necessarily as simple the instructions would have you believe – are things ever?! – but the next one will be much easier to put up. Not that I’m volunteering to help anyone, I’m too knackered for that!

So after Pythagoras, I managed to get the frame up on my own:

Hoops in place, located on foundation tubes, which in turn are located on anchor plates buried under the ground.

 

Ridge bar now in place. At this point I made my one and only ‘support’ call to First Tunnels to check on the fact it didn’t appear to be that straight. Not a major problem apparently and should sort itself out when the cover is put on, so I ploughed on.

Corner stabilisers now in place.

At this stage I called in some help from my Dad, him being far more practically minded than me. And also retired so readily available. This enabled us to get most of the timber in place for the doors (and get the cover round the wrong way on them!) and for the base rails, and put on most of the anti hot spot tape:

After which all I needed to do was put on the battens to create the rebate for the cover and put the cover on. Yes that’s all…! More reinforcements were called in and to cut a long and tiring story short, it’s up:

As I said, it needs some tweaking with the cover  – I’ve still got to fine tune the base rails to tighten the cover further – and the remains of the cover needs tidying up, but it should be open for business very shortly.

I have plenty of tomatoes and chillies to go in there, and fortunately I acquired almost 70 large plant pots the other day courtesy of the house near the kids school which had recently been raided for growing cannabis plants! And the thing is my haul was but a fraction of what was being cleared out of that house :>o The compost was destined for other places, but mustn’t grumble.

And now to bed…

A bit of a tidy up

I thought I’d move the plastic greenhouse to put it next to the ‘cold frame’ I’d cobbled together the other day. So I emptied out the plants – which was a surprisingly large number and moved it into the old greenhouse area. Only to find it didn’t fit. I then took apart the cold frame – which took far longer as I was too lazy to put it together properly in the first place – and moved it along a bit so the greenhouse would fit in. That done, all the plants were put back:

 

Now the plan was to tidy up the old play area where the plastic greenhouse was so there was somewhere to sit on the plot, only I ran out of time. So not really much of a tidy up at all really!

Elsewhere on the plot, everything is still crying out for water so I gave as much as I could a really good soaking. I’m almost at the stage of having to use the tap. The strawberries are forming so they are getting more water than most things on the plot at the moment so we don’t end up with mis-shaped fruit:

  

Although they could do with some straw and netting sooner rather than later. The large alliums I originally thought I was growing for cutting (they’re far too good for that!) are out and stunning.

Along with the rosemary next to it, there are bees everywhere. Hopefully a few of them are making the short trip to the strawberries nearby. Even with loads of bees around they are surprisingly difficult to photograph well, but will a bit of perseverance (i.e. taking a lot of photos) I managed to come up with a decent one:

The peas and beans are slowly beginning to get going, but like everything else suffering from a lack of water:

Finally finished off the bean netting and put some lettuce in the middle to grow whilst waiting for the beans and peas to grow – which could be a while since I didn’t manage to get them in! I also put in some of the sweet peas in various places along the netting. Sadly the camera stopped cooperating by this stage.

Exciting News!
The optimistically titled ‘polytunnel bed’ in the last post is indeed to become the polytunnel bed! Negotiations with Mrs D went somewhat easier than expected: “Can I get a polytunnel for the allotment?”. “If it’ll get all your plants out the garden, then yes”. Before she had chance to change her mind I ordered a 15 x 8 foot polytunnel from First Tunnels which was the biggest tunnel I could get in the space I have left, and not much smaller than the largest size allowed on Sheffield Allotments. Hopefully it’ll be here before the end of the month.

Now, where was I…?

Regular readers (anyone left?!) will know I found myself out of a job at the end of March. Strangely the lack of a job and increased activity on the plots has resulted less output on the blog front. Maybe I don’t need the escape of the blog so much at the moment? Or maybe I’m just too knackered in the evening to write anything? So, what have I been up to…?

The Greenhouse
I finally got my act together and sorted out a base for the greenhouse I’ve had languishing the garden for a while. I developed my bricklaying skills (wonder if I can put this on my CV?!), although perhaps more use of the tape measure would have been beneficial. Having ironed out several ‘issues’ I was just about ready to go with the assembly when I discovered yet more of the frame has gone missing thanks to our local ‘scrap men’.

At this point I had to question whether it was going to be worth trying to put the thing up, and unfortunately came to the conclusion it wouldn’t be worth it – I could get a new polytunnel for not much more than the price of replacing various bits of frame and glass. Which is a bit of a pisser given the work I’d put in for the foundations and the lack of space I was hoping for to grow tomatoes and chillies in.

After a day of moping around and kicking the cats (only kidding, about the cats anyway!) I came up with the following greenhouse/cold frame construction that I’m hoping will be OK for growing the chillies under at least:

It’s still at the prototype stage so needs screwing together still, but was made from bits around on the plot – although I had just bought the wood for the greenhouse. I’m quite pleased to have built in the water collection element too, as despite the long dry spell recently I’m pleased to say I still haven’t had to use the provided water supply, thanks to the various water butts on plot no 1.

The Frost
Last week here in Sheffield there was a frost, and let’s just say the inside of the mini greenhouse was not a pretty side the following morning. A lot of plants made the journey to the compost bin. Fortunately I had grown plenty of plants from various packets of seeds I needed to use up, the plan being to sell the surplus plants at plant sales on site and at the local school garden open day. So whilst the plant sales aren’t going to be getting many plants I do still have the plants I want for my growing.

Media Star!
The Allotment Association had it’s first plant sale at the end of April, which was list as one of the first events for Sheffield Environment Weeks. This attracted the attention of a local journalist who came down on site to interview a few of us. Two hours later, the story of the site told, he left. Fortunately when the paper came out that week we had a full page article, giving us some great publicity. Sadly this didn’t make it online, but I have scanner so you can read it here.

Polytunnel Bed
Now the tree has been cut down I’ve been clearing the area around there and have discovered it is big enough to fit a polytunnel on, hence the name. This is somewhat wishful thinking as without a job I don’t think the wife would be overly happy about spending £400 on a polytunnel! I have been trying to work out the cost of the tomatoes she buys though to see how long before it pays for itself!

Crops
We’ve been having a lot of rhubarb, which is good as we just have the one productive crown at the moment and have even had enough to make a few jars of jam. I harvested the first salad leaves this week, picked a couple of peonies for the wife (which were lying on the ground anyway) and had some oh so rare purple sprouting broccoli – I think it’s suffering from a long winter and now a lack of water, still I thought I’d lost it all so it’s all a bonus.

Tulips were few and far between (see below), and not what they were supposed to be in my opinion: I’d bought Queen of the Night but they seemed far too small and red. I queried this with the supplier and even sent a photo as requested but have heard nothing since. And given only two of the white tulips came up and the Dahlias I planted from them are looking at a similar success rate, I guess that means I won’t be ordering from Garden 4 Less again…

The weather
After weeks of hot sunny weather and no rain, a few weeks ago we had a hail storm. It’s no exaggeration to say I’ve never seen anything like it. Hail stones the size of broad beans, a tremendous noise, localised flooding, the roads covered in ice, etc. All of which wasn’t good news for tender young plants: lots of purple sprouting broccoli, Brussels, leeks and sunflowers snapped off in their youth. Not to mention tulips in their prime. Bugger. Fortunately still early enough to replant many of the young plants at least.

What no weeds?
All this dry weather has resulted in very few weeds to date. I know, I know, famous last words an’ all that… Especially given the rain in the past few days. Fortunately (?), the ground elder and bindweed up on plot no. 2 is still growing well so I have had plenty to do

So to sum up, some set backs but no-one said this gardening lark was easy!

A trip to the Garden Centre

It was a thoroughly miserable day and we needed to get out of the house to let the kids run off some energy, and give the cats some peace from them. So what better place than a garden centre!

We got a little side-tracked round the back of the garden centre and ended up here:

Well, this was just the appetiser: the old stable block. Yes this was a stable block!

Still when you see the house (although I’m not sure ‘house’ does the place justice?) round the corner, you can see why it’s just the stables:

 

 

This is Wentworth Woodhouse, reportedly the largest privately owned house in the world? It has the longest facade in Europe, with 365 rooms inside there. And given the size of it, very few people have ever heard of it. I have to confess it’s become a bit of an obsession since reading Black Diamonds: The Rise and Fall of a Great English Dynasty a few years back, but this is the first time we’ve actually made it to see the house.

Unfortunately, being privately owned, it’s not opened to the public in any way, as the many notices pointed out. But there is a nice public footpath that runs next to it! It’s no longer in the hands of the landed gentry as you might expect, their Earldom having died out a few years back – although most of the land around here is still owned by the remaining family. Having been neglected for a while it is currently being renovated by the current owner and featured in Country Life last year. Yes I do have this copy, my only copy of Country Life I’d like to add. Did I mention it’s a bit of an obsession?!

So what’s this all got to do with the Garden Centre trip? Well the Garden Centre is in the old walled garden (another obsession, but let’s not go there this time!) round the back. I can’t remember the last time I actually bought anything garden related there, but they’ve got a great cafe (now actually a huge restaurant), a selection of shops to keep us all happy, a park for the kids and various bits of restored gardens from the original estate – including the newly restored maze we spent an amusing half an hour getting the children lost in!

So, after first refuelling with a coffee and a huge piece of cake, we then bought new toys for the cats in the pet and aquatic centre (aka free aquarium), a new walking stick for Mrs D, a bag of sweets each for the kids and a book for me. About the old walled garden there. Did I mention obsessed…

April showers

I should really be grateful for any rain, but I called it a day today come the 3rd shower. It’s been pretty hot in the sun, but once the cloud cover came the temperature soon dropped and I decided today was a day for being a fair weather gardener!

In between showers, there seem to be a lot of bumble bees around this year and I finally had the presence of mind to both take the camera, and use it up on plot no 2! Despite it not playing ball I managed to get one decent shot:

Prior to that I was attempting to get rid of some of the weeds and clear some space to plant my beans this year. It’s dry on that plot on the top of the hill at the best of times, but at the moment it’s like digging sand, there’s absolutely no moisture in the soil at all. On the plus side it’s easy to dig the weeds out I guess.

I still had a couple of trays of onions to plant out and wanted to plant some carrots, so I raked over a patch of soil to within at inch of its life – not to get it to a ‘fine tilth’ (not too dificult at the moment) but to get rid of the majority of the stones. Just after I watered the drill I’d created for the carrot seeds it started raining again…

I managed to plant a third of a row of radish, carrots and beetroot as well as the two trays of onions:

I also dug over about half of the remaining bed to be sorted out for the beans and added some rock dust before wandering off home for tea, rather wet.

Time to plant something out!

I’m a little behind with the planting this year, and not just due to the cold weather. So to plant the rest of my potatoes out on plot no 2 I enlisted help:

They did need a little pursuading, but once ‘on site’ they got stuck in:

Well one of them did, his sister taking a more supervisory role:

We did manage to get in the rest of the potatoes: 3 rows of Romeo and 1 and a half Pink Fir Apple. The onions will have to wait for another day as I volunteered to go on a site inspection (long story!) on the other site. Almost 3 hours later trying to figure out the worlds most bizarre alltoment numbering system – and a lot of chatting! – we were done:

We never did find plot no 174 (bottom right of the map), lost to the wilderness.

Today I managed to plant out 3 rows of broad beans and a few rows of onions and shallots – all of which had been started off at home in toilet rolls (aka root trainers) for the broad beans and modules for the onions and shallots, which allowed them to get a start and put down roots before planting out. And for me to prepare the ground…

It is incredibly dry at the moment on the plots so I gave all the new plants a good soaking once them were in, as well as watering the garlic and newly planted strawberries. Fortunately the ‘streams’ running through the site are still plentiful since the water is not on yet.

Plants everywhere!

As usual I’m late as ever potting on the plants from the propagator and lost a few. However when I did get round to potting them up I still have 44 plants of 4 different types of chillies! Having run out of plant pots – something I thought I’d never do, but sadly many of them perished in the greenhouse fire – so I bought another 48 cheap pots thinking that would be more than enough…

No. 1 child decided he wanted to come for a dig to see where the patch of ground I promised him is. He then proceded to dig a big hole whilst I pruned some raspberries and attempted to weed around the rhubarb on plot no 2. A quick tour round the plot with him revealed the ground elder making a come back in the warmer weather, the frogs have been, erm ‘busy’, as there’s lots of frogspawn around, and indignation from no. 1 child when he saw the state of the greenhouse. “Why have the police not caught them?” he demanded to know. Sadly he got bored before I was able to do much else.

Some time later after lunch I went to plot no. 1 to plant a couple of rows of potatoes. I added to a few handfulls of chicken manure pellets to the bottom of the trench, then some shredded paper which I watered well, followed by some bagged manure (I know, I know), then the potatoes – Charlottes. They should have the best possible start with that lot.

After the hard work of the digging I thought I’d take it easier and clear up the strawberry bed. An hour later I’d worked my way down half of it – there were a few more weeds in there that I realised. The plants had also thrown out a few runners – a bucket full – but given the state of the bed it’s difficult to tell which are the Gariguette and which are the Chelsea Pensioner. So I took them home to pot up and promptly used up the 48 pots I’d bought earlier…

First produced of the year!
Picked the first (forced) rhubarb of the year. Despite the fact I seem to be forcing the same crown as last year, it seems to be doing OK and it looks as good as ever:

It might not look like it…

… but this is probably the tidiest the plot has been!

I’ve moved the comfrey to next to the leaf bags, cleared all the rubbish next to the leaves to the ‘bonfire’ side of the plot, moved the glass down to where the greenhouse will eventually go, added loads of wood material to the compost heap (which will take an eternity to rot down no doubt), used loads of old compost bags to cover the ground next to the leaves (which are now held down by the hose pipe and various logs from the tree), tidied away the netting and pots and raked all the rubbish off the path around the entrance to the plot and next to the compost.

It’s tidier, just take my word for it!

Compost
Now I can actually get on to the plot, it’s time to get a manure delivery in. Bit late, but should be OK for the potatoes still and a fun job for Easter. However to get the beans going I managed to ‘score’ a load of home made compost on offer from a local gardener who had too much for his own needs. Some of it needed to go back on the compost heap for a bit longer but most of it looked like good stuff and after borrowing the neighbours wheelbarrow (you so need a new one Dan!) I carefully (aka slung) over the bed for this years beans and peas, which you can see in amongst my cardboard crop:

I also added a load of compost around the old rhubarb:

Can’t think where the mess from the top of the plot went…

Finally Easter’s pudding (finger’s crossed) is coming along nicely:

Some Pictures!!!

Firstly, spot the difference:

And I’m not talking about the lack of dodgy looking leeks! I’d have cut down the rest of the tree on the left but it’s quite big and to be honest I wasn’t confident enough to do on my own with the trusty bow saw.

Now that spring has finally started, some signs of life:

This years forced rhubarb, hopefully be ready in a week or so.

Daffodils and garlic just beginning to get going.

Newly potted up Blueberries.

Crocuses growing along the lane – we were lucky enough to get some crocus and daffodil bulbs from the council to plant around the site last Autumn and they’ve just started coming through – despite my random planting of the ones I put it!

Up on the forgotten plot…

It doesn’t appear to look that bad from the picture and the small area of dug ground at the far end of the picture has grown significantly since the picture. Truth be told the soil in a dream to dig really, it’s good deep, loamy soil. Plenty of weeds too! It’s also a bugger to keep moisture in it come summer, but that’s a long way off yet.

However, it’s not all good news up there. This is the remains of the greenhouse. At least I can get to cut the hedge now I guess…