Photo of the week

The photo was taken last night after watering. Bye bye for a week, we're off on holidays.

Cycling to the plot!

The allotment on 2nd May

And here lies the proof that today I cycled to the allotment! It was hard (especially pushing the bike up Whitehill)

One can see, it hasn't rained much last night, despite the promising weather forecast, so today I watered well. I also removed the attempted netting for the Brussel sprouts. I decided I will repot them in bigger pots and transplant them in the allotment when we're back from France. I also sowed two rows of parsnips and fancied sowing leeks too, but then realised that the packet suggested to start them off in a planter, which I will do presto.

The tomato plants are looking a bit better today, I think the lack of water wasn't very good to them. the courgettes on the other hand seem a bit pale to me, compared the the one at home. We need to get some netting and create a windbreak somehow.

So the work for tonight at home is:

1. Repot brussel sprouts, tomato, pepper and purple sprouting in bigger pots.

2. Sow leeks

3. Water

4. Relax (if I have time)

Progress Photo 21st May 2011

The allotment as we arrived

I always make the mistake to forget to take an after photo so I will do so as I'll go to the plot tomorrow. The weather was great this morning, it was sunny and warm, ideal for a morning in the allotment.

Will came with me today and insulated the shed, that will be good to store things over the winter, such as dahlia tubers.

On my side, I de-weeded, then planted some sweetcorn, a dahlia, 2 tomato plants and some marigold around the tomatoes.

Our other growing place: Home

Our home plot

The allotment isn't the only place where we grow. Last summer we decided to dig up a small plot in our front garden, with the approval of our landlord. We filled it up with green manure over the winter and it was ready to plant in spring. These broad beans "Giant Exhibition Long pods" has been sown early spring and they are looking good and in bloom. as a reference the cold frame on the right is 43.5cm high, so the broad beans are about half a meter high.
Behind is our lovely big cat Lucas, who is helping us keeping the birds away (not that he can catch them but he scares the birds away at least...) Behind the broad beans are the climbing beans and runners beans, and on the left are the sugar-snap peas.

I mentioned in an earlier blog that we were keeping a courgette plant in a pot at home, I noticed today that some male flowers were fused and couldn't resist and take a photo, maybe some of you have already seen this... The plant is also much bigger than the two we planted in the allotment, that must be because it is less windy here and also the compost is probably more fertile than the soil in the allotment.

Courgette plant with fused male flowers

One more photo: reading a magazine, we saw a potato planter offer that we decided to try. We bought two of them (Will's parents ordered another one for us) and the potato plants looks like they really like it there. Let's hope they're producing as much inside as they do on top... 

Potato bags

Today's work

Nettle tea preparation

So today Will and I went to the allotment in the morning and did a bit of work on it.

My first task of the day was to inspect the plants and how they are growing.

The potatoes are coming out nicely, so are the garlic and onions. The tomato plants and getting a nice dark green colour. Rocket and radish are coming out too.

On the not so good side, the courgette plants don't look very well. I think they are lacking a bit of water, but they'll be fine once they settle down in the soil... The lavender doesn't look very healthy either, we'll see.

Then after my inspection, I put the gloves on and went in the surroundings to pick some nettle to do some nettle tea. I shredded the leaves in a bucket and poured water over. Then I sealed the bucket and will leave it rot for some time. once it's ready, it will be used to fertilise my tomato plants...

Once this was done, I planted some strawberry plants, yeah! 16 plants all together. They probably won't give a good harvest this year but I can't wait for next year and the strawberry jam I'll be able to do. I have also 10 plant in the post from Gardener's wold offer. Can't wait to plant them down.

While I was looking, chatting tot he neighbours and doing my nettle tea and planting my strawberries, Will was very hard at work and placed 3 patio slabs in front of the shed and did some more digging.

Weekly photo

The allotment on 13th May 2011

A friend of mine suggested that I post a photo a week of the allotment as a whole so people could see the progress. I thought it was a brilliant idea and I will also try to take the photo from the same angle every week.

After a year I should be able to do a small clip that will show the growing changes...

For the not-so-techy people, it is possible to click on the photo to enlarge it.

This photo was taken yesterday as I arrived to water the plant after two days not visiting the plot. Some plants are a bit droopy but the tomato plants did really good and hae a much nicer dark green colour than when they where in their pots...

Dwarf Beans

I had a think about the courgette space yesterday and instead of sowing a new courgette I decided to use the space for  some dwarf beans. I did a seed swap earlier this year with a work colleague and got some dwarf beans among other seeds.

I have three varieties: Borlotto di Vigevano, Meraviglia di Venezia, and purple king.
I wasn't sure how to plant them as I forgot to write this down on the envelope so I called dad. He said there's two schools in France for planting French dwarf beans: either you plant a seed every 2 cm, and space them in rows of 45cm, or you sow 5-6 seeds together, every 20-22cm, spaced in rows again of 45cm. My dad tried both and prefers the second technique. So because he's been growing vegetables since before I was born, and that was in the late 70s, then I trust his expertise and used technique number 2.

He also advised me to do the same as for potatoes, ie dwarf beans need earthing up when they reach 10cm in height. But they only need earthing up once. That's so the plant develop a better root system.

I also checked the tomato plant and they are doing fine. I also removed a few dock leaves as, now that it rained a few times, they are coming out again...

Bird scarer for broad beans and tomato planting

One of our allotment neighbour told us a few days ago that pigeons are quite a nuisance around here, so today I built some bird scarer with some old hard disks. Let's hope they resist the wind.

I also planted some of my tomatoes, the ones that were the biggest. I grew them from seeds. My dad told me to used shredded nettles as a fertiliser at the bottom of the hole, so I did as i was told. I am planning of doing some nettle tea too to water and spray them with. Apparently it fortifies them and also keep them disease free (doesn't act on blight though)  

I'm growing three varieties. From left to right on the photo below: 'Gardener's delight', an old favourite (cherry tomato), then two 'Morden yellow', as it names says, they are yellow tomatoes (got the seeds at a seed swap) and right is a Tomato 'Alicante', a medium size red tomato. It was rather windy tonight so let's hope that the tomato plants will resist and do better than my courgette Cavili F1 plant who was destroyed by the wind, or my impatience to put it in the ground while it was too young.... I shall sow another seed in a pot, as it is not too late...

The courgettes are in!

It was a bit windy today and the window of the shed blew off. Luckily, Will is the master of DIY and fixed it easily...

I also went to a shop today and bought a lot of reduced plants, still OK for planting but in need of TLC. A couple of French Lavender (those were only 20p while they were originally £5 each) and some Foxgloves and lupin, and a thyme. I planted them in today making sure I left plenty of space for growth and following the instructions on the label. I always find it strange to leave 1 m each side of tiny plants but then to realise it is much needed indeed... I have also removed one of the sage from our garden to plant in the allotment. It was getting too big and killing the plants around it. The idea behind getting some flowers in the allotment is to attract the pollinators (bees, bumblebees and butterflies) so they pollinate plants, such as courgettes, for example.

On a more productive side, I decided to plant my courgettes today. I have four plants in total. One that I will keep at home in a planter (a BIG one) and three that will go in bed 1. I have sown three different varieties: two golden rush, a zucchino genovese and a Cavili F1.

The Golden rush courgette is a small bush that does yellow courgettes, so 'ideal' for pots (hence the one I keep at home...). The zucchino genovese produces light green courgettes (seeds provided by a friend) and the Cavili F1 plant doesn't require pollination (*) and produce dark green courgettes. I decided to plant different varieties to try on and see which one is liking it best on the allotment. So here are my courgettes in their bed and planted with plenty of well rotted manure:

In order, from left down to right up: Cavili F1, Golden Rush, Zucchino Genovese. 

Cavili is the smallest because I sowed it last, ie about 2 weeks ago. The other ones were sown early April. Behind you can see some of the other plants I planted today. The one in bloom is the sage.

(*) Pollination of courgettes:

Courgette plants produce two type of flowers, the female type, which produce the courgette and the male one which is 'only' a flower at the end of a stem. For a courgette to grow, a pollinator, for example a bee, needs to visit the male flower then visit a female flower and deposit the pollen of the male flower. This is called pollination. Then the stem of the female flower will grow into a courgette. If female flowers don't get pollinated they just fall off. 

Even at an early stage, the female flower looks like a mini courgette with a flower at the end, so if the plant doesn't grow courgettes, someone has to behave like a bee and do the pollination... by hand. 

In the case of the Cavili F1 which doesn't need pollination, I'm not sure if the flowers are both male and female at the same time so wind can pollinate them, or if it's another trick of mother nature so I'll have to watch the plant out and report back!

7th May - after a couple of hours of work

So yes today it rained. The rain has been beneficial to the soil, however the soil has been soaked only 2.5 cm deep, for you Brits, it's about 1 inch. The conclusion to that is that we need more rain...

I hadn't been to the allotment for a couple of days now and I was surprised to see the difference.

The onion and garlic are coming out. Those were given to me by someone who had too many and I planted them late, so I thought they may not come out. On the first photo, you can barely see them but on the second one you can see this red onion is coming out nicely...

Another crop doing well are the broad beans. Some of them are in bloom! The one in the photo are called Broad beans 'the Sutton'. I have bought the plants in a garden centre. I'm also growing another species called 'Giant Exhibition Longpods', I'm looking forward to see how they look like, or shall I say how they taste like! These aren't in bloom yet but I shall take a photo for comparison when they are blooming.

So apart from looking at the new growth, what have I been doing today? well I've created bed 7 and raked bed 7 and 8. Now only bed 9 needs to be marked. I'm waiting for Will to tell me that he's finished digging the area... 

I've also planted a few things. In bed 10 I have planted the remaining of the potatoes that were given to me by friends, and I've also sowed coriander, parsley and basil. I've also transplanted some chives I had a home, as I had two.

I've also sown. a row of radishes, a row of rocket and a row of spinach in different beds. I've also met for the first time our immediate neighbours.

And finally below is a general overview of how the whole plot looks like, the limit on the left and at the front  is the path and at the back is the back of the shed. On the right, the limit is the dock leaves :D

Rain!

As soon as I posted yesterday's last post, it started raining. Great! It was a big thunderstorm which filled up half a waterbutt at home. This morning, one waterbutt was full ad the second is waiting for more rain. My waterbutt are interconnected so when the first one is full, the second starts filling up.
I'm going soon to the allotment and find out how the rain has affected our plot, and take a few pictures to post...

6th May 2011 - planning the next planting

Ok now I've caught up with the present. Still no sign of water, but the weather forecast says some rain will come tomorrow. Let's hope so... Tonight no allotment for me, we're invited at Will's parents for dinner, but I have already started to plan what I'm going to plant next...

the Shed is up and some veg are in! 30th April 2011 (retrospective)

Yes, we now have a shed on the allotment. That's great! A shed means that we can leave some tools there, so now we may be able to cycle there and lower even more our carbon footprint...
That's what's the shed looks like:

it's a 6x4 feet shed, tiny, and it was the cheapest we could find. Our immediate neighbour's shed looks massive compared to ours... We built it on a very windy day! The allotment has been exposed to a lot of winds these part few days, it's so windy that the broad beans I have in bed 5 are nearly horizontal. and still no sign of rain. I think it hasn't rained for about a month there... 

I've also got carrots onion and garlic in bed 2, that's the first thing I planted, ad some spuds in bed 3.

I wanted to add this photo to show 'the other part' of the allotment and how much digging is left for us to do. I think this photo also shows how amazing is the view from the site. Also by clicking on the photo, one can see hat the dock leaves have starting growing back, rain or no rain....

Progress on the digging 24th April 1011(retrospective)

The first thing we did when we got the plot is to dig all the weeds out. Indeed even if the field has been ploughed it was a necessary step because of the perennial weeds in the area. The main weeds is broad dock leaves, which has deep taproots, a bit like dandelion but in bigger. And the whole root has to be removed, or the little buggers will regenerate...

The photo above shows where we are in terms of digging. about 2/3 down. I even started to draw bed 1, 2 and 3. Nothing is planted yet, that was the next step. 

Allotment the map!

To quickly introduce the new plot, I've drawn on paper a quick scaled map of the plot. What is shown on the photo of the previous post is actually what we have planned, the 10 beds and the shed area.

Its orientation is pretty much North-South which is ideal, north being where the shed is and south is at the compost heap. The dimensions of the beds 1 to 9 are 1.5m wide by 3.5m long.

We haven't decided what we will put on the left part yet. We are the first plot as one enters in the allotments area, and we are lucky enough to be very close to the water supply!

20th April 2011 (retrospective)

So that's it, we've agreed with the landlord, signed the contract and sent it through the post.

This is what we get: a massive piece of land just ploughed with nothing on it:

The plot is 7m wide and 18m long, I know, this is only 126sqm and about half of what we've been promised. We later discussed this with the landlord who agreed that we could extend to the left of our plot up to 250sqm

The beginning...

It all started when Will's parents mentioned to us that they were some private allotments for rent at the top of our town. They gave us the phone number to contact the landlord. I called them and we now have been the proud tenants of 250sqm of land since the 20th April 2011.

The plot we've been allocated is a brand new plot so we're starting from scratch. We were a bit hesitant at first because a new plot means a LOT of work! However it has been ploughed by the farmer who owns it, so it makes it a little bit easier for us to start. And it has been easier indeed, even if we have to dig it all again to remove the perennial weeds, which are mainly broad dock leaves (I know good luck to us). The soil is sandy and free draining, so spuds and carrots should thrive there, we'll see.

After 2 weeks of work, a couple of bank holidays and a royal wedding, we're getting there. This blog, is, you may have guessed it by now, about our allotment experience from a blank canevas to what we hope will be an enjoyable experience in to growing our own...