most of the rows of potatoes

Things move on slowly. The potatoes are growing well, as you can see they are mostly growing on appropriate to when they were planted. Most of them look pretty similar now they are growing apart for Red Duke of York which is much more vigorous and has a certinaly redness to it’s stems etc. the other is Mayan Twiglight ( or Twilight as I’m pretty sure they had mis-spelled the label but I like it).

Mayan Twiglight

All but one of the plants have much more pointed, smaller more tomato looking leaves in quite a light green.

The other one.

The last one is bigger, red stemmed and has big dark rounder green leaves.. much more like Red Duke of York, which is very strange, I would say I must have mixed up the seed potatoes but out of all of them Mayan Twiglight are the most distinctive being red and white splotchy long thin tubers.. we will have to wait till harvest.

Tomatoes, added a couple more since this photo

I finally cleared out the greenhouse.

Most of the tomatoes have been planted up, well those that will fit in the greenhouse. have them in a mix of small IKEA blue bags, one of the IKEA planters, all with holes punched in the bottoms. Also some old compost bags rolled down and part filled. Finally i found a 7 foot long metal gridded trough in the scrap metal pile on site and decided it still had use. I lined it with opened out compost bags, again punctured for drainage, then filled with compost and it now has 8 tomatoes in it. The green bag has cucumbers in and there are various peppers that need potting up in bigger pots.

cucumbers in the green bag.

Tonight Tom hung up some old bamboo blinds as it is so hot in there we can’t keep anything on the staging as it burns so we can at least play with some shading now.

Nearly everything else is either in the harding off frame or behind it in a slightly shaded area as all the pots are drying out faster than I can water them. The frame is full of pumpkins and other squashes, corgettes, spare cucumbers, sweetcorn and so on.

Hardening off frame, a box pallet with fleece

We also have glode artichokes, leeks, kale, strawberies in pots, and finally various brassicas I got cheap at B&Q. I planted some of those around the edge of our eldests pumpkin bed, I will move them again before it takes over but hopefully the larger soil area should help them survive.

British Bank Holidays are well known for being wet but not this one it seems. I always find the May holidays a bit funny and this time it just feels like we have jumped from one to another., due to where Easter was we had four weeks of school, including the first May bank holiday off and now we are at half term! I have never quite got why we have two bank holidays in May. The first is May day but why the second and why not have it in June or July to spread them out more?

Anyway what have we done?

Well I mowed the top part of the plot which helps make it look more kept though I really need to weed the first raised bed then you will be able to see down to the greenhouse before hitting any signifcant weeds or similar. I have left a stripe down the hedge side for wild flowers, partly because it is a ditch and bank and partly for the butterflies and bees.

I planted up the whole of the middle bed, though it isn’t done in this picture but the camara ran out of power and we put out a pumpkin in Noddles bed covered in feece for a few days to get acclimatised.. We did more weeding and earthing up of potatos though there is still more to do and as always plenty to plant. We also planted the last few potatos and put in a path along the edge at the far bottom left courner. We plan to put a bench at the end of that path as it is pretty much the only place on the plot where you can sit in the shade of trees.

Finally we bought some bags at IKEA with the idea of using them as planters so watch this space to see if it works !!.

I have spend a few hours up at the plot this last week dodging the rain, though you can’t see much change compared to many of the jobs we have done in the past. Last Sunday we spent a short while up there before the rain hit but it was long enough for Tom and his dad to chop down the worst of the docks along the lane and allow us to put plastic down to try and keep them from coming back as vigerously.

Otherwise I have mostly been pottering around, moving plants into the hardening off frame, then bringing more from home. I also weeded the two new raised beds and planted out my rather sad looking broad beans but I thought I’d give them a chance as they have sat in pots so long. I need to get some other things into that bed. The other bed was half planted a couple of weeks ago with seeds which are starting to show if you look very carefully.

In that bed, sowed across the bed, so each row is about a metre long, are the following. From right to left looking from the greenhouse.

2 rows Parsnip – Gurnsey from Heritage seed library – rather late but I thought worth a try even if they were only baby ones.

Carrots -Karvnavit (showing), John’s Purple and Chanternay red-cored (showing)

Beetroots – Bolthardy(good showing) , Detroit 2(showing) and Di Chiocchia (one or two just coming up)

with some radish between the last two rows which are already doing well.

I have divided the other end of the bed into 12 (+3 halfs) approx one foot sq areas and planted up some young rocket, Lollo Rossa and Parella Red lettuce I had started in seed trays. I will try and plant other salad and herbs in the rest this weekend.

The potatos continue to grow well. The Pink fir apple are now showing properly and the other that were planted after them are coming through as well.. Everything else is showing well and the Mayan Twilight have an interestingly different leaf compared to the rest, though they seem more variable from plant to plant than most of them. I will try and take close ups of each type once they are growing well to show you the differences

box crates

Well the weather wasn’t very good today and we had various jobs to do so we didn’t get to the plot but weather willing we will tomorrow.  We did however get down a couple of times this week and now have several box pallets scattered round the place. These were from some builders down the road from us who were putting new paving in and were very happy for us to take them rather than throwing them in their skip.

One has been made into a makeshift cold frame with some fleece to harded plants out in. Another couple are to be used as holding bays for now for such things as plastic sheet which doesn’t need to be inside and a couple are earmarked as the basis of a play house!

Patio

Tom also layed a bit more of the patio next to the shed, on the sheltered side and tried to put in a pallet fence to keep small people contained. However the ground was so hard at the beginning of the week it he was struggling getting posts in and after splintering one of them decided to wait till either the ground was softer or he had the matok with him.

The potatoes are coming on well, the red Duke of York is particularly vigourous and it and Swift are already heading toward flowering. As I don’t think i put the list up by the 26/4/09 we had planted the following

2 Colleen in a tyre for Smalls
main plot
Row 1 Formost (9) – several weeks earlier
row 2  Red Duke of York (8) – several weeks earlier
row 3 Lady Christi (4) swift (5) – several weeks earlier
Row 4&5 Cara (14)
Row 6 Santa (9)
Row 7 Desiree (9)
Row 8 Mayan Twilight (5) International Jersey (4)

All of which are now up and visible

rows 1-5 plus extra row at end.

Then we put in  3.5 rows of Pink Fir Apple and part rows of Organic Milva, Cartriona,Organic Remarka, Moulin Rouge and Salad Blue. The pink fir apple are just starting to show as are one or two shoots of some of the others but even the few days between these and rows 4-8 is noticable.

The only ones still to go in are Highland Burgundy Red and the single ones we got from a friend mostly because we reached the end of the area we had laid out for potatos and want a trailer access across the plot at that point !

The other main thing I’ve been doing is startin to lay the path along side the potatos a bit more formally. Currently it is cardboard weighed down with some random bits of slabs which I am gradually trying to make into a crazy pathing path, so more slab less cardboard visible.

Path

We did buy a hoe while out and about which we need badly as the weeds are growing faster than we can keep up with. We did try the strimmer we own off a car battery but our invertor doens’t give enough power and anyway the strimmer is a bit light weight so we will have to look at other options. I would love a proper sythe but I think it will depend what the other options are and how much they cost.

Winning Sally

One of the extra activites that had been layed on for the kids was a guess the name of the dog competition, Noddles guessed Sally which turned out to be the correct answer. I think this photo sums up quite well how he felt about it !!Sally now has a cardboard box kennel which she shares with two other smaller dogs we bought on the day as well as a ball and a snowman toy!

seedlings

Before I get to the open day a quick picture of some seedlings from a few days back. I just liked the difference between the seedlings from the squash family, those with standard leaf shaped leaves and the others like blades of grass which are sweetcorn.

Saturday was our open day at the London Road allotment. A whole bunch of people rallied round and offered to do various jobs.Tom took out biggest tent down there to make a seating area, with British weather it is after all wise to be prepared for rain and/or blazing sun  as well as anything else in between. We took various photographs over the day but I have mostly picked ones with few if any faces showing and I have a principle of not showing other peoples kids on my blog or at least making sure their faces arn’t on view so until I get permission to show other most of the photos are from set up or of my kids.

Our tent set up for drinking tea etc and Treestump.

The building in the background is the allotment hut and has recently had a face lift with a new paint job and  kitchen being put in which is being brought up to the standards needed to serve food to the public.. those involved have been working long hours to do this and it is coming on wonderfully. It normally doubles up as a shop but that was moved out to the area behind and to the side so the hut could be used for cakes and other sales.

The trampaline and the hut

The turn out was great however and many of the new members of the association were there, including a lot of kids which was wonderful. We had tea, coffee etc plus a barbeque that was very well attended. There was also a well stocked plant sale and a whole host of home made cakes including some lovely gluten free ones made even better by the fact I didn’t cook them!  I contributed a few spare plants to the sale and picked up a couple of goji plants, a different pepper to the ones I’m growing, a celeriac and a couple of snapdragons and some leek seedlings.

Just some of the plants on sale

There was also a trampoline for the kids which was very much enjoyed by both of ours and all the other kids from what I could see. Plus music which Treestump loved dancing too. We even had the police in attendence giving advice and freebees on things like shed security and so forth. Our communitee police regularly drop in on a Sataday which is really nice as we get to know them and they know the site.

Noodles and Treestump bouncing.

The infamous tummy bounce !!

I must say I am very impressed by the seeds we have got from Lidl. I will definitely be getting them again next year. I must admit to be half expecting them to be a bit dud as there were very cheap but while there arn’t huge amounts in some packs they have been extremly reliable about sprouting and turned into nice healthy plants. There is enough in the packs for normal family use and in some ways that is better than being left with lots.. this way we get more fresh next year.

Also being a continental based company rather than UK the varieties and even types of veg seeds they sell is a bit different to the norm which is good. I am looking forward to trying some of them.

We have found a place on the other side of Coventry that does industrial sized composting and they are happy for us to come and take trailer loads of it. For them our little 1/2 a ton at a time trailer is minute amounts, their scoop on their digger picks up about 3 ton at a time ! That does mean we have to shovel it by hand but as it’s pretty much free it’s not a problem. We did give them a few quid but for the price of a bag at B&Q we got a couple of tons of rough compost, some of which went to another plot as they helped collect it.. When I say rough it seems pretty good but still has twigs and such in it . So far we have used it to fill several raised beds and cover potatoes with but if sieved it could be sued for seed beds and so forth I think, with the bigger bits going back in the compost bin.

We now have about 13 rows of potatoes in which fills one half of the bottom square end of the extra part of the plot. This photo of Treestump shows you what it looked like before we weeded.

before weeding

This is afterwards, weeded, potatoes put down on prewatered ground and covered by compost.. a lot less effort than digging as even after rotervating the soil is still pretty heavy. Hopefully the potatos growing and the compost will help improve that a lot for next year.

potatoes planted

You can see the cardboard and broken slabs that are the base of the path that runs down the middle of this section. There will be a wide path running parallel with the top row of potatoes to the road so we can bring the trailer in. The bottom  left corner is the edge of the current pile of compost.

These are the first three rows that were planted the traditional way a few weeks ago, they are all first earlies and growing fast.

First Earlies

We have also got some seeds in to the raised beds, mostly root vegs like carrots, beets etc. I plan to get hoops and nets up before they sprout to stop the rabbits eating them and to plant more things like spinach, peas, beans and so forth. I am also moving plants from home to the greenhouse and need to sort out some of cold frame or similar for hardening off.

This coming weekend we have an Open day and plant sale. seed swap so watch this space for a report on that. Also check my craft blog for more pictures.

We were away for Easter and with the kids off we have not done as much the last couple of weeks. Combine that with me being less good at taking photos and our internet going down for long enough that it has been the last straw to kick us to changing suppliers and This is another pictureless update.

On a more positive note pretty much all the new hedging is growing and all the fruit trees are in flower and one of the fruit bushes is already starting to form berries. We have done some basic stuff like clearing and mutching fruit bushes and moving piles of earth/turf to a more sensible place to rot down for a bit as it was right in the middle of the plot.

Both boys have had great fun running around the place today, though that cuts down on the work we get done but it does mean I should be able to drag them up there after school on occations.

Yes I know such a title is bound to make the weather bad but honestly my skin is getting darker and everything!

No photos this update as I forgot to take the camera down with me.

This weekend there wasn’t much time as we did a lot of moving things about and putting new shelves up at home then had visitors most of the rest of the weekend. However i did get down to the plot for a short time while Tom and the boys went to Jamjambomerang, a local play centre with friends.. I am suffering from aching limbs sort of like when you get flu but without any other symptoms, it is one of my bodies normal reactions to toxins but i’m fairly sure I’ve not eaten gluten. It’s possible it’s a side effect of the sickness bug i had a couple of weeks ago.. who knows.. anyway it means my digging ability is less than ideal so mostly i pottered. I was additionally hampered by not having any secateurs with me so I got a bit more barbed wire out of the hedge and did some weeding round the fruit bushes.

Tuesday I got back down and this time with secateurs. I planted the third row of potatos ( about one row is my limit currently for digging it seems but one row at a time gets there eventually.)

I then attacked the hedge and removed more barded wire but I also pulled out most of the ivy that was smothering the old hedging plants (mostly hawthorn I think).. since they were cut back hard late last summer most of them are valiantly trying to shoot from various places on the trunks so removing the ivy has to help. I also took out all the dead wood I could and some but not all the brambles. I see no harm in leaving some as long as they don’t get out of control and they fill gaps till we have something to interplant with. Still plenty fo hedge to clear yet though.

Finally I started to clear the bottom corner near the lane. This is part of the old hedge and I asked to keep it. The plan was to chainsaw it to clear the area but in amongst the brambles there is at least one plum tree which was heavy with fruit the autumn before last (I didn’t look last year). I love trees and wanted to try and rescue this one. The tree is covered with brambles currently right up to the top and some of the stems are as thick as the tree branches so making sure I cut the right ones was interesting. I’ve cleared most of the lane side though not the ones in the top of the tree as brambles are really hard to pull down out of a tree and I nearly had a serious accident involving a thorn breaking off and getting in my eye after which I was a bit more wary about pulling to hard.. that and I thought the brambles might be stronger than the tree branches.!  I’m working on severing the main stems so the brambles are not connected to the ground so at least they will just be dead wood then we can worry about pruning and removing the higher bits later. Unlike most trees plums shouldn’t be pruned dormant anyway and it is only just starting to wake now.

The last few plots down the end of the lane including the ones nick-named the lost gardens are rapidly coming back inot use as our new intake of gardners get to work. it is amazing how fast some of them manage to clear a plot! Even with every plot taken we will still have a waiting list it seems which in many ways is wonderful as not so long ago much of the site was over grown..