February 27th, 2009 by Rich

I have a confession, I missed something out of last night’s post and I will now come clean.

I said we had chosen Katy as it was in the correct pollination group, this was true, we were both convinced we had purchased a Cox’s Orange Pippin from Lidl. Thing is when we started planting the trees we discovered we were wrong, we had picked up a Jonagold. Ends up that Jonagold is in a different pollination group and to make things worse it’s a triploid, this means it requires two pollinators not the usual one. We decided to plant the trees we had and have yet to decide if we leave it chance for pollination or get more trees (this would technically be another three trees ~ I’m not convinced we have the space for that!) So there you have it I was let down by my memory again!

I thought I would show you a plan of the plot showing the stuff we have in place so far.
As you can see we have the pond, greenhouses, shed, trees, raspberries, gate and water tank marked on. The raised bed is the garlic I planted just before Christmas. The key for the trees is as follows:
P1 = Conference (pear)
P2 = Buerre Hardy (pear)
A1 = Katy (apple)
A2 = Jonagold (apple)
C = Stella (cheery)
PV = Victoria (plum)

February 26th, 2009 by Rich

As I sit here it is Thursday night and I’m only now getting around to updating from last weekends work, another classic example of me being a bit slack. I fully intended to post Monday or Tuesday but stuff got in the way so you’ll have to make do with this delayed post.

So last weekend ….. another busy couple of days, Saturday kicked off with a trip to a local nursery (Tree World in Ufton Nervet) to pick up another apple to act as a pollinator. I had selected a Katy (also known as Katja), I had opted for this as it was from the right pollination group and the apples look good. The tree seemed a very healthy example and set us back £14.99, a bit more than the others but we were happy enough. Having left the nursery we popped into Homebase to pick up a few bits, namely compost, tree stakes, tree ties, some troughs and random stuff. Being asked at the till for £75 was a little bit of a shock, all those bits soon add up but hey we needed the stuff and most of it was one expenses so not too bad.

Then off to the allotment to plant them trees! This was  fairly hard work, six holes dug out all around two foot square and two foot deep. The holes were back filled with a combination of compost, rotted poo, top soil and bonemeal, this should mean they get the nice healthy start in life they need. Over all this wasn’t too bad a job but took a little time as it was a bit tiring due to the erm … sunny hot conditions … I didn’t make that up, it was sunny and hot! Whilst I did this Lou got on with sowing some sweet peas in the troughs to grow up the arch by the gate, she also potted up four of our first early potatoes in a big pot so that we can force them in the greenhouse and get some really early spuds. We did a similar thing last year with the first earlies and they ended up being the best spud we had grown to date. This year we are just doing the four with the intention of planting all of the others outside in a few weeks time. Currently I am surrounded by potatoes chitting away in the office, we have four lots: first earlies are dunluce, second earlies are vales sovereign, main crop are valor and salad variety are pink fir apple (cool name eh?). We have 10 of the pink fir apples and 3kg each of the others. All going well this will keep us going in potatoes for a good amount of time providing we get a good harvest – fingers crossed!The problem with the delayed posting of this  is that I only *think* that was what we did on Saturday but I have probably missed something!

Sunday was a good day, I caved in to demands that the shed was not colourful enough and Lou set about giving that another coat, meanwhile due to the dry week I was able to break out the rotovator for the first time! Now when it comes right down to it I am a boy, I like toys, especially if they are dangerous looking so this had been a day I had looked forward to

I whacked in the spark plug, attached the lead, attached the tiller blades, mixed up some two stroke and filled the tank. I then read the instructions and discovered I had done it all correctly so far! The machine sparked into life on the first pull which amazed me, I then headed off to one of the big beds to give it a whirl.  I have never used a rotovator before so I was a little surprised when it started to churn the earth (and bounce around in a comical manner), I soon got the hang of it and the only problems I ran into were a few stones jamming it up but those were soon sorted out using hammer and screwdriver (or brute force and ignorance as it is also known.) For ground that had gotten quite compacted I was impressed, it dug reasonably deep and produced a nice fine tilth. The bed I had chosen was one that we hadn’t manured so next I tried it on one of the ones that had been, this proved to be a little more problematic as the poo and straw was still a bit too damp from the weeks of wet weather so I ended up leaving it with the intention of trying again this coming weekend. I gave the machine a quick go in one of the raised beds to see if I could control it well enough to use it on the beds and am pleased to say it worked well, the only thing we will need to do is have some tarp or something along the edges as when I was close to the wood it did spray a little over the sides and I don’t want muddy paths!

The rotovator had generated a bit of interest from some of our allotment friends so once I had finished with it, it took a little trip down the site for Sarah and Richard to use on their plot ( in the interests of fairness I should point out that the honour of using the machine fell onto Sarah’s son Terry). After having a natter with a few others on the site I returned to our plot and finished digging out the pond. This was bloody hard work, it appears that the flood plain transition occurs somewhere during the length of out plot, I was digging the pond through stone and gravel. To give you an idea, one wheelbarrow of excavation was sifted to give us mainly soil and we filled one of those large trugs with soil from this, we still had at least three quarters of a wheelbarrow of stone afterwards! Looking on the positive side, we will have plenty of stones to go around the pond The pond is now ready for lining with sand and placing the liner in, the only thing I haven’t worked out is how to fill the pond, we have no mains water and the new electrically pumped tanks are switched on yet so the only option would be Victorian hand pumps to fill an endless number of buckets ~ this may mean we wait until the electric pumps are switched on.

OK time for some photos, me using the rotovator, the fine tilthed bed and the even more blue shed!

Please note that in the last picture, to the left of the shed you can just make out the speciality safety equipment recepticals  (or beer bottles as they are also known!)

OK it is now nearly Friday so I best wrap this up for today, I do have some more stuff to post so will try to get that done soon!

February 19th, 2009 by Rich

Today was another cheap tree day, this time around Aldi had fruit trees for £4.18 each. I had inteded on just getting a plum tree but as I was there looked through the others and managed to find a polinator for the pear tree we already had. I also picked up a few windowsill propogators  as these were pretty cheap. The trees I ended up with were a conference pear and victoria plum. All going well  will get some stakes tomorrow or Saturday and get them in the ground this weekend.

Todays shopping trip means we now have five trees and I intend to get one more as a polinator for the apple, I’m thinking about getting a Katy/Katja but need to have a look around local nurseries and garden centres to see if I can find one.

I dropped the new trees off down the allotment at lunchtime and still think the plot is looking good after last weeks hard work. I think the shed wil need another coat of paint mind, there’s a few patchy looking bits but overall the blue is looking good!

February 19th, 2009 by Rich

I’ve just read this article on the BBC which has cheered up my morning.  The shortened highlights are that the National Trust has released land on many of it properties to allow 1,000 new allotments to be created. This is great news and is very much in contrast with allotment closures that we have seen recently (our old site Cow Lane in Reading, Manor Park in London.)

If you are in local or national government, take note: people want allotments we do not need our exisitng sites destroyed for such things as a car park for a private company (network rail) or a footpath for the olympics.

February 17th, 2009 by Rich

I had said I would post the varieties for the fruit trees we purchased but  I forgot so here you go:

Apple: Cox’s Orange Pippin

Pear: Buerre Hardy

Cherry: Stella

We hope to get a plum tree this week as Aldi have some on offer for a little over four quid, we’ve also started looking at which varieties to get to cross polinate the apple and pears.  Once we have decided I shall let you all know what we went for.

February 17th, 2009 by Rich

This will no doubt end up being a long post as 3 days were spent down at Scours Lane this weekend and this is the first spare time I have had to post anything … where to begin …..I know, Friday!

Friday I had booked the day off on the grounds the weather was going to be ok so I thought I could get on and do a few jobs here and there. It ended up I was there from about 10.30 until 4.30 ish

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Grrr halfwits setting off fire alarms … now where was I … Oh yes Friday , so a pretty full day down there, mainly doing some prep work for Saturday. We had arranged for our friends Tony and Claire to come over Saturday to finish off the paths, this meant I had a big pile of poo to shift before that. So first and rather wet and smelly job of the day was to shift the poo pile temporarily into some three of the raised beds. This did prompt some questions of fellow allotmenteers as to what I was going to grow in beds of pure manure , I then had to explain what I was doing to prevent them from thinking I am madder than they do currently!

Once this was done, I then positioned our two dalek composters at the top of two paths on top of some membrane with a paving slab in front to allow easy shovel-compost interfacing. I then dug in the final raised bed which we had been unable to do with the poo pile where it was. After this a few edging boards were placed by the greenhouses and I began to dig a pond out. After much deliberation I went for a simple figure of eight shape, as far as dimensions, it is made up f two circles approximately random length of metal in diameter! I dug the pond out to about 4 inches in depth ready for Loo to inspect the shape and make sure she was happy, after all she wouldn’t want the wrong shaped pond! (I reckon I might get a slap for that ) Once that was done it was time to head home and rest before another long day on the plot.

Saturday was kicked off with a jolly nice bacon roll and a small amount of time playing animal crossing then it was off to the allotment. We had arranged to collect Tony and Claire at 2pm so this gave us a good few hours to get membrane down on the remaining paths. After so much practice doing this we worked together as a well oiled machine and the job was done and coffee made and drunk before I headed off to pick up T&C. Once we returned the four of us kicked into action, Tony and I shovelled the chippings into the barrow, wheeled it down to our fence and tipped into another barrow that Loo was waiting with, she then wheeled this to the appropriate area emptied it out and then Claire took on the job of raking it all out into place. A couple of hours later and we were done, all the paths done and it looked great. We reckon we saved about a day of work by having two helpers so that was great. By the time this was done Claire (who wont thank me for this) needed the toilet, as she is posh (so she claims as a Cavershamite) she wouldn’t use the bucket in the shed, this meant we were now on deadline so we decided to do one last quick job, which was for Tony and I to erect a garden arch by the gate, this was something we had purchased the Sunday before, a bargain at £9.99! And here is a lovely photo of us sorting it out:

As a thank you for their help we got take away and beer in and sat down to watch My Name is Bruce starring the one and only Bruce Campbell, I high class cheezie flick!

Sunday arrived and we were both a little tired so we decided to only have a two or three hours down the allotment. As the weather wasn’t too bad we decided to get the shed painted, we have had the paint/preservative stuff for ages now but not had the weather to get it done. The shed is now a rather fetching faded blue colour and doesn’t stand out quite as much as it did when it was just brand new wood colour.

The results of our weekend work are here, you can see the composters, paths, shed and arch all in one photo. Now we just have the actual gardening tasks to do!

February 9th, 2009 by Rich

Last week I took delivery of my new toys, a nice A/V Receiver and 5.1 speaker set. I felt I deserved a new toy to fully enjoy the delight of blu-ray with. The system is now all set up, speakers on walls, inputs plugged in and it sounds great (just ask the neighbours!) Over the weekend we watched a few movies but none as good as the first one but this was not down to the content of the film, let me explain…

We loaded up the disc, turned all the bits and pieces on and just as we are about to press play Seefur comes along to sit on my lap and have a sleep, nothing unusual so far. Then the film started and the fun started! Over their lives the cats have learnt all about the tv, it is shiny and they get told off if they try to scratch it, it makes noise and they will mainly ignore it. Now we have a cat in the midst of 5.1 surround and she can’t get over the fact that sound is coming from all around and what is that thing that keep flying past (the answer was Hancock ~ I highly recommend it.) This freaked Seefur out and after 10 minutes she couldn’t hack it anymore and retreated upstairs to the bed.

I’m not a cruel man but I thought this was funny as hell, if you have cats get a surround system, it will no doubt provide hours of fun!

February 9th, 2009 by Rich

Contrary to weather reports, Saturday was a nice day. It started off a little on the chilly side but as soon as the sun came out it was nice and warm (warm for February that is.) We kicked off Saturday morning with a trip to the badlands or Reading (known locally as Whitley!) to visit the Lidl there as our local one didn’t have the fruit trees that were on offer this week. Fortunately they had plenty in stock but none of the varieties they had advertised so some off the cuff choices were made. After a few minutes of deliberation we had ourselves 1 cherry tree, 1 apple tree and 1 pear tree (I can’t remember the varieties off hand so will post them later.) And how much did this mini orchard cost us? I hope you are all sat down…. they came to a grand totoal of ……. £11.97! I honestly don’t know how they sell ‘em that cheap and still make a profit. We then left the badlands unscathed and returned home for bacon butties.

Around an hour later we set off down the allotment to get some more paths covered in wood chipping, we aimed to at least get a single path from the gate to join up with what we did last week so that we could get from gate to shed without getting muddy and dare I say it without having to resort to wellies.

Four to five hours later we had met our goal and more we have completed the central path to the raised bed and have two paths down the raised beds and to the gate. This now leaves four paths around raised beds at the top end of the plot and the fence side and behind the greenhouses to do. By my reckoning I think we will have another 11/2 to 2 days of work to do that if it was that simple. However when do I do things the simple way? Behind the greenhouses I want to get a small pond put in to attract in frogs, toads etc. This obviously needs to be done before the wood chippings can go down around it. The other slight problem we have is there is still a giant poo pile at the front that needs shifting to allow the last raised bed to be put in properly and for us to put the path down. Still a fair bit of work to get done but its starting to look good, it will be even better once the paths are finished and we have trimmed the excess membrane away.

Here is a photo from the gate showing the two paths we did: (notice the new paving slabs by the gate to prevent the gate catching on bark ~ clever eh!)

As for the fruit trees, given the less than favourable weather conditions at the moment, we have placed those in the shed to protect them until we are able to get them in the ground.

We celebrated our hard work with Chinese, which was very welcome and then sat down to watch a film …… my work was done!

February 5th, 2009 by Rich

This evening we placed our very first geocache! We started geocaching June 2007 and have now found 229 caches but to date have been a little slack at placing any. Well today we placed one, it’s called “Can U” find it? and you can find it on the geocaching site here.

I’m gonna go out on a limb here and guess that some of you reading this have no idea what geocaching is, so I shall try to explain….

Geocaching is essentially an electronic treasure hunt, a geocache is a container for which you have gps co-ordinates for (although sometimes you have to work out what they are as a puzzle.) You then use your gps unit to find the cache  where you will at minimum a log book to sign but depending on the size of the container, you will also find *stuff* (for the knowledgeable read as geo-tat! ) The idea with that is that if you take something out, you put something in.

To add to the “sport” (really lets face it, it ain’t a sport more of a past-time) you also get trackable items, these can either be in the form of special coins or (geocoins) or dog tags (travelbugs). These have unique tracking codes on them so you can place them in a cache for others to move on and log, this means you can track these items around the world. In our cache we placed today we also deposited two travelbugs which we are competing in a race with! Simplistically the race is to see which travelbug travels the furthest in a given time (I’d tell you the end date but memory failure is happening!).We have a whole blog dedicated to the race, if you are interested check it out here.

If my poorly worded description of geocaching has interested you at all and you want more info then do go and check out the official geocaching website.

On the allotment front, not quite sure what we will get done this coming weekend, the weather is still looking pretty cack and if it is frozen or snowy there will be little we can get on with which will be a bit of a pain to say the least!

February 3rd, 2009 by Rich

Monday was meant to be a nice lazy day for me, I had the day booked off as I knew I was unlikely to be in a fit state to work as I stayed up to watch the Superbowl so I knew bedtime would be around 4am. The game was a corker and was in the balance right up to the last 5 seconds of play when the Steelers secured their victory, it was a game the really showed why the Steelers and the Cardinals got to Superbowl, I’m glad I stayed up to watch it.

Ahhh lovely sleep, wait what’s that f*&£ing noise …. arggghhh, yes no one told Seefur that I was meant to be having a nice sleep. I managed to put up with her being a royal pain for about 2 hours and ended up getting up bleary eyed at 9am. I knew snow had been predicted but was none the less surprised when I looked out of the window to see just how much snow there was.

On a day where there is snow and  schools are shut, public transport is cancelled the country is in mass hysteria, what is the first thought that comes into my head? Hmmm I should get down the allotment and get that snow off the greenhouse roof! Yes truly that is the thought I had upon seeing the snow, I guess this proves I’m a real allotment man!

The drive over there and back was a little interesting, (mainly because it appears the world is full of morons who can’t drive) whilst over there I quickly brushed off the snow off the greenhouse and the shed roof to make sure they weren’t going to get damaged by the weight of the snow. Having done that I took a quick photo and headed back to the warmth of the house and plonked myself in front of animal crossing on the wii so that I could weed and plant flowers

The difference a day can make:

This also shows nicely shows how much more wood chip we need to shift as you can see all of the paths around the raised beds