March 16th, 2009 by Rich

You may have noticed nothing got posted about last weekend, this wasn’t me being slack, just as weekends go it was pretty rubbish, it started off OK on Saturday, we pottered around cleaning up greenhouses, sowing seeds, nothing too taxing, a nice relaxing day. Sunday on the other hand sucked, we had very windy conditions and when I went down to the plot was confronted by our old greenhouse worse for wear a panel had blown out casing one of the frame struts to come out. Result: broken glass and carnage. Then the new greenhouse came into sight, and around five of its panels had blown out, this meant that the seed containers we had sown the day before were also blown around the shop. Just to make life a little interesting a heavy hail storm kicked up ~ great … there I am trying to put panels back in in freezing cold hail and strong wind. After many a curse I had the old greenhouse patched up and glazing replaced with spare bits I had behind the shed, the new one had the panels back in and were secured with a LOT of gaff.

That is all I will say about that weekend as it is still a little fresh in my mind and I don’t want to rant too much! Now let’s move on to this weekend …..

Another productive couple of days, during the week I ordered and received a roll of wind break/greenhouse shading netting, this stuff is basically scaffold netting but only a metre wide, it is claimed this will reduce wind strength by 50% and is effective for a distance of 12 times its height (so theoretically enough to cover the width of the plot.) This was the first job for Saturday, we fixed this to the fence on the windward side of the plot for the entire length. We fixed it in two ways, firstly we stapled to the fence posts and then cable tied it to the top and bottom of the fence and added a few more in to make it nice and secure. As we didn’t have quite enough cable ties for the job I had to nip up to Do it all, fortunately whilst inside I bumped into Stumpy who offered me a whole bunch of cable ties for free, all I spent in the shop was a few quid on some flower bulbs that I got side tracked looking at! We noticed the difference in wind coming across the plot immediately, hopefully this will mean the greenhouses get a little less bashed. The other main job of the day was planting out some hazel along the back of the plot, the reasons for doing this are to provide wind break along the back, provide us with pea and bean sticks, give us a little privacy when we want to sit down and chill out and also to give the birds somewhere to hide/nest. The hazel was another free find of mine, I came across an advert on freecycle from a lady offering hazel, oak, yew and holly trees as she had a large number that had self seeded (all be it with some squirrel help!) All we had to do was go over and dig up what we needed, so around 30 minutes of work gave us around 15 hazel and 5 holly plants. The other quick job we got done was to plant some shallots, we hadn’t planned on growing any but our allotment neighbours Jon and Linda had around 9 bulbs left over having planted theirs so offered them to us. These were quickly planted out and will look forward to harvesting those later in the year.

This brings us on to Sunday,  I wanted to plant the remainder of the little trees along the wildlife area on the plot (around where the pond will be) so had to dig up some grass, fork over and then plant in the holly and hazel. This should give us a nice thick hedge, really good for the birds. Once that was done I did some levelling off and tidying up of the pond, this is pretty much ready for us to line with sand before putting the pond liner in, perhaps a job for next weekend if we get time. Whilst I was doing this Lou planted out a whole range of summer flowering bulb and perennials in a section we want to have as a flower border. Lou also finished off sieving two wheelbarrows of pond excavations, this was really really stony, from three barrow loads I would say we at most got one of soil. That gives you an idea just how stony that end of the plot is! The stones will be reused to make the pond area soil lower quality ready for the wild flower seeds to be sown next month. The final job for me was to drill a few holes in the water butt, attach the hoses up to the greenhouse guttering and then pour five watering cans of water into it to give it the weight to stay steady in wind.

I’m sure there are other things I have missed, if I think of any I will post again!

March 6th, 2009 by Rich

This week has been a bit odd, much spent off work feeling rubbish, so it is only now that I have gotten around to posting so I shall keep it short(ish)!

Last weekend was fairly busy, we glazed the replacement greenhouse which was a bit of a pain. This is our replacement one from the council and unfortunately the glazing is very thin polycarbonate, a bit like food packaging and is held in place with long strips that snap into place. After a couple of hours with some minor sweary rants it was done and looks OK as you can see below.

Post glazing, I planted out two rhubarb and 4 currant plants which we have had in pots since digging them up from our Cow Lane Plot. Meanwhile Lou did some seed sowing in the greenhouse. I think that was it for Saturday……

Sunday started off with some construction, having looked at the price of greenhouse staging I decided I would build some myself. I got a couple of lengths of wood cheap from focus do it all, stripped down a pallet that the shed had been delivered on, found some batons that were left over the shed and utilised some wire shelves we had from some of those crummy plastic mini greenhouses. Once I had all the parts measured and the visual in my head off I went. The result was pretty good and is around 5 and a bit foot of staging with some storage underneath. It’s not the prettiest of things but the total cost was a fiver, compare that to the £60 they wanted in the shops! To prove it isn’t pretty there is a photo below (click on the pic to get the full size versions)

The rest of the day was spent rotavating the two areas I didn’t get done last week. I’m sure we did some other stuff but I really can’t remember what now, I blame the illness! (that’s my excuse anyway).