April 2nd, 2009 by Rich

Why is it that most bike shops fail to have any bike racks outside? Or are we expected to drive to them?

April 2nd, 2009 by Rich

I seem to have been a little slack again and not posted for a while so this will serve as two weeks worth of stuff, I can’t completely remember when stuff was done so I’ll try to do a list of things done.

Onion sets planted – approx 100 Centurion and 50 Stuttgart Giant
First Earlies (Dunluce ) planted out approx 24 in the ground a few left overs in pots to force them early
Finished Digging the pond, lined with sand and pond liner, filled up using watering cans!
Planted a bunch of seeds – memory not too good so will post again with what we have.
Purchased some pond plants
Finished off pond by paving around it and covering exposed liner with pebbles collected off of freecycle
Sowed two short rows of early carrots
Prepared and then planted asparagus bed with 10 plants
Sowed a bed of broad beans
Planted some pansies and a load of summer bulbs
A few other bits I can’t remember!

Other stuff that has happened; the new greenhouse is rubbish and blows panels out every time there is a bit of wind. This is making it unusable, fortunately the council are trying to sort this out with B&Q. We were given a hop plant by Jon and Linda to thank us for lending of rotovator and giving them wind break netting for their fence line ~ now just need to decide where we are going to plant it. Can’t wait to get some hops off of it – beer time! Between leaving the plot last Saturday and coming back Sunday lunchtime we gained frog spawn! Thanks to some frisky frogs we now have two good size balls of frog spawn floating in the pond, really pleased with that as the pond had only been finished a week and goes to show that we got the right plants in to make it a good wildlife habitat.

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).

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

…

….

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!