June 5th, 2009 by Rich

This week has been an important week, we harvested and ate our first two cucumbers of the year! They are a variety called Cucino and are described as lunchbox cucumbers due to them being only two to three inches long. The good thing is that they are not full of seeds and water so you get a real shot of flavour from them.  I would recomend this variety as hopefully it will also mean we don’t end up with a cucumber glut like normal (that will happen with the other variety – marketmore we have growing!)My only gripe about the cucino is that the seeds were normal price (£1.50 -£2) but the packet stated average contents 5 seeds, we got 3 thats a 40% discrepency! Fortunately what we did get all germinated so not as bad as it could be.

May 22nd, 2009 by Rich

There was a time not that long ago when local press did an important job, sadly those days appear to be over. If you can find a story in local press that isn’t a just a press release being re-written you are doing well. I have the misfortune of having Martin Salter as my MP, many of you may have seen him recently seeking as much publicity as possible over the Ghurkha’s right. The Ghurkhas deserve our respect and the rights to a life in this country, they have earned the right through service to our country. However the constant self publicising grinning twat that is Martin Salter, who chairs a cross party group in Ghurkha’s right, decided he had no back bone what so ever and when the matter came to vote in the commons rather than vote on the side of a campaign he “believes in” he chose to not go against his masters (i.e. the one eyed Scottish prat destroying our country) and instead abstain. I have seen more balls on a newborn baby girl.

What really takes the biscuit is that at every available opportunity he is there in the local press saying how great it is that Ghurkhas will finally get the rights they deserve. How dare he! Meanwhile the local press (including the Reading Evening Post and Reading Chronicle) continue to ignore the fact his waste of space abstained!?!? Where are the reports on that? It’s not like they don’t know he was two faced on this issue. In days gone by I believe local press would not let the local MP get away with this pathetic behaviour but these days we get no mention at all. Let’s also not forget that Salter is standing down at the next election, so what did he have to lose by voting against the government?

The sooner we have an election and get rid of Martin Salter and this shambolic government the better. As for local press, if there sales are in decline I suggest they try looking at the “journalistic quality” of their papers. May local press return to greatness or be confined to the pits of hell!

May 20th, 2009 by Rich

Is that you don’t talk about chicken club!

No I haven’t gone mad, well may be a little …..Our allotment neighbour Jon had an idea and has convinced me and a few others that it is a winning idea, to collectively keep some chickens. The basis premise being that seven plots join forces to rent a plot and keep chickens for eggs, sharing the costs and sharing the work. Currently we are five, we’ve worked out ball park figures to start up. We need to find some more willing members but I’m sure that won’t be a problem, the main sticking point at the moment is that we need to convince the council that this is a good idea. Hopefully we can get things worked out within the next month or two so we can get some ex-battery hens in and back to good condition before the poor weather kicks in.

May 19th, 2009 by Rich

If you remember way back I said we had planted four left over first earlies in a big pot, well last weekend we harvested the pot giving us our first new potatoes of the year. After emptying out and rooting about we came away with 2.4kg of spuds, not bad for the left overs that didn’t make it into the ground! I did consider taking a photo but then I figured you all know what a potato looks like

I feel I should also point out that I haven’t posted in a while,  ok more than a while! Sorry about that, been busy with many things on and off the allotment. I will aim to bring you up to speed with our progress over the next few days

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!