Today is a lovely sunny day – at least the afternoon is and I have got another ‘first’. Early in the spring I planted two large flowerpots with some unwanted potatoes – they sprouted and looked sorry for themselves. Forward to today and I’ve got our dinner for tomorrow.
There is more than enough for our evening meal and what will be left I will make a salad, adding some tasty bits. Not a bad result out of the unloved spuds – a tasty evening meal for the two of us.
Amazingly we have a sunny Bank Holiday and I’m making the most of it. I am doing my best to finish all my weeding and any other heavy work because I’m due to have an operation on my back to remove a cancerous growth so after that I will have to take it easy. I weeded one more net tunnel where I have my currant bushes and then worked in the newest greenhouse. I’m so pleased to have it, it would have been a shame not to rescue it – thank you Wayne.
I have two benches in there, they both hold 12 large pots with tomato plants and in the soil on the floor I have a mix of lettuce, radishes and more tomato plants.
As I was transplanting the lettuce seedlings I found many more little tomato plants, it must’ve been the seeds in the compost from my composter bins. I’ll keep as many as I can. Of course I have no idea what type of tomato they’ll be but all the better for it, it’ll be a pleasant surprise.
I had a look at my apple trees and I think the harvest will be good. Of course we shall have ‘June drop’ but I think I might have to thin them out as well, just to be sure to get some nice sized apples.
The last job was to check the strawberries and they are doing well too.
I think all this is thanks to Wayne’s bees. He has got four hives on our site and they have been very busy. The bees are amazing – only a few days ago they swarmed but didn’t go too far, they settled in Wayne’s apple tree in their garden and built this fantastic structure
Incredible, I’ve never seen anything like it.
It is all coming together. I knew from last year that Wayne got a large greenhouse and he was going to put it on one of my plots. He and his men erected the skeleton of it – it is a large one indeed, actually they are two joined in the middle so it makes a nice long greenhouse across almost the whole width of the plot. Then came the glazing of it, this is where our slight problems started. Because it was such an old greenhouse the glass was quite brittle and some of the panes broke. I didn’t want to leave it all half glazed so I tried to finish one completely and the other one as and when I get more glass. It was my friend Stevie’s idea and she even finished putting the last three panes in yesterday after I went home. I was going to do it today and all was done. I could concentrate on organising the inside. I had the two grow boxes on the bench there but it looked too heavy, the bench was leaning. I emptied them and instead of them I have five of the large black pots and will grow tomatoes there.
I had to put an edge on the bottom by the glass to protect it, piled some more soil there and this little bed will house more tomatoes and perhaps a cucumber at each end, they can climb up.
The outside is fine, I have a line of the black pots along the side with some canes ready for climbing beans.
The front part of the large greenhouse will be finished tomorrow, if the weather lets me. I have got a number of large green nets from the collapsed net tunnel so I’m planning to cover it completely and secure the net to the ground with pegs. When I next get some more panes of glass I will fill the empty spaces until we are all done. But even just with the net cover the plants will get some protection. The roof here is almost done, most of one side is glazed so it doesn’t leave too much.
It was still too wet to do any work on the allotment – anyway, for what I wanted to do, which was more weeding. This time it was inside the fruit cage. The dandelions are there again, even though I got them all out, or that’s what I thought I did. It didn’t matter very much, I had enough to keep me busy in the greenhouse at home. Quite a few seedlings suddenly shot up and I thought it was time to transplant them. I have got enough compost and pots, all I needed was patience.
Fortunately I have enough pots of varying sizes so after some time the job was done.
This will be the pattern from now on, after some time into bigger pots and then finally to their proper growing space.
At last – the biggest job on the allotment is finished. I was hoping yesterday that I would be able to do it and now I’m delighted to say – finished!
Even though it was a lovely sunny day yesterday I was just too tired I couldn’t carry on. It needed a fresh start in the morning. I made a guess about the number of flower pots that I’ll be able to use there, I was wrong. I thought 12 would do but in the end I needed 16. Just as well I have lots left. The hardest part of it was dragging the sacks of soil there and filling the pots.
It is all ready now for planting either more climbing beans or outdoor tomatoes. Both should do well in this position, they would be sheltered.
I can safely say that the allotment is ready for the spring, apart from a few panes of glass in the latest greenhouse all is done.
I have even placed a number of large flower pots alongside the finished side of the greenhouse, anchored them down with long canes and filled with good compost, that will be either for outdoor tomatoes or for climbing beans, depending on how many plants I’ll have.
It was a perfect fit, six pots on each side of the water barrel, that’ll make it so much easier to water them. There will be one more barrel on the corner of the greenhouse, hopefully for watering inside it.
I’ve got the base ready for it in place.
One more day of maintenance work. After cutting down the blackberries yesterday I suddenly realised I have another line of them on another plot. These have been cared for better, I remember pruning them last autumn but rather slightly. All was remedied today.
As I was taking away the branches I noticed the gorse bush beside my very old greenhouse. I have trimmed it already but it needed a bit more work done. As I did that, it suddenly occurred to me that I can put some of the ‘cannabis’ flowerpots in the gap between the path and the greenhouse. They are a perfect fit and I have already filled them with some of the new soil I got from the composter bins. A perfect home for the sunflowers this year.
Today was the first day where the temperature was above zero. I had the opportunity to clean the fountain in the pond and finish organising the greenhouse. Earlier today I went to B&Q and bought a couple of large trays and that finished my new set up. All is ready to start seed sowing, can’t wait. I think I’ve got enough to fill my allotment many times over but I’ll be trying some new varieties.
I always wash all my pots as I finish with them so it was very easy to get it all ready. During the clean up operation I also sorted out my little plastic greenhouse behind my large one, this one is just used to store pots and bags of compost, it is rather dark to grow anything there.
I hope the mild weather will stay, it’ll make the wait for planting times a bit more bearable.
My New year started well. The weather is reasonably kind to me and I have been going to the allotment as often as I can. I knew I had a few jobs that needed doing – finishing the weeding in the fruit cage and tackling the raspberry patch. This is another job that keeps coming up, never mind how often I do it during the year. To start with I had to cut down all the old canes that bore fruit. This is quite easy, it is clear which ones these are. That done it showed even more all the weeds. I was hoping to do the weeding during one session but that was too hopeful. I finished the job today and I’ll wait and see how quickly the weeds will start growing. I’m not cutting corners, all weeds are pulled up. roots and all.
I also planted the first part of my elephant garlic in the ground, it was growing in a grow box in my garden. I needed to empty the box because I have a plan how to use it better.
There will be more to come.
My friend who is a tree surgeon and does garden clearances asked me if I wanted a greenhouse. Of course I said yes. He said that he and his men will put it up on my plot. I’ve never seen a greenhouse assembled this fast. He told me that they very carefully dismantled it, saved all the clips, springs and glass so they just reversed the process. They will need to replace a few panes of glass, it gets rather brittle with age. It is not just an ordinary greenhouse, there are two bolted together.
I even have two benches inside. This is where the grow boxes come in, I will have them in the back greenhouse and in the front one I’ll put large flowerpots. I still have a number of them from the cannabis farm some years ago. Also the position of the greenhouse is such that I’ll be able to stand a line of the large pots outside, it is a perfect sun trap and tomatoes will thrive there.
Waste not want not.
The storm Eunice certainly stopped all work on the allotment. Even without the heavy rain I wouldn’t have been able to get there, it was blowing a gale. I wanted to go and just check the state of the greenhouses but I’m afraid the weather didn’t let me. Today in the morning was the first time I walked there, I needed some of the rescued soil from the canabis farm. I was very pleasantly surprised that all my four greenhouses were completely unharmed, in fact nobody on the site suffered any damage. Just as well we had the broken post in the fence repaired, it could have collapsed altogether. I collected a sack of the compost and on my wheelbarrow got it home. No need to buy compost from a garden centre when I have this. I have four more of the sacks there so I will bring them home as I’ll need them.
The canabis factory clearance also gave me a lot of large pots and saucers, I’m using these for growing very early potatoes. I planted some Sharpes Express potatoes in some of the pots and in the rest I put sprouted supermarket potatoes that my friend gave me. I’ve done that in the past and it worked. Waste not want not……
The next job was another indoor one – some baking. I have been baking my own bread for years now and again today was a perfect day for it. In the end I have two loaves of nice seeded bread and two brioches.
DOWN TO EARTH 