Whoops!

Sorry for the long silence! Not sure where the last few weeks have gone to be honest, I haven't really done that much with the plot either, need to get my skates on (or wellies depending on the weather) and knuckle down, my back is still playing up though which is annoying and makes me very slow. I am seeing a physiotherapist on Tuesday about my hand problems so I will mention my back and see what she says.

I have had more potatoes from the plot, I need to correct myself and say that the first lot I dug up weren't the Maris Baird, they were Arran Pilot, the Maris Barid's seem to be being eaten by something which is annoying but they're still not bad spuds, I roasted some yesterday and we all enjoyed them! We've also eaten the first few courgettes which were fabulous and I tried some of the Rhubarb Chard finally as well and enjoyed it, I just wilted it in some oil with some garlic and it turned out really well!

Last Sunday my Mother and I went to the RHS Tatton Park Flower Show and had a really good time. We saw on the board as we walked in that there was a talk on growing vegetables so we made sure we went and were both really really pleased that we had! The talk was given by a lady from W Robinson and Son, I can't remember her name but I believe that she's 3rd or 4th generation in this vegetable growing family. She was incredibly interesting and we rushed over to their stall after the talk to have a look at the seeds and vegetables, they are the company responsible for a lot of mammoth vegetables! I bought a small pack of cauliflower seedlings, some red curly Kale and a packet of salad mix seeds. My Mother and I will be placing an order and splitting the packets next season though, they have some wonderful things that we both want to try growing! They're actually not that far from here so I may wander over when I'm preparing for the next lot of planting and save myself a bit of cash on their mail order prices (they offer a 25% discount if you got to see them!).

I also visited the stall for the National Society of Allotment and Leisure Gardeners and got 2 issues of the Journal and a few leaflets. I have to say I was a bit disappointed in the men on the stall though. I made a comment to one of them about a picture they had comparing it to my plot and instead of starting a conversation about allotments and 'oh, you've got a plot, where are you located?' or anything he simply made a short comment about the photo and turned away... Not sure they'll be getting my money from that display, but I will read the Journals before I make up my mind for sure!

Other purchases included more salad mix seeds (I *will* find some lettuce besides Iceburg that I like and can grow myself), a Grapefruit Mint, a Ginger Mint and some gardening magazines. We also walked away with a few packets of free seeds for bits and bobs and I bought some turnip seeds from the Thompson and Morgan stall (they were as uninterested as when we saw them at the Southport Flower Show last year..). I found a potting tray holder that I want to buy as well, it was reduced in price at the show but I didn't have enough money and didn't feel like carrying it either so I didn't get it there, hopefully they will have low prices when I look at their website, it will save me so much room in the shed!

All in all a great day out and well worth the £18 admission, I love it when at 4pm on the dot they start pulling the plants out of all the displays and selling them, you see people wandering about carrying all sorts!

So, I went down the plot the other day and had a short potter about and the man was starting to rotovate my plot for me! I didn't know whether he'd finish or not as the weather wasn't great and he was having throttle problems but this is what we saw when we got to the plot today:



Lots and lots of bare soil and roots! Hubby got to work on the first bed raking out the roots and I began the edging, when we left this is what we had done:




Hubby is off work tomorrow and Tuesday so we will be down there again, I have lots of seeds ready and stuff to go in and as we rake out each bed we will be planting. Some seeds are too late according to the packet but I want to get stuff in and see how it does, we've still got enough time before Autumn I think to get some growth.

So, I shall keep you up to date as we get on with this, the intention is that if we don't have anything to plant we will cover the bed with black plastic until we do and hope that keeps them clear.

I'm also starting to think about next year's planting, I think I'm going to start placing an order a month with the Organic Seed Catalogue so that I don't have to fork out all the cash at the same time. Still waiting for my bloody Square Foot Gardening book to arrive from Amazon though and as I want to try their methods I need to book to know how much to try and buy!

Anyway, I will shut up now and try and post more regularly so I don't have so much to say!

25 Quid

That's what it's going to cost me to have half my allotment rotovated. I think it's a bargain, especially considering these facts:

- hire of a rotovator is over £100 for a weekend
- I would then have to do the rotovating myself, very hard work
- the plot needs weed whacking first
- I don't have a weed whacker which would mean more rental charges or me pulling stuff up or cutting it down manually
- weed whacking is included in the £25 quote

So, I'm one happy gardener, within the next fortnight I will double the number of beds on my plot and be able to plant up some more stuff which is exciting. I will also have to rake out each bed to get rid of whatever roots I can but that's much better than having to dig it by hand and pull all the roots out by hand. Considering how much regrowth I had of weeds after digging by hand I can't see how rotovating can make that number much worse, and without digging new beds to be done I can work on a rotsystemtm weeding each bed and keeping it under control. I need to invest in some black plastic for any beds I'm not going to use but I should be able to fill a few of them quickly.

We finally had some rain today which was a blessing, not nearly enough but it's a start! I must have been one of the very few people in the country saying 'yay, rain!' this morning! :o) I lost all my cauliflower seedlings to the heat along with a few pumpkin plants. I planted out 5 butternut squash in the place of the cauli and hopefully now that they've had some rain they won't die of heat exposure. Besides those casualties everything seems to be growing well, I dug more potatoes (Maris Baird are lovely, I will be growing them again!) and have some courgettes in mini form coming along nicely!

This week is going to be a busy one and my parents are coming to stay this weekend so I will probably only make it up the plot for a few hours on Saturday with my Mother and I don't expect to be able to visit in the week unless things suddenly fall into place with our decorating of the room my parents are to sleep in and we finish it off early rather than the expected hour before they arrive ala' Changing Rooms!

Here's hoping for more rain!

Better

For those of you filled with fear that you can never make your plot look organised and clear(ish) of weeds take heart! Check the photos in the last post and then have a gander at these, this is what a few visits of hard work can achieve:

View from the back:



Next bed after the potatoes



This bed has courgettes (5 plants, mine didn't come up except for 2 of them), Rhubarb Chard at the front of the bed and at the back we now have Pumpkins attempting to grow up some netting. So far I've lost 2 out of the 9 I planted out to slugs or snails, I filled the gap left by one of those with a Spaghetti Squash plant and I'll keep doing that with the Spaghetti or Butternut plants if I loose more and until I get beds dug for those plants.

Next:



Peas to the front of the picture, I planted the other side on Friday afternoon so hopefully those will come up soon. To the back there are 4 tee pees of runner beans, the 3rd and 4th tee pees were put up and planted on Friday with Suttons Scarlet Emperor so we'll see how those do!

And on:



Who knew there were that many parsnips hiding amongst the weeds?? I spaced them out which is why some are sagging in that 'you moved me, I'm going to die now' sort of way, we'll see if they recover or not. The far end of the bed there are a whole 11 leeks! I think I need to plant more leeks and more parsnips next year, those won't get us far! Down the side of the bed is the rhubarb which is finally starting to grow, I picked a few bits on Friday but have yet to do anything with it. The middle of the bed has a few short rows of Rhubarb Chard in it now and I think I will stick in a few rows of carrots as well when I get a chance.

Finally:



The half and half bed! The back is all nice and clear and now houses 12 cauliflower plants (again I will need to grow more next year, although I lost a lot in the shed whilst waiting for somewhere to plant them), the front is full of weeds and has lettuce in it, I picked 2 today so I shall give them a try tomorrow. The middle of the bed is sort of half full of weeds and half full of cabbage seedlings. I planted these a while back but as the seed packets are on the computer table I don't think I've documented them! I put in Unwins January King 3 and Unwins Kitchen Garden Resolution F1 Hybrid which is a Savoy and purply in colour. I have to say that the Hybrid seeds were disappointing in that they cost £2.99 and there were very very few in the packet. Unless they all grow really really well I don't think I'll be buying them again. The seedlings are doing well, once I've weeded the bed out and eaten the lettuce I will space them out.

Here's a nice view from the other end of the plot:



I have to admit that clearing, putting the sting back out and sticking the fork in the ground was as far as I got with that new bed, but I shall do some digging this week amongst the weeding! The new bed will be for the Spaghetti Squash which are flowering in the shed...

Talking of the shed I didn't get a picture but the peppers are growing really really fast. The aubergine seedlings have come up and the last remaining mini plant from Jane Lane is doing well. I have 2 trays of purple sprouting broccoli (no bed!), the butternut squash plants (no bed!) and a few trays or regular broccoli (guess what? no bed!).

So, I'm happy with it now, I still have a long way to go but things are growing, I can see soil instead of weeds and I'm hoping that it won't ever get as bad as it has been recently, but I'm sure it probably will. Seeing how few of each type of vegetable I'm going to actually have I've realised how much space I will need if I grow veg 'conventionally' so I've ordered the Square Foot Gardening book and will give that a go once I've got all this lot in. I have some bean seeds I can experiment with!

I started working on the carrot bed today as well, I found 5 tiny Purple Dragon carrots and not very many of any others. Not sure if it's the position, the seeds or the weather so I will hoe it all out and try to plant a few more rows and see what happens, even if I only get small ones it's better than nothing!

What has made me happiest this weekend with the plot though is this:



My husband was probably more excited than me, he kept shouting 'there's one' whenever I unearthed a spud! I have had a few plants with various things wrong with them (which is why I dug so many up, those will last ages!) and a couple of rotten spuds but nothing to worry about I don't think. I am amazed at how big the spuds are though, I expected lot of new potatoes and instead we're getting really good sized ones. Not a huge amount per plant, all that lot probably came from 6 plants, but I have about 15 plants left of the Maris Baird and then a whole bed of the second lot! Once I've dug all these I'm going to shove in the freebie potatoes I got from a fellow plotter, may as well see if it works, I will make sure I plant them elsewhere next year though!

Long Time No Post

Clare over at Pumpkin Soup posted a bit back about how to fit in working on the plot and to feel like you're doing it justice. I've been feeling a lot like this recently, especially when the unworked site of my plot greets me each time I visit looking like this:



Then you have this kind of thing going on in the shed:



And no sign of a bed to put them in....

After a fortnight or so of struggling with what to do and feeling guilty I have come to the conclusion that, despite swearing I never would, I fell into the beginners trap of thinking that I could do it all the first year. What I am going to endeavor to do now is to plant what I have in as few beds as possible and then work slowly on getting the rest of the site under control and find stuff that I can plant later in the season in them.

I am also trying to look at what I have done, which includes growing my first potatoes:



Some pepper plants:



Almost managed to get 1 side of the plot under control (it's better than this now, these photos are from the 25th June):



Recently I have been doing a lot of weeding, you can see why from this picture of a half weeded onion bed:



And finally, a picture of my bean and pea bed with the courgette bed in the foreground, and the reason why I decided (and have now) that bark paths were the way to go!



I had a flash last night, after spending yesterday morning weeding the courgette bed, that there is an awful lot of space in that bed not being used due to the fact that I only had 3 plants come up and 3 given to my by a friendly fellow plot holder, so I am going to risk moving 1 or 2 of the plants so that I can use the them empty end of the bed for the cauliflower seedlings I have ready.

Hubby almost finished digging the cabbage bed, I will hopefully finish that off in a short while and then I can get going on the next bed where the spaghetti squash will live. I am also thinking that if I can find carrots in the carrot bed the first 6 rows or so can come out and I will stick in some of the pumpkin plants with some sort of structure for them to grow up, no point wasting the space.

I also ordered myself a copy of Square Foot Gardening as I have decided that I'd like to give it a go next year. My aim is to have a year round plot providing most of our veg and not having the time or space for a huge garden square foot sounds a good way to go.

Anyway, must go and pull on the old clothes and get down the plot again. Now that I've decided that I was being unreasonable and there's nothing wrong with only going twice a week as long as I work hard while I'm there I feel so much better about it all. Plus getting rid of the weeds so I can actually see what I've done makes a huge difference. Obviously everyone is fighting the weeds and has lots of jobs to do as the car park was totally full yesterday!