1st Day of Spring!

The first day of spring is upon us and the first batch of broad beans are in the ground. Hopefully I'll have the parsnips in this weekend as well. It's been a beautiful week with sun sun sun but I'm sure it will turn at some point to cold and rain again. I've collected several toilet rolls to plant the parsnips in and I will be putting these into a raised bed to prevent 'forking'. The ground at the lotty turns to clay not far down so it isn't ideal for root veg but not impossible. I'd like to make a fine grainy compost for them to grow in, raised up a bit to give them a couple of extra inches to grow in. It's an experiment so we'll see what happens.
I'm planting the broad beans in batches so that we have a steady crop. I've got about 10 rows in now and I'll put in another 15 the weekend after this one. They're under fleece so they should be okay. I've hammered the fleece onto the raised bed as sticks and stones don't really work from past experience. The wind just throws them around. I'll have a look this evening to make sure it's all still okay and that the fox hasn't had a go at anything.
I'm also going to try and nip out the growing tips of the broad beans to deter blackfly. We're still bound to get blackfly (we always do!) but I'm going to try and be vigilant this time. It's about time we had a decent crop!!

Time to spring...

For the past 2 weekends I have been preparing the lotty for spring. I've dug up the parsnip patch and found a nice heap of mare's tail buried nicely below. Grr!
I have moved the cold frame to it's new home (it's a bit delicate but should be ok). Plus I have pulled up the last of the brussel sprouts and dug over this patch for some new broad beans.
This weekend we should get the herb bed finally sorted plus some planting. New raised beds are coming along nicely and I've made a valued trip to LIDL for some gardening stuff. More slug/snail traps and compost. I'm looking forward to this weekend and potentially some seeds in the ground! :)

Allotment Plan Layout 2009

Plan for 2009

We had an allotment meeting last night to discuss the rotation / layout for 2009. We all had our own ideas on what we wanted to grow but I think Dave has the best plan by following this simple method.

Answer the following questions on each fruit / veg:
1) Is it tastier than the supermarket equivalent?
2) Is it expensive to buy?
3) Is it easy to grow?

If you answer No to 2 or more questions then it's not going in the ground.
So therefore we are culling the following:
Potatoes: Blight
Aubergines: Pain the arse - never have a decent summer.
Garden peas: Eaten by slugs / not a good cropper.
Spinach: Doesn't get eaten.
Brussell Sprouts: One good stem out of 5. Nuff said.

We need an anti-mammal technique for sweetcorn as we had literally NONE last year due to rats and squirrels. We are ,however, giving broadbeans another shot. (I'm dubious as I know it will be infected by blackfly in seconds but hey-ho - it's a May cropper so what the heck?)

We're also going to try Jerusalem Artichokes! No idea how these will turn out and we've got to get seeds/tubers (i have no idea as of writing this!!) and put them into action for Feb/March.

We are definitely doing:
Manage Tout
Tomatoes
Squashes
Leeks
Climbing French beans and dwarf variety
Runners (cos it's an alllotment staple!)
...plus moving the herb bed as it's overgrown.

We have also played with the idea of doing chillies in the cold frame. Risky but worth a try.

So, that's the plan. Better get a final version laid out. :)

Happy New Year!

Here's to a blight-free 2009 with more sunshine than ever before! With the economic crisis being as awful as it is - I think we deserve more sun this year.

I will be taking more boxes up the lotty this evening to be used as raised beds. It is absolutely deathly cold out there at the moment so trips to the lotty are restricted to 30 min MAX! After that my hands go numb. :(

I tried to rinse out a slug trap in the water trough but the ice in them was over 2 inches thick on Saturday! Apparently Roath Lake has frozen over as well!

Updates

Apologies for the lack of updates. The allotment is still going but Karl has moved to Canton so we may not see him as much as we would like to. Me & Dave are still plodding on but with the wet / freezing weather we are leaving the allotment over winter to rot down until we can start again next year. :)

Back in 2009!

September Time

Unfortunately we ended up being the victims of blight this year - the soggy end to summer pretty much destroyed all of the tomatoes and potatoes. Very sad and frustrating. We weren't alone tho - many of the other allotmenteers have suffered as well with most vegetables seeing a squishy end. We've lost the herb bed to couch grass which will have to be cut back vigorously and the sweetcorn has been eaten by rats. We even found a dead rodent on our brussel sprout patch! Is there no end to our battle with nature?

Strawberry patch sending out runners

Purple Sprouting Broccoli

Looking towards the back of the plot

All of our sweetcorn got nibbled!!

New tubs for compost and bins

The start of a new raised bed!!

Strawberries in pots

HUGE bean tower!

2 Compost Bins

The problem with rats and their love of our sweetcorn!! Grrr!!

Brussel Sprouts!

Blight ridden potatoes! :(

Tomatoes and potatoes ruined by blight

I do have some revenge tho! Slug Kebabs!!

August Growth

I forgot to add these photos from last year so this is a delayed post (which I've dated August for blog record purposes). Nothing very exciting going on here but it's lovely and green!

Green Tomatoes

Squashes

Aubergines in the cold frame

Dave in the cold frame!!

Karl's bean structure starts to wobble, slide and fall apart (slightly).

Dr Who on the allotment?

Back in November there was a notice on the allotment board about filming on the plots over a couple of days. I didn't really think about it but assumed it was Dr Who or Torchwood as they are very much Welsh based. Well, I looked at the newsletter for our allotment online today and found out that they did indeed film for Dr Who and I found the name of the episode as well.
I even found the clip!

For any allotment and Dr Who fan, here's the links:

YouTube Clip (3:30 Mins in): Click Here
Dr Who Locations: Click Here

The episode was broadcast on the 5th April 2008.

What's that smell?

I forgot to mention that we have recently made some Comfrey fertiliser by hacking up half the Comfrey and bunging it in a bucket of water for a few weeks.
It STINKS! (Really Badly!)

It honks to high heaven and that can only mean that the plants will love it. Lets face it - they love poo!
It has started to rot down now so it doesn't smell quite so offensively but it's certainly up there will fresh baby poo for a real hum in the air. Eugh!!

Eggs?

Remember that blue-ish egg we accidentally smashed up whilst digging. The one that was buried in the soil? Well... we found another one! But this time it's a whole egg and it's huge!
We think it's a swan's egg now as I can't see a duck passing anything quite so big and geese eggs look different. I've seen some pictures of swan eggs online so I reckon it's one of those. The lake near by has lots of swans, ducks and geese so I think Mr Foxy has been pinching them and burying them in our plot. Explains why so much has been dug up over night - including our strawberries! Grr!

Ginormous egg!

Pretty tho - but what can we do with it?

Heat Wave! (In May?)

We had a mini heatwave this week which meant that we were suffering a bit trying to dig, build and plant stuff! Me and Dave managed to erect some sort of shelter but it didn't last long with the mild breeze! A gazebo would be better suited!
I did, however, get most of my plants into the ground and do a bit of digging. (Although the guys did most of this!) Fabulous weather but you can't help but think that's our summer over and done with in May??! I hope not!!

Desperate times - desperate measures. Our rubbish heat shelter!

Dave in his hijab!

Dave on the beers....alcoholic!!

Mange Tout

Karl on bean pole duty

Sugar Snaps

Strawberry flower!

More!

Handy boxes for spuds and strawberries!

Une asparagus...we thought they were dead!!

As usual, I've planted too many tomato plants so I've brought 3 into work. I can nibble on cherry tomatoes throughout the day...if they flower?

Quick trip up and another rainbow!

Me and Dave had a brief trip to the plot to have a nosey around and check that nothing had been eaten or dug up by slugs or foxes. For some bizarre reason some foxes have take to digging up our strawberries in raised beds??!! Silly animals.
We had another gorgeous rainbow which made up for the crappy rain shower that took us by surprise.

Nicola New Potatoes popping up

Klevedon Wonder peas climbing up

Sitting area

Slug Slamming...

Ahh, another weekend trip at the lotty. This is such a regular thing now! We're very good this year!!
Beds have been raked over, tomatoes and courgettes are in the ground, potatoes are in and raised, bed prepared for leeks, my salad is popping up and mange tout has also sprouted in the greenhouse. Whoopie!!
Our slug traps are also doing VERY well! I must have tipped out about 50+ slugs per cider pot that Dave placed in our trenches. We are getting small ones too so it's obviously getting them young!
We have also tried picking them off a pallet on the grass too and we usually get at least 20 each time so we're doing well in keeping the population down. :D
I did pick off the slugs and slam them hard with some thick wood but they just exploded and I got slug guts over my front. Yuck! I'll use some sort of plastic barrier next time as it's a bit disgusting but very effective.
I know - it's revolting but the boys won't touch them without gloves or kill them.

Mange Tout? Carrots and Courgettes in here

Spuds...

Tomatoes under plastic

Rusty bin moved away from greenhouse door. Next stop - the skip!

Leek bed

Tomato cover

Courgette

Courgette

Small slugs that have drunk themselves to peril. Cider really works!!