September Strawberries and other musings...

Well, at least it's now official! The craziest growing season that we have ever had!

We had literally a couple of strawberries to harvest during the sunny spring, nothing all summer and now....

 

 

I think this picture taken only a couple of days ago really sums up the rollercoaster that all of us growers have been on this year. Many, many downs but thankfully some ups too!! It's been really exciting seeing what has coped but also dissapointing to see what has flopped. The strawberries are still on a resurgence and there are plenty more to pick in the coming days.

 

Other recent picking have offered...

 

...plenty of beans....

 

 

...and GIANT MARROWS!!

 

 

 



 

The last week or so has been pretty good weather wise, but due to the new job the allotment is a little bit more neglected than I would like. We are also going out for the day on Friday so there will be little time to visit the plot then. Thankfully Amy has agreed to come to the allotment to give me a hand tomorrow evening, so it will give us some chance to catch up.

 

 

So hopefully we'll get the weeds under control at some point and we'll be ready to put the beds we used for potatoes and onions to bed this week by raking in some new compost and covering them over until next year. I have been so busy elsewhere that I haven't even sown any Spring Cabbage seeds despite having the packet sat on my bedside table to remind me. I might have to buy some plugs in a few weeks or sow some in the next couple of days and really hope for the best. Never mind. We're still eating a plentiful supply of summer cabbage, but we are definately going to suffer come the hungry gap!

 

I must remember that this is our first year on this plot, so we are still learning all about what grows well on this site and we are always thinking of things we can do better. Despite having the allotment for only 7 months we have already been hit twice by mindless thugs. You might remember that our mini greenhouse was stolen a couple of weeks after we 'moved in' and last week some thieving scum bags broke in to a whole host of sheds on the plot. Thankfully they didn't manage to get in to ours but they did have a very good go and there is noticeable damage to some of the shed panels and to the lock which is obscurely bent and now difficult to close.

 

 

Thankfully there is nothing in there worth stealing......

We opened the door, it wasn't ajar when we discovered the failed break in attempt.

 

 

 

 

 

Oh well! It is depressing, but at least they didn't damage any plants or steal any veg! That's the main thing!

 

Well. I hope to bring you more updates here soon. I would also just like to clarify that WE ARE NOT moving to facebook permanently. It will just be a subsidary of this blog and will make it easier to communicate with a large pool of our followers and we also hope that our 'min updates' will  feaure here too. Please don't worry, we aren't going anywhere and we are here to stay.

 

Thanks again for reading. I am hoping to get some pictures of my new work place on here before too long. We have 6 acres of beautiful gardens including a kitchen garden!

 

Keep smiling, it's almost Christmas!

 

Sorry!

 

Martin :0)



Bricks, bark and bloody brambles!

Welcome to the latest installment of our allotment update. It really is strange writing about things that I did at the end of March, but seeing as we were offline during that time, it's the best I can do I am affraid.

When we took over plot 114, the soft fruit area we had inherited really was the problem area. The raspberries had been completly untended and had spread across the whole area. The strawberry patch had ran amock too and I have disposed of no end of runners and plants. The whole area really put Amy off taking on this allotment but I managed to prod her in the direction of all of the positives and remind her that 'in the summer' it would all look fantastic. The patch was also covered in prickly brambles and blackberry bushes, and seeing as there is a bush behind our garden already, we know we have a good supply and therefore could eliminate them from the allotment completly.

I really can't believe this is what it used to look like, and for novice vegetable gardener Amy, I can see why she was slightly put off..

After completing Amy's paved area, I set about completing the fruit patch. In order to get Amy engaged I needed to make the place as nice as possible for her, and make a real effort to show that progress can be made on what was a barron wasteland.

It took hours, days, maybe just over a week to clear the endless amounts of nasty stuff. Not knowing whether the raspberries were a summer or autumn cropping variety. I took good advice from Monty Don and just simply removed any dead wood and lef the rest of the canes well alone, and just wait and see what happens this year.

It wasn't just what was on top of the soil it was what was underneath it aswell. You might remember we found tons of carpet under the vegetable area, and udner this there was bin bags, black plastic, rotted weed supressing membranes aswell as rotted tools and cigarette packets. What a concoction!

When I eventually got the patch looking like a patch of earth and not a wasteland. It was time to get planting. I said earlier that I binned a whole load of strawberry plants that were covering large proportions of the allotment and this might seem wasteful, but I wanted to start with new virus free stock in order to manage our fruit properly. We may as well start as we wish to go on..

So I ordered 30 plants from fothergills online, and we watered the strawberry bed right at the very end of the allotment very heavily before covering it with multi purpose compost and then a membrane to prevent weed growth. I then made a slit in the membrane for each plant and then added a top layer of bark which will keep the slugs off the strawberry fruit crop come early summer..

We had plenty of bark left so we made a bark path inbetween the raspeberry frames which makes access a lot better for us. I say two raspberry frames, but it is now actually just one raspberry frame and a frame for a grapevine too! To edge the path and strawberry bed we have just used bricks that we have found on our plot since taking it over, and it certainly looks very posh..

Here is the whole area..

We also have some fruit bushes too. There is one big blackcurrant bush, I've never grown blackcurrants before so that is quite exciting, the only problem being that big bud is present on the bush.

 Just a tip.. NEVER google 'big bud', you won't find anything to do with blackcurrant bushes at all.

Here's a picture of one of the diagnosed buds...

I've also added three gooseberry bushes opposite the blackcurrant bushes at the other end of the strawberry bed. They are young stock, so I'm not expecting much of a harvest this year.

All of the raspberry canes and established fruit bushes have been mulched with well rotted manure and it definately seems to have given them a boost.

I hope you like the area, the photos might not do it justice because of the rain. But we are definately the envy of the allotment site, there are already whispers from old hands about the allotment of the year destination, but I won't hold my breath! It definately looked superb in that scorching week in late July, I mean MARCH!

Come back soon for the next two installements which should be up by the end of the week!

I STILL can't believe it is May already!

Martin

Summer is here!

Well, today has been absolutely delightful. The sun has been beaming down on us all afternoon and the temperature has reached 29 celcius.

I was unsure whether the good weather we had been promised all week would actually reach us when the sky was filled with grey all throughout Saturday. There was quite a blowing wind too, which added to our doubts.

We had been searching for somewhere to go strawberry picking in the local vicinity. Like I said in a previous post, the biggest ones in the area had shut down, so we were less than optimistic of finding somewhere really local. However, it was nice to see a sign for a ‘PYO’ in Dunnington, a very small village about 3 miles from us. We went yesterday and picked a bucket load of delicious, juicy strawberries. We enjoyed some yesterday with some scones and cream, and we are going to have some tonight after a barbeque at Amy’s house. The rest will be frozen for use at a later date.

You can see in this picture why I was quite doubtful about the gorgeous weather reaching us..

The wind was ripping through the open field!

Here is Amy with her ‘champion’ strawberry...

It was massive, and the perfect shape too!

Here is the final pickings...

Cost us £9 in total. But compared to buying the supermarket you can’t beat the flavour, freshness and the support to the local producers. When you work it out that Marks and Spencer’s strawberries cost £4.40 a kilogram, these were a bargain because we got almost 4 kilos.

The afternoon was very pleasant despite the grey skies. Picking your own is great fun, and gives you a real sense of getting back to nature.

I’m off now to enjoy the rest of this baking heat , and fill my face with some lovely barbeque food.

Enjoy the rest of your day, please think of me when I start work at 5am.

Martin



It's all down hill from here..

Well, today marks the beginning of summer.

Every day now until the 23rd December we will gradually get less and less sunlight. I've really been enjoying the long late nights in the garden, I recon we've still got a month or so of late nights though. It's not going to get really dark, really quickly now is it!

I don't think vegetables get the credit they deserve, they are much cleverer than you think. The 21st June is a significant day for the likes of leeks, beetroot and many other root carrots. Apparently, these delicious vegetables clock on to the fact that the amount of daylight is gradually reducing and therefore they begin to in take more and more water and nutrients in order to prepare themselves for winter. (Obviously, they won't see the winter in the garden, but they don't know that) With the increased intake of goodness the vegetables begin to swell up and then when they are at their prime we take them in to the kitchen to eat.

Following yesterday's post about the lack of strawberries, we've been searching for locations to go and pick our own from local strawberry fields. I remember that when I was a kid we used to pick our own all the time. But these days it is difficult to find any where to do it. It seems that the health and safety brigade have forced many small businesses to shut up shop. The strawberries still grow, but you can't pick your own. It's very sad really. I am going to do a bit of search tonight and see what I can find, but in the meantime I've found something that is equally delicious and free in the hedgerows, I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw them. I'll tell you a bit more about them tomorrow.

I couldn't post a blog post without a picture.

So I thought this picture sums up my day...

...tiring!

I took this picture at the Royal Show in 2007. Why did they have to cancel it, it was such good fun.

Have a great day one and all. I still have the candle post and hedgerow post to go up in the next few days so be sure to check back.

Thanks for visiting,

Martin

Just in time!

It's that time of year again.The time of year I absolutely love which I inherited from my Grandma Margaret. It's Wimbledon! For two whole weeks we ask for bright, sunny days, bucket loads of strawberries and gallons of champagne.

People all across the country will be getting in to the spirit of things with the consumption of Tesco, Waitrose, and Morrisson's strawberries and the cheapest single cream they could find. Well, I almost was one of them people.

I've read blogs, where people have been picking punnets upon punnets  full of the juciest and most delicious strawberries around. I have been so green with envy for weeks, but with just over an hour to go before the first racket hits the ball, we have been saved by not just one strawberry...

but our first raspberry too.

They look delicious don't they. Ok, that isn't the most uniform strawberry that you've ever seen. But nonetheless it is red.

I'm not sure how we are going to go about this. Half a strawberry and raspberry each? Maybe Amy will have the raspberry and I'll have the strawberry?

I'll let you know how it turns out. (and who wins!)

Have a wimbledon-tastic day.

I wish you full punnets of strawberries.

Martin

What's going on in the vegetable patch?

Well, so much is happening at the moment.

We rather embarassingly had our first potato harvest of.. one potato, but never to give up we have hope with the others. The plant seemed to be dying so we pulled them up a few weeks before they would normally be ready, and all that was in the bag was one solitary potato. Oh well. Hopefully the others will provide more...

The 'barrow of berries' as I like to call our strawberry patch is full of fruits, none are ripe yet, but it won't be long now. They are in the front garden and this area has a lot less sun than the back garden. Most of the blogs I follow are already proudly displaying their finest, juciest, red strawbs.

In the veg patch, most of the tomato plants are establishing flowers. Harvesting tomatoes is one of the best bits of growing your own and so easy to do too!

 The next picture shows that we have 5 MORE tomato plants that I need to find some room for. They've come on leaps and bounds since they've moved in to the greenhouse. The sunflowers in the foreground likewise. These are going in to Grandad's garden as soon as they are big enough! There also some pak choi sowings, some lettuce seedlings, beetroot and pumpkins.

The growbag at the bottom of the greenhouse is now planted up with 3 courgette plants. I'm hoping they'll grow rather wildly in the bottom of the greenhouse and we'll be harvesting courgettes well in to the autumn.

 A quick snap of the jungle as a whole...

Remember, that arched structure we made for our runner beans? Well we've put the runner beans in and some of them are starting to make the long, winding journey to the top. I'm sure some of you will be familiar with the '3 sisters in a bed' form of gardening where you grow courgettes, runner beans and sweetcorn in the same area and thus maximizing the useage of your ground. Well we've adopted a similar idea and put a marrow plant at the bottom. I Will be happy if we can grow a few marrows to stuff with minced meat later in the year.

It's great seeing everybody elses blogs and seeing similar things going on. I am very proud to say that we are in the middle of a massive courgette glut. We've had about 8 or 9 lovely courgettes from only 2 plants. I see that some people's plants haven't even started producing yet, and they are green with envy at my harvest.

The raddishes should be ready very soon and most of the potato bags are full up. So much going on, just off out to give them a sprinkle of water due to the huge amounts of sun we've had already this week.

Have a great evening!

Martin

Starting them young..

I found it very amusing the other day when Amy's younger brother, Jordan told us that he wanted to grow his own cucumbers because he didn't want to get E-Coli. He said that he would never eat a Spanish cucumber again in his life.

So off we went to the garden centre and we brought him a grow bag. He decided that he wanted to grow a different thing in each of the holes. So we bought him a female cucumber plant, a tomato plant and a strawberry plant. You wouldn't normally grow strawberries in a grow bag but he insisted, and we can take them out at the end of the season an re-pot them then! It's hard to find a strawberry plant that doesn't have fruits on at the moment so we bought one with flowers emerging so he could observe the whole process.

Under our supervision, he undertook the whole activity. Cutting the grow bag, planting and watering. Amy was obviously very proud...

Here is the final product and one very pleased 11 year old!

You might be able to see the 1p coins around the base of all three plants. Well, I know that slugs love cucumber plants in particular, but they don't like copper. I thought it might work, and 4 days later the plants are still untouched. Fingers crossed if continues to work..
It is really enjoyable for me to pass on my knowledge of growing just like my grandparents did for me when I was younger. I remember my Grandad Ian would grow delicious tomatoes in his greenhouse, and he had the most gigantic compost heap. My Grandad Fred was an inspiration on the allotment and helped me greatly in getting in to all of this. Hopefully Jordan will take some inspiaration from his brief encounter with 'growing his own'

Have a superb day.

Martin

P.S I've been quite busy during the last couple of days so will be reading all the blogs that I follow tomorrow, and no doubt I will be leaving comments too!

P.P.S Thanks again for visiting, and finally a welcome to the blog to my Grandma and Grandad who are now reading!

(Hi!)

Fruit

Probably the most boring title to date.. but when you start growing things, I always find that it is you grow veg, veg and more veg and then you get to a point when you go... 'Doh, we forgot the fruit'

This is pretty evident in our case, we sown all the veg seeds weeks ago, bought a huge amount of veg plants and over the last week or so we probably realised we hadn't really considered fruit. I have said previously that the garden is home to an established damson tree which has been here for years. We recently added the apple tree to 'the orchard' and we have covered ourselves on those two fronts. Talking of the apple tree, it went in to a nice big pot on Friday to give the roots some more room to grow!

The easiest fruit in the world to grow are strawberries, everybody should grow them, no matter where you live. There are now so many varieties around these days that tollerate all sorts of growing conditions and it is also fun to grow a mix of varieties, because not all varieties grow at the same time and therefore you can easily prolong your season.

We bought the rhubarb crown on Tuesday, and here it is now nicely snuggled in to it's big blue pot, but it is slightly engulfed by the ravishing courgette plants. Hopefully it will do well here, it is a bit of an experiment for us as I have only ever grown it in a massive bed on the allotment, but I do know and have read that it can be grown in a pot...

I said in Thursday's post about the  young rasberry canes we bought that were reduced from the garden centre in Evesham. Well they are currently in small pots and are waiting to go in to a prepared bed. I've read that they benefit from a prepared bed rather than just planting them outright in to the soil... There are some small flowers too which is a bonus. It looks like we will have a very small crop of raspberries this year which is a bonus, but hopefully next year and beyond they really will take off...

There is also the melon plant bought from the same garden centre, it is currently in a grow bag with two tomato plants, I have no idea how this will turn out, but it would be nice to have a home grown melon or two... Here is Amy planting the new grow bag up using her new trowel...

Can you guess what these are..?

Grapes! This is one of the things that I forget about in my garden until I see the small bunches of white grapes hanging from the fence. It has originated as our neighbour's vine but has come over the fence to spread over our side too and I can't complain about that. The grapes themselves are a bit more bitter than those you buy in the shops, but I have thought about a few things I would like to try out with them this year.

My advice, to anybody starting to live a more sustainable and self-sufficient life is don't forget the fruit. When you start out it is easy just to look at the seed packets in a garden centre, which are dominated by thousands of vegetable seeds. A lot of fruit needs to be obtained through buying existing and established trees, plants, bushes etc. Some fruits such as Rhubarb can be grown from seed but grow better if the crown is divided from an existing plant. Other favourite fruits such as apples, will come from trees which will only start to give a decent harvest at 25 years old, a rather long time to wait indeed. But like with our apple tree, most garden centres will supply 'ready' trees for you to take home.

Have a superb Sunday!!!

Martin

Windy..

Well we've had the downpour we needed and the sun has now come back too. But the one thing we can't seem to shift is this wind! It is so windy here, it is untrue. You can hear it whistling through the air. We've had a bit of wind damage too. The water feature we were going to turn in to the wildlife pond by adding some aquatic plants has been swept off its feet and the top half has smashed in to oblivion. Secondly, I have just seen the apple tree topple over too. Thankfully it is payday today so I am going to buy a huge pot to put it in because it is still currently in the little black pot it came in.

In the veg garden we have the first bloomed courgette flower of the season. It is a beautiful bright yellow and the courgette itself has doubled in size from what I can remember the last time I saw it. There are about 6 mini courgettes now on the tubtrug residing courgettes.

The runner bean plants have really come in to life. Lots of rain and lots of sun has seen these really kick on and they now have been transferred in to their own pots. One of them is now so big that I have put it into it's final growing pot. Remember, these aren't traditional runners but they are supposed to turn out like a small bush. It will be interesting to see what happens to them.

The second sowing of mange tout are now about an inch a piece, so I have just sown a new seed tray full so hopefully we will have a continuous crop of fresh mange tout. I find that spacing out the sowings instead of sowing them all at once avoids a large glut that needs to be preserved, and instead you get a much more steady and continuous flow of fresh produce.

Look how well the first sowing is doing too! They have all now attatched themselves to either the sticks or each other... (typical!!)

We need a new grow bag, so I will add that to my shopping list for later. We have 2 large tomato plants that need to go in as soon as possible, and we also have 6 that have freshly germinated. Again continuous flow as opposed to glut.

The first potato bag has now had it's final covering of soil. We are already looking forward to fresh potatoes in a few weeks and I will start another bag off by the end of the week. We currently have 3 on the go, but simlarly to the runner beans we want a continuous flow rather than a glut.

The mixed salad we sown that were out of a free pack of seeds are almost ready for picking. I think I am going to make burgers again tomorrow so the salad leaves will be lovely with the burger in some homemade bread...

Finally, the strawberry bed/wheelbarrow is doing well out the front. So far we have counted 44 flowers or mini strawberries. The bed is looking quite established already and there are plenty of runners...

I can't wait for my exams to conclude on the 27th because a) we are then going camping on the Monday and b) we can do some more planting and self-sufficient like things like beekeeping, jam making, strawberry picking etc etc.

Have a great Tuesday!

Martin

P.S Over the next few days you might see some 'archive' posts taken from my old blogs to fill the gap whilst I am studying. I will pick out some relevant and interesting ones for you and hopefully you will enjoy them. I will also do some 'photo archive' posts from different topics such as bees, chickens, jam making etc.

P.P.S Don't worry, I will still be compiling blog posts but I like to post every day so the archive posts will fill in where it is not possible for me to compile a new entry!

Check back soon!

Yesterday

Wow! What a fantastic Easter Monday yesterday was! The weather was glorious once again so that called for one thing and one thing only... gardening!

Yesterday, we managed to sow some cabbage seeds, beetroot, some more mange tout, runner beans and we also started a second bag of potatoes which is quite exciting. Our garden is now resembling a garden centre/farm shop with seedlings and plants scattered about the place including on top of an old rabbit hutch!!

The highlight of my day was planting out on an old wheelbarrow which was in the front garden when we moved here. We added some good well rotted compost to the bottom, before adding some fresh, drier compost on the top. We had 10 Strawberry plants that needed potting up. Like I mentioned, there is a house on our daily walk that has plants outside for people to take and make a donation if they like. I have found it hard to resist taking plants every time I go by. I took the majority of the strawberry plants last time I went past and I was pleased to see that she had restocked with more today. I love kind people like this and therefore I always make a donation just about in line with the price I would have paid at a garden centre. I have also taken a few Tomato plants and another courgette plant today. I really do like kind people, and the idea of an 'honesty box' makes me very happy.

So that was 10 plants planted out of their pots in to larger accomodation. They look a bit like Cheryl Cole's hair at the moment; weak, limp, lifeless.. but hopefully they'll establish themselves well in the next few days. Amy did most of the work and I am nagging her to get on here again to tell you about all her new ideas. Including a post about what be bought on ebay for £20 yesterday.. And why I've had to visit Banbury twice in a week..

Have a very happy Tuesday evening.. well what's left it anyway!!!

Martin