Rain Rain Go Away

....come back again when i'm on holiday in August so that i need not worry if my veggies are getting watered whilst i'm away, lol. Seriously though, when will this rain ease, my plot was flooded again after the heavy rain that came toward the back end of last week, luckly though it's only seems to be flooding in one area, though this will cause a problem shortly as this is where the bottle house and fruit area will be. It's not stopped raining for long either yesterday or today and it’s been really heavy at times, so probably more flooding at the allotment. Got a few bits done over the weekend, planted up the rest of the Rocket potatoes, I’ll be doing the Pentland Javelin during this week as and when. There’s no more space for them in the mini greenhouse so these will have to fair the weather. I started to weed the ‘Root’ patch; I’ll be planting some Sweetcorn - Mini Pop in the little area I got done. Try and get some more of that weeded over the weekend. My Comfrey plant is starting to grow again, the first cut will go in with the potatoes, and then I’ll start to make some Comfrey tea for the Tomatoes and Potatoes for when they need a feed later.

I’ve sown some more Leeks (Autumn Giant and Lyon), Cauliflower (AYR), Kohl Rabi, and various Lettuces. The carrots are finally starting to show under the little grow house on the 4ft x 4ft bed in the back yard. The parsnip seeds are now sprouting shoots; does this mean I can just plant them in the soil now?

I cleared away some of the area where the chicken coop and wildlife garden is going to go. I had some roof slates which I was going to use on Samson’s kennel but as I didn’t have enough I felted the roof, but lucky for me, when you lay them all together they measure 3ft x 4ft, just the right size of the chicken house (shed), so these are going to be a base for the shed to sit on, rather than it standing straight on top of the soil.

I’ve re-allocated the space down the side of the plot where the bottle house and fruit and flower beds are going to be. Hopefully if the weather gets better over the weekend I’ll be able to begin the digging for putting in the fencing posts which will be the start of the frame for the bottle house. I’m not sure if I’ll cement these posts in or just find some other way of securing them, just in case I decide to move the bottle house in the future.

We (Caleb & me) popped to Pets at Home over the weekend, and to my joy I discovered that they sell chicken bits n pieces. This will be a great benefit for us, somewhere local I’ll be able to buy food from etc. So anyway in anticipation of the little feathered friends joining us sometime soon, we bought a chicken feeder and water supply. I’m dead chuffed with them; it’s great what little things make us happy.

Oh yes, I’ve received a kind donation from a friend at work (well her father to be precise) two rhubarb plants, so I’ll have to decide where they will live. Probably somewhere within the fruit bits I think. Somebody told me that rhubarb leaves make a good fertilizer, does anybody know if this is true?

Small Steps in the Right Direction

Progress is being made, slowly but steadily, I was hampered by a day of rain on Saturday so not all that was planned happened. I managed to build the final (planned) raised bed in the back yard plot. So now I have three beds, one which measures 7ft x 4ft, one at 4ft x 4ft and one at 4ft x 3ft. These are primarily going to be for growing the carrots, parsnips and quick salad items in. I got some Anya seed potatoes planted in a potato barrel, I’m going to have to knuckle down and get the remaining Rocket and the Pentland Javlin sorted out this weekend. I managed to also recycle some pallets and made a start on the wood for the henservatory.

Over to the allotment, I’ve pre-marked the side of the plot where I’m planning to put some flowers, the bottle house and the soft fruit area; the flowers will sit directly in front of the shed (see picture), giving them a patch measuring 10ft x 5ft, I thought I’d put them there as that will give me something nice to look out onto. I’d then planned on putting the bottle house, next to that in an area I’d earmarked at 16ft long 5ft wide, and then I’d planned to have after that 2 areas of 10ft x 5ft where I had thought about putting my raspberries and strawberries, this would leave me about 15ft of space to ponder with before I got to my gate. These areas and the existing raised beds that are already built will be separated by a gravel path from stones which I’ve been collecting as I’ve dug over the plot. Each of these areas would be split by a small path. My only concern now, after marking this out is that the bottle house will be sited near some bushes/trees from next doors plot, although they won’t block out the sun as the sun moves clockwise around my plot, I will need to be able to get behind the bottle house to chop down growing branches, something I’d not really taken into consideration when allocating space. Saying that, the area where the fruit is planned to go has a bare patch behind it so I think the best thing to do is swap these two areas so that the fruit bit comes before the bottle bit.

I’ve started digging over the potato patch and started to build one end of each of the raised beds, this gives me a starting picture of where each type will be, there are three sections, one for 2nd earlies, and one for early maincrop and another for late maincrop. I can now concentrate on the patch for 2nd earlies as they need to be in the ground by mid April. I can then finish the other two areas off for the maincrops to be planted out by the end of April.

I also managed to pull out the last patch of really overgrown area of weeds (see bottom left of picture). So now all I have to contend with are the rooted weeds like dandelions and other small growing weeds and bits of grass that has decided to grow around my plot when digging over the areas to make the raised beds.

Hoping to get down over the weekend but will have to wait and see, we’re going to visit a local farm on Sunday morning, they are holding an open day to let people see the spring lambs, piglets and calves. I’ve a family commitment on Sunday afternoon, so that only leaves Saturday to play with and we have a fixed commitment every Saturday morning so lets hope Saturday afternoon can be stretched out into a full day.

Weekend of Activity

Well I’m off work tomorrow, my car is going to the garage to be repaired (it currently drives itself about) and fail its MOT, I’m expecting a few things to need replacing like its brakes (due to driving itself, I spend most of my time with my foot on the brake trying to stop it). The other day the back doors locked and now I can’t unlock them to open them and get in and out of the back seat, even when you press the button to lock and then unlock them they stay locked. Poor Samson got stuck in the back of the car after we’d been out for a walk, me and Caleb had drag him through the little gap between the two front seats to get him out, not a pretty sight!

So I thought I’d take advantage of my non-working day and do some more garden activity. I’ll not be able to go to the allotment, it’s an hours walk away so I’ll potter about in the back yard, build another raised bed, pull out all the nails in the wooden posts I’ve ‘claimed’ for the henservatory and cut down some 2x2 ready to make one of the frames for the bottle house. Mrs C has another bag of 2 litre bottles for me so I’ll need to collect them. My spare room is full of black bags which are full of pop bottles, lol

Caleb’s off to cub camp Friday night so weather permitting (its forecast scattered showers - but I can brave them) I’ll spend all Saturday and Sunday at the allotment (presuming I get my car back) as I’ll not have to think about keeping him entertained. Hopefully I’ll be digging over the potato area and making a bed ready to plant out the 2nd earlies. I’ll put some chicken pellets in the onion bed which I made last weekend ready to plant them out probably next weekend and give the other beds a weed so that I’m on top of that before they get too riddled with neglect. I’ll Lime the brassica beds then start to mark out the side of the plot which runs from the shed to the gate where the flower bed will be and the bottle house and the fruit area.

How many hours are there in a day?

How Could I Forget - My Chickens!

Gosh, I don’t know how I’ve done it, but yesterday I forgot to mention the most important happening of the weekend - I’ve ordered 4 chickens. When I say I’ve ordered them, I’ve put in a request to a friend who has a small holding (1 acre) to rear me some chicks, she will look after them until they are at ‘point of lay’, which is roughly about 18 - 20 weeks old, and at which point I’ll have returned from my holiday and it’ll be all systems go, eggtastic!

Quick update on the sowing - I’ve started to pre-chit some parsnips, done the old wet paper towel trick; we’ll see how they get on. I also sowed 3 of each of the tomato varieties: Gardener Pearl, Roma, Red Cherry and an Italian big beefy one I can’t for the life of me think what it’s called now, I’ve put them in little peat pots so I don’t need to prick them out and pot on, I’ll just pop the peat pot into the next size up which will probably be a 3” pot and carry on from there. Did this with a couple of plants last year and it seemed to work out ok, so I’ll give it another go.

Had another look at my potato plans last night also, I was going to put the 2nd earlies into tubs as I’m doing with the 1st earlies, but again the seed potatoes seem to be multiplying, I don’t know where they are all coming from, but they will go in the ground as I haven’t enough of the potato tubs.

Another Productive Weekend!

Yet another weekend of nice weather so plenty of progress made. On Friday night I popped to our local B&Q as they had 20% discount on all purchases over £50. I’d been there the previous weekend and had seen a little shed (4ft x 3 ft) priced at £65. Now having decided we were going to get some hens and had found some details on how to build the henservatory, I thought this little shed would make a good house for them. They could occupy the bottom and if I put up some shelves, this could be storage area for their feed and other bits. So I’ve bought one, sale price of £52, however I’ve had to leave it at the store until I can get some kind volunteer with a small van to pick it up for me. I know just the man but he’s on holiday at the moment. I’ve managed to source (or should I say recycle) three 3x3 fence posts 7ft long and a couple of 10ft lengths of 2x3 which will help create the frame of the henservatory.

On Saturday I planted a further 4 (rocket) seed potatoes in a potato tub. I’ll put Pentland Javlin into tubs over the next couple of weeks so that I get a gradual harvest. I sprinkled some bone meal over the 7ft x 4ft raised bed in the back yard ready for when I plant some parsnips in there. I’ve decided to plant carrots and parsnips at home in the back yard as a backup as the soil at the plot isn’t very good yet (improvements are being made) and I thought they would grow better in some compost where they won’t be hindered by stones etc. I’ll be pre-chitin some parsnip seeds tonight, going to try the damp paper towel trick.

It was then off to the allotment for me and Samson. When I arrived, fencing around the 4 little plots which have been created over the last year had been erected. It really makes our little bit look very smart now. I decided this weekend would be dedicated to creating the onion bed as the sets need to be planted mid-March to mid-April, so I got down to digging. The bed will be 7ft x 4ft. Lots of digging and plenty of weed and grass extraction later (over the course of Saturday and Sunday) the patch of ground was cleared, a raised bed made and then the soil was treated with some much rotted garden compost. This coming weekend I’ll scatter some chicken manure pellets to give the ground some oomph and then I’ll be looking to plant out the onion sets - Santero (the first onion set with resistance to downy mildew) and Red Barron. I’m also trying to grow Bedfordshire Champion from seed, but these sets are my back up.
Tonight I’m going to sow a couple more tomato plants, some tunip and possible a few other choices, keep you informed.

Chicken/Wildlife Area

After missing out on the chicks last week I’ve been reading more and more about the chicken side of things and I’m really determined now to getting some. I’ve found an article in one of the magazines that I get each month ‘HomeFarmer’, it gave an overview of how to build a ‘henservatory’, which I think is a brilliant idea. It’s a very simple enclosed lean-to extension that goes on the side of a chicken hut (shed). Instead of shutting the birds away at night, the pop-hole can safely be left open, so that the birds can wander in and out at will, as still be safe from predators. This will be really useful for me as by the time I’ve finished work in the winter it’s already dark, so I could pop over to fill food and water up on a morning and not have to worry about needing to get back to put them away for the night.

I’ve been to the plot and measured the wildlife area, I thought that this would be a nice place to site the ‘henservatory’, it measures 14ft long by 10ft at one end tapering to 8ft at the other end. I’ve drawn (attempted to scale 2cm per ft) the area. In it I’ve tried to plan where I think things would be sited, the little star shapes are wildlife friendly flowers and the small circular shapes will be stepping stone so we can easily go from one side to the other without needing to step on the mud. When i've figured out how to upload a word document i'll try to attach it for you to see.

It’s forecast to be dry all weekend, so I’m planning to have TWO yes you read right, TWO full days at the plot. Samson won’t know what’s hit him. Caleb is at his dad’s this weekend so I’ve won’t have to find things to entertain him, so it’ll be lots of hard graft and no interruptions, well that’s the plan.

At Last - A Dry Weekend

I can’t believe it, a whole week without any rain, well nearly, it rained a bit on Friday night, but hey we’ll let it off as it was dry all week and then also dry for the rest of the weekend. My plot has nearly gone from a boggy mess to a cloggy mess. Hopefully if it keeps like this it’ll just be a mess that needs sorting.

So to update you all on the weekend’s happenings, on Saturday morning I put 8 seed potatoes (Rocket) into 2 potato containers (4 in each) and put them in the large plastic greenhouse. I’ve put them on top of some pallets just to keep them off the cold concrete floor; I thought this might help keep the chill/frost off them. I also sowed some carrots (Early Nantes 5) under the little grow house which I’ve had placed over the 4x4 raised bed in the back yard. On Saturday afternoon, Caleb, Samson and I went to Redcar beach to collect some seaweed, read somewhere that it’s good for the potatoes so I thought I’d give this a go. I’ll plant some with a seaweed bed and some without and let you know the results.

Sunday I finally managed to finish Samson’s kennel, he’s currently sleeping in the kitchen whilst I’m at work, sleeping is what he does best, but now the weather is getting better I thought it would be nice if he could spend time outside and basque in the glorious sun (when it arrives), so I started to build him a kennel but then with all the bad weather I’d not been able to finish it off, well now that’s complete and he loves it. He was even sleeping in it whilst I was nailing the roof felt onto it, nothing interrupts his sleep! Now all we’ve got to teach him not to panic when he’s outside, as he doesn’t particularly like it, it’s not the being outside that upsets him, it’s the door being closed and him not being able to get back in that he doesn’t like. So it’ll have to be a slow, confidence building exercise I think until he’s comfortable staying outside on his own.

Me and Samson also spent a couple of hours at the plot on Sunday afternoon, it was wonderful! I dug over the small brassica bed, so now they’ve all been dug; I’ll add some lime shortly. I used my new cultivator (a xmas pressie from my Mam) to rake over the muck in the legume beds. I then started to weed the area where the potato bed is going to go, the mud was still very wet, but at least the boggy bit was starting to dry up, all the puddles have gone, it was just very cloggy. Its forecast to be dry all week so hopefully we can get down at the weekend to get on with a bit more.

Oh yes, something I couldn’t resist buying, even though I didn’t really need any more seeds, some Broccoli (Calabrese) - Samson. I wonder if these will grow big heads, as big as Samson himself, we’ll see!

We've Missed the Chicks

Over the last couple of days I've been reading up about keeping the chicks and had just started to think about how I was going to make a coup for them, when I recieved a phone call to say that they had all been allocated homes. I'm rather disappointed now, just when we decided we'd say yes to having the chicks. Not to worry, it was obviously ment to be that we'd not get them and at least that gives me more time to think about the implications of having the birds and where the coup will go etc. Also having to fit in building the coup amongst all the other pressing jobs that need doing, it was probably one headache too many at this moment in time, but we will get some when the time is right.

Nothing much more to report on, a couple of peas are starting to poke their heads through the compost, i've transferred the onions out into the plastic greenhouse during the days, i'll bring them in on a night to give them a little extra protection at least for a week I would think. Over the weekend I sprinkled the 4x4 bed in the yard with a slow release food mix and it's been covered with the grow house for a couple of weeks now, so i'll sow some carrots in that little area over the weekend.

It's forcast to be quite nice so i'm definately going to spend some time at the allotment this weekend, its been fairly dry all week so far so hopefully the plot will have dried up a bit.

A Great Weekend - Shovelling Shit

Wasn’t it lovely over the weekend, well lovely compared to the previous goodness knows how many weekends gone by. On Saturday I managed to build a walk-in plastic greenhouse a bargain at £19.99 from B&M; do you have one of those shops anywhere near you? There brilliant and so cheap. So I’ve built that and put in my Broad Beans, I’d potted them on into bigger pots, getting them accustomed to the outside world ready for when I plant them up at the plot. I sowed some Toms, Chilli and Sweet Peppers and Tomatillos (just 2 of each variety - 4 varieties of toms and 2 of each of the sweet and chilli peppers) just to see how they get going. I sowed some marigolds, and nasturtiums for the beneficial planting area.

On Sunday the weather was not as good as Saturday, but I went over the allotment, it was still rather flooded after the rain on Friday, just as it was starting to dry out we had continuous rain all Friday which meant the plot was re-flooded in parts. A delivery of horse muck had been dumped so I spent an hour shovelling shit, it was WONDERFUL!!!

On Sunday evening my Mother telephoned me to ask if I knew anyone who was interested in some chicks. Her partners’ son’s daughter’s school had incubated some eggs and they had hatched. I’m pondering taking a couple on, they’d be ready in a couple of weeks; I’ll keep you informed as to what I decide. Wouldn’t that be nice though a couple of little chicks?