Lovely Weather

Welcome Rooko, thanks for popping by and sticking around.

Well what can we say 'Glorious'.... that's what it's been over the past week, temperatures in the 20's, great stuff.  The tomatoes, aubergine, pepper and chilli plants are all growing very nicely, I'm sure they have doubled, nearly tripled in size due to the warm temperatures, just what they needed as they were looking really sorry for themselves.

On Thursday evening and again on Sunday I finished off clearing and digging over the bottle grow-house.  I have made a start on creating the planting beds in there.  I will have 4 beds 7ft x 2ft to plant out the toms etc.., I have built 2 so far, hopefully the other two will be completed this Thursday evening.  These beds are made from scaffold boards so will be nice and deep.  I'll try to rotate as best as I can, will probably have to dig out and replace soil in a few years time.  There will be a pebble path running down the middle so I can wet it down on a morning, something that is advised in greenhouses, so I suppose it's something I should be trying to do in the grow-house.

I've got some annual leave booked in for next week, so hopefully I'll be able to make a start on the curcubiteae area.  But I'm not putting any money on that, it always rains when I'm on leave.....

Couple of picture of the inside of the bottle grow-house.  Two beds complete.

No Further Forward at the Plot

Well I’m no further forward in getting the plot prepared for the spring, I now have the added headache of having to make two lots of (rotational) raised beds seen as though I went mad and ordered loads of potatoes and there isn’t going to be room for them in the proposed ‘root’ section. I sat down and looked at my plan of the allotment and looked where I could squeeze in another section. I’d taken Friday and today off as holiday in the hope of being able to get started on these along with some winter digging but the weather is not helping at all, it has rained, and even snowed today so things are getting further and further behind.

I bought some lime for the Brassica patch; I’d managed to get two of the three beds in this area dug over in November, so I’ll get the third done and then add lime ready for when I plant out. I’d read in one of the magazines that this is an ideal time for the lime to be added so I’ll try and get that done fairly soon. I’d also managed to get the Legume section dug over and a load of compost and manure spread, so hopefully this will be ready to go when the beans are germinated.

I’ve sown a few more veggies. I tried again with some seed onions (Bedfordshire Champion) and this time I used brand new compost, I’ve bought B&Qs cutting and sowing compost, this was the best performer in the Which magazine trials with an 83% success rate and huge seedlings so I thought that I’d give it a go. I’ve sown some more leeks (Musselburgh), some cabbage (Greyhound), cucumber (Marketmore), celeriac (Monarch) and some aubergine (mixed).