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.

Fence Posts, Plastic Bottles and the WEATHER!

So the big question is.... will the weather hold off this weekend so that I can start on one of the two big projects i'm so eagerly waiting to get off the ground. Well I'm off to buy the fence posts this evening for my bottle house, it's a mammoth project, somewhere in my dreams this bottle house will measure 16 ft long by 4 ft wide. Its going to be home to my Tomatoes, Cucumbers, Peppers (Chilli and Sweet) and also i'm going to have a go at growing a Melon. I've got several large black plastic bags in my spare room full of 2 litre bottles and Mrs C has kindly got another 2 bags waiting for me, so with 4 days off work, I think the time is right to start.

I still haven't figured out how i'm going to secure the posts into the ground, I have 2 of those metal square block things that fence posts fit into, these will be for the middle 2 posts, but the 4 corner posts, well i'm going to wing it.

Wish me luck!

Light(ish) Nights

Isn’t it wonderful now the nights are starting to get a bit lighter, there will soon be a whole hour after work that I’ll be able to get bits n pieces done at the allotment. I’m lucky that it’s only 5 minutes drive from my work, so it’s easy to pop over to do a few bits before it gets dark. Over winter this has not been feasible, but with the nights getting lighter for longer I’ll be able to get over and do bits. Another added bonus is British Summertime Begins in just 4 weeks, just think of that extra hour!

I’m planning to get over to the lottie over the weekend, didn’t manage last weekend, what with one thing and another, but I would like to get across for a couple of hours at least on Sunday. The only stumbling block is yes you’ve guessed it, its forecast snow showers here in Middlesbrough. Hopefully though this prediction won’t come true and it will be glorious weather, yes I know cloud cuckoo land.

I ordered some Gardman (Pack of 2) Reusable Potato Planters / Tubs online to plant some of the earlies in, as the potato area isn’t sorted yet. You can see from the photo below, the area just at the bottom of the picture covered in weeds, this is where the potato beds are going to go.

Once I’d ordered the planters they only took a couple of days to arrive, very fast turnaround. I’m very pleased with them, they seem more robust than some of the designs available, and they have little pouches on the sides which will be useful to fumble about and see how things are progressing.

On the seed front, the chitting spuds are chitting quite nicely, the Rocket in particular are doing very well. The Cabbage (Greyhound) is doing well, Cauliflower (AYR) are starting to come through, so are the Khol Rabi. No sign of the Onions, Celeriac, Peppers or Cucumber yet but nearly all Broad Beans are through. I’ll going to have look through my seeds at the weekend and sow some more things. I may try some tomatoes, I’ve been given a heated propagator so I’m going to keep them snug in there and see how they go.

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).