SPUDS!

....have arrived! I've got them all chitting in my bedroom (all thousands of them! :o) ) I wanted to try at least 5 different varieties and they only came in 2.5kg bags so what can you do? AND I'm off to Ryton tomorrow for the potato fair/day thingy so will no doubt come back with a fair few more, hmmmm!? Sooooo exciting though! We love spuds and although I have got far more than I need, we do get through at least a bag of spuds a week, more at early potato time, so I'll squeeze as many as I can in at the plot and the rest I'll give away.

Also sowed my first seeds of the new year. Mostly toms of many more types than I need (again!), and I can't seem to help but sow too many of each. I'm sure I'll be able to find a few foster homes for them if need be.

It was cold on the plot today (I had on about 6 layers and legwarmers), but not windy or wet so actually really nice. I did a bit of weeding and sorting, not much really, it was just nice to be there.



This is the new Tayberry bed I put in a few weeks ago. I've split the plot in half with it and am not totally sure I like that yet. I will have to see, I can always move them next winter if I need to.

I've also got around to creating a cage to protect my gooseberries with the Build-a-Balls I got for Christmas. The idea behind them is sound enough I think, though the balls don't seem all that secure. We'll see if they hold together.
Finally, just a couple of pics to show Feb on the plot looking from either end! x

We succumbed and had go with the allotment's rotivator to turn over the spud beds. The thinking was that I really just wanted to see what the difference was, and to conduct a bit of a comparison test between that and digging each bed by hand. Firstly I was totally girlie and was rubbish at using the rotivator, so Hubby took over and sent me home to make lunch while he did it.
A few weeks on (Sunday) we came back and checked through the beds for weeds and marked out the beds. We also spread a whole load of well rotted manure on them all ready for the worms to do their job. Overall it WAS a fast way to turn over the earth for the only time I plan to do it so deeply, but will probably not bother again.



We also put a few of the large slabs that were going spare next to our plot to see how heavy they were for when we run them down the side of our plot and hopefully down the middle too. I can't wait to have paths etc. It'll look great!

Moved the fruit bushes today. 6 raspberries (4 Malling Jewel and 2 that I can't remember what they're called). A huge loganberry and a little blackberry. We also transplanted the gooseberry.
I LOVE how it looks now - how it's been divided from the communal plot next to me. All those lovely berries in Summer mmmmmmmmmm!

View from on our plot.

View from the communal plot.

There I was, pulling up loads of these little baby carrots for tea , when out came this mad mutant whopper! It must've been left over from the first load I sowed that mysteriously disappeared. As it happened the little ones had all been burrowed into by some small annoying creature so the biggie was the one we ate. And yummy he was too!

WE HAVE A SHED!

And what a beauty she is! Not bad for free (bar some nails and coach bolts). Note the new panels at the bottom, seamlessly blending in with the rest of the woodwork. It took us two tiring days at the weekend - one to lay the slabs and one to repair the rotten base and sides, and to put together. It's pretty sturdy though and complete now with net curtains!! FAB! We need to preserve it, but other than a few gaps, it's pretty sound for an old gal.


The beds below are where all our fruit is going. So far I've got strawberries, a donated gooseberry bush (nice bloke over the road and a few plots up), a jostaberry and rhubarb (impulse buys!). I'm also going to move my raspberries, blackberry, loganberry and gooseberry from home to go in here next week (probably!?).

We've got two more beds in the top end of the plot to dig (Beds 8 & 9), one bed on the other side of the compost bin (Bed 12) and finally the beds for the spuds (13-16). Then all the basic structure will be done and we can start to think about paths, etc.

Can't wait (poor Hubby)!

Finally, we had a smashing time on Sat at the Allotment bonfire, fireworks and BBQ. The biggest bonfire I think I've ever seen and tonnes of fireworks (hubby was put in charge of these - bit scary!!). Everyone was really nice (if a little inebriated by the end!) - great fun!

After a chat with the 'sort of' Site Manager about what he follows cabbage/squash with, I have come to the conclusion that I have been making things quite difficult for myself with different 'families' of veg and fruit dotted all over the plot on my first plan.

I was told that I should try to keep all my spuds together in a block and then move this block to another area of the plot each year (made sense). Also I shouldn't follow brassicas with spuds as the lime in the soil gives them scab - (the whole plan shot then!!).

So a good hour sitting in the sunshine while Hubby helped the 'blokes' shift slabs and here is the new plan. Much simpler I think! Took some working out mind you, and couldn't follow ALL the rotation advice (as in following the legumes with the brassicas - just didn't fit), but it seems to work okay (give or take a few things I've already put in the wrong place - onions etc.).

The plot's coming together brilliantly though. I just had a look back at my posts from July and we've really come MILES! Actually looks like an allotment! Still got two beds left to dig in the first half, along with the area for the spuds (that currently has the shed on - so that needs sorting first). And we're dug. I'm all prepared with green manures for any vacant beds though so far I seem to be filling them as they are emptied.

Early July

3 months later

Bob here was supposed to be a family activity - but I ended up creating him all on my own (kids and Hubby not in the slightest bit interested). Still, he seems to be doing his job, I spoke to him twice thinking he was Hubby out of the corner of my eye, and looked up to see who was standing there more times than I can count. Just hope he works on the pigeons (and burglars too!!)

Hubby dug over all the remaining fruit beds ready for the currant and gooseberry bushes I ordered and to move the 'berries' from home into in Nov. We lined to bottom of the trenches with manure and are now going to give it a few weeks before we uproot them from our garden. Can't wait!


At last we managed to eat two of our sweetcorns. One was scrummy (didn't know I liked sweetcorn - cor!!) and one wasn't ripe yet - yuk! The best thing though, is that my daughter loves them - what could be better?

We always seem to be up at the plot at the right time. Yesterday morning a man in a flatbed van arrived with manure for some of the plot tennants. After a few trips I asked him how we could get some of it and he said he had a couple more loads and came back and dumped a HUGE pile on our plot for us - what a result!! All for the price of a bottle of wine! We then spent the rest of the afternoon shifting it into a hastily made pallet bin (or rather hubby did most of it as we only had one fork. I was on wheelbarrow duty though!). It still needs to rot down a bit and has a fair bit of straw in it, but it will be perfect for in the beds in prep for spring and the rest can just stay where it is!Hubby made a start on the beds for my fruit bushes, both newly ordered and those I'm going to move from my back garden. The soil seems to be getting harder to work the further back we move, but still, Hubby's strong :o) ! It's here in the pic in front of the greenhouse.
  We've picked our first cabbage AND I actually ate a lot of it (was quite nice)!! I'm very impressed with myself (not a cabbage fan) and proud that I've grown such beauties since July.

I picked a small bowl of chillies that have finally started to ripen. I chopped them in half, de-seeded them and popped them in a small jar with some olive oil and pepper corns to make chilli oil. Looks good and will infuse over time. I think I'll make a few of these if they can keep turning red before the first frosts kill the plant off. I must say I'm much less impressed with the peppers though, none of them are ripening!!!! Arrgh! And a few are even starting to rot - what's going on there?
My lovely butternut decided to split :o( - so we chopped it off and roasted it. Nice enough but I think it would have been even better fully ripe. A shame! My pumpkin is going nowhere, lots of babies but none maturing - not looking good for halloween. Slug are big baddies here too!

 
Few other bits and pieces done too. Tried sowing some more (now very late) kale in cells in the greenhouse as something has eaten all the seedlings I put in. Weeded my smashing salad bed, moved the swing to the back, planted all my onion sets, marked out the fruit beds for Hubby and even experimented with 5 Christmas spuds!! It's all still busy, busy with no signs of slowing down yet. The yellow squash Sunburst F1 are happy as anything, can't wait to try them, they're supposed to taste smashing!

What a productive day!

We had a great day today, the weather was perfect - not too hot, not cold, not raining or windy (our plot seems really sheltered - our allotments are on a slope with us at the bottom but when we walked up the hill today you could really feel the wind!).

We did loads:

• Hoed a few paths



• Put straw beds under the butternut and pumpkins



• Weeded Bed 5 and was about to fill it with garlic and onion sets when someone gave me loads of leek seedlings to put in (45 in fact). Them in, I then had just enough room for one type of garlic so planted my Cristo



• Hubby put up the next compost bin & finished weeding Bed 10
  

THEN, a man came over and asked if we wanted a shed and said we can go pick it up from his plot if we do. FANTASTIC! It's a bit woodwormy on the base, so we'd need to replace that and a few other planks/beams, but overall is great (our car can be our car again instead of our shed! :oD ), and best of all it's FREE! We had been in the process of collecting a shed from Freecycle, but I was finding it hard to get up the enthusiasm for hiring a van to move it - plus it's really a bit too big (6x10)! This is great! Anyway, we moved it down to our plot a bit at a time (it was SO heavy - and I'm such a weaking!! took us 7 trips and my arms and backside (for some bizarre reason??!) are killing.

A tractor turned up today too to chop off all the growth at the end of the plot that meets the boundry. The chap said he was also going to be back to dig out the ground and level it - which is fantastic as it was a job we'd have needed to do to to put the shed on. We've ALSO been told that there is someone giving away slabs that we could have.

It's all looking good and I've even got mini yellow Sunburst F1 squash growing and sweetcorn lady flowers. Love it all!