Thursday 30 July 2015

Feeding the Daleks

I had to go to the allotment to pick up Kelly's car and took a load of kitchen compost and shredded paper down with me for Dalek 4 which I keep topping up much to the disgust of Dalek 3 who's time will come later in the season. Harvested 3 lettuce, but there are to many bolting that will become compost fodder shortly. I need to sow some more.

Wednesday 29 July 2015

A Nice Little Harvest

A swift visit to water and as it happened harvest onions, looks like white rot has started on some of the onions, so now researching what can be done about it seeing that it can live in the soil for 20 years.
http://www.growyourown.info/page173.html

Nice little harvest of onions, spring onions, Runner and French Beans

Talking to the site agent on the construction site next to the allotment who has a nice little Nissan Micra for sale and she looks really nice so we are getting it for Kelly to learn to drive in. Now where are my blood pressure tablets again
:nowink:

Tuesday 21 July 2015

Extending the Cucumber Frame









Watering visit - and I extended the cucumber frame and the little blighters just keep growing.









I also harvested some spring onions, Red Barron Onions grown from seed that I'm really happy about, a few carrots and a cucumber and lettuce. 

Sunday 19 July 2015

Video Update 19th July 2015

Time for another Video Update





The potatoes on Bed 11 on the video has been harvested and taken home. The soil bulks about 10% as air gets into the mix. I have extracted nearly a round flower bucket of glass, stone, nails and other things that keep coming to the surface and it still looks like the bed has a pillow.

 


I found a small heart potato and sent a photo to Jen from the plot

Sunday 12 July 2015

Rain Stopped Playing with Mud

Raining first thing but it stopped so I got to the allotment about 8am - started clearing the weeds and hit Bed 9 which had the over wintered Onions in and now has half a bed of parsnips. So I set about weeding the bed and removing the volunteer potatoes from the vacant half.

Once all clear I formed some furrows and lined them with compost and planted 4 rows of carrots then I planted the two rows of onions that have survived in the nursery trays all this time, and then one at the end of some of the rows hopefully to confuse the carrot root fly once/if the carrots grow.

Topped up the comfrey water butt and added comfrey to make a nice on tap comfrey tea. The aerator keeps the water fresh and the smell to a minimum, plus there is an absence of insects / gnats floating on the top of the water.

Some of the beetroots have started to bolt, so I have harvested them, I'm really short of beetroot this year and I only have four out of 30 in vending machine cups that have germinated so far of the next batch.

I fixed some of the cucumbers to the trellis and found Wally has a long curved mate, and then I found members of wally's boy band. Looking at the amount of flowers and growth, I may have to extend the height of the trellis, but it looks like I will be alright for cucumbers for the next couple of weeks at least.

The foxes had dug all the woodchips out from around the bottom of the compost bins and it was all over the carpet path, so swept it up and put it all back and topped it up for good measure.

Lots of ladybirds all over the French beans and not so many aphids, so I'm happy they came back.

All the tomatoes had a feed, then as I was about to move onto the next job at about 12 ish the rain came so, I made my way home. Because of the rain  today I lost about 2 hours work
  ::) never mind, it could have been raining all day.  

Wednesday 8 July 2015

Little Shop of Horrors

Wednesday 8th July - Morning Watering Visit

Thursday 9th July - Evening Watering Visit

Lots of biting insects so watered undercover crops and harvested Wally
Nice to see an army of ladybirds now feasting on the aphids on my dwarf French beans 


Saturday 11th July 2015

No visit Friday, Bessie was taken away to be turned into a cube.

An early morning visit today before breakfast to water before the sun gets onto the plot, as we just are not having any rain.



I also harvested the last of the early potatoes and some of the second early potatoes, in addition I harvested two Cabbages, Never grown the pointy ones before, I can't help it but they remind me of the plant in the little shop of horrors  :nowink:


Plan for tomorrow is to get there early and dig up more potatoes before the sun comes around and weed the beds working from the bottom of the plot up and hopefully keeping ahead of the sun then sorting out the dodo around the greenhouse and grow house.

Tuesday 7 July 2015

Wrens in the back garden

The Wren in the back garden feeding his two young and cleaning the nest recorded by my daughter Kelly Wooldridge