Heckington Show Here We Come!

29-30 July 2017. Remember the date, as this is when we will make our agricultural show debut. The Heckington Show is billed as the "Largest Village Show In England" and this year celebrates its 150th anniversary. Quite an achievement.

Please check out their website for all the information you could ever want: Heckington Show

Of more interest to any allotmenteers reading this may be the show categories for the vegetables, you'll find these on pages 3 to 6 here: Categories

If you're close to Heckington why not join in and have a go? This will be our first attempt so we're expecting nothing more than a sound thrashing and a good learning experience. We're planning to show some potatoes, white onions, longest runner bean(!), tomatoes, dwarf beans, runner beans, marrows, beetroot, cucumber, courgettes and radishes. Plus of course the Garden News Top Tray and the Allotment Challenge.

So come on Plot 13D, Grow Grow Grow!

Glory Awaits!

Greenhouse Climbing Help

As well as some outdoor plants we've decided to grow a few cucumbers and tomatoes in our little greenhouse. As much an experiment as anything else....

Almost certainly incorrectly, we've alternated the plants in two grow bags. We realised that these are both plants that do better if they stretch out a little, so we had to come up with a way to help them....netting?

I am absolutely useless at making things, the ultimate un-practical man. So how could I give them a little assistance? Well, we just draped netting from one side of the greenhouse, across the ceiling, then down the other side, under the grow bags, and back up to the frame. Whether this will prove to be effective, who knows? But I was over-impressed with the result of my terrible handiwork.

I hope the whole thing stays standing, as one of the cucumbers has started to flower and fruit already! We'll be knee-deep in them within the week....

Flowers

Even on our humble little allotments our plants give us lovely flowers to enjoy. Of course the plants don't set out with a mission to make us gardeners feel aesthetically enriched, they just want to attract insects to help them reproduce. Long may this continue!

Here are five of the most "ordinary" plants we are growing, showing off in the sunshine. A nice purple potato flower....

....very pretty French bean....

....inviting courgette....

....vibrant runner bean....

....and a strawberry. People who don't have an allotment really are missing out....

Do You Know Your Onions? We Don't!

Onions. Easy to grow. Reliable. But so cheap in the shops, why bother? There are very different schools of thought on the topic of growing your own onions....

Above is our "Avenue Of The Allium Sepa", a lovely view between our onion rows. We've gone for one row each of white and red, and we definitely think that an allotment ain't proper until there are some onions maturing nicely and quietly somewhere.

Our white onions are Senshyu Yellow, grown from sets. We planted 21 sets and miraculously all 21 of our white variety survived and thrived. So from a VFM point of view, Senshyu Yellows can't be beat. We're looking forward to trying one when they tell us that they're ready. Until then we just keep admiring them as they swell and look marvellous.

Our red onion variety this year is Electric. Of the 21 sets planted just 15 of them made it. And overall they are smaller than the white ones, but that's OK. Again, we can't wait to see how they taste.

The onions are housed between the swede and beetroot, and they seem to all be getting on very amiably. One good tip I have discovered is.....

....give the onions a top dressing of potash in June. If they get even better then brilliant, if they don't, nae bother! So, onions on the allotment, yes or no? For us it is the easiest answer - YES!

Projects....

We took on Plot 13D in May 2016, and we're pleased with our progress thus far. The plot is bisected by a path, which separates the north and south sides. The north side, which enjoys day-long sun, is where we are growing most of our crops. But the south side. Oh dear....the south side....

It's a ruddy wilderness. But it's being recovered! The pic above is looking east, and below we're looking west. I've spent many hours trying to knock this area into shape and the effort is finally paying off. In some places you can even see soil! And the raspberries along the fence will be allowed to do their juicy job this summer before moving house for next year.

At the west end we have our strawberries in their cosy wooden box, and the rhubarb. And just "this" way from there is Jacob's mini-allotment (the jury is out on whether he has another go next year). He's enthusiastic, sometimes, but seems to believe that allotmenting is a computer game and will "do itself". The real challenge for me is the area nearer to the camera, where we planned to house a greenhouse, but have changed our minds. We'll now have a seating/eating/drinking area and extra growing space! What a fabulous hobby this really is....

Another project is on the north side, where the previous occupier sited a cane lattice for his tomatoes. Now, up until last week we "thought" that this was part of our neighbours masterplan, so we have never touched it. It's now overgrown with raspberries, and that is when I mentioned it to Ivan and he said that it was actually ours. YES! As with the south side we'll keep the rasps in situ this year and move them later. And we have a stock of canes to prop other needy plants up.

We're having an absolute ball on Plot 13D this year, some things are going great guns, some have already failed, but it's a constantly surprising and always fulfilling addiction....

 

First Harvest Of 2017

It's the middle of June and Ruth and I headed to Plot 13D to make our first proper harvest of the year. Ruth's parents became addicted to our spinach last summer and are hoping for lots more of the same this year, with radishes thrown in to the deal!

And so, within a short space of time there were gaps in the rows of carrots....

....gaps in the potato patch....

....and lots of newly vacated space in the spinach and radish aisle. We ate a lot of what we harvested for Sunday dinner, and it was all absolutely delicious!

We love our allotment and at this time of year the allotment seems to return your affection, in the form of delectable produce. What a lovely selection of spinach, cos lettuce, radishes, potatoes and carrots, thank you Plot 13D!

Ruth's Pea Patch

Ruth has warm, cosy memories from childhood of her Grandad's garden, and in particular shelling freshly picked peas and admiring the fabulous sweet peas growing on the fence. It's said that if you want to find happiness as an adult you should go back to the things that made you happy as a child....

Therefore we decided to clear a fence panel's worth of the garden and try to recreate a version of Grandad's place here in South Lincolnshire. It was a difficult job as the border has been left to its own devices for a few years, and buried under a weed-limiting top dressing of stones. After a few evenings graft and the addition of compost we managed to have it looking like this. Ground ready for planting and netting attached to the fence to encourage sweet pea mountaineering. Chuffed!

Our first pea shoots had appeared in mid-April (above) and they had matured quite nicely in the meantime. I'm still surprised how Mother Nature works so beautifully....

At the weekend we decided it was time to start populating "Ruth's Pea Patch" (a name we settled on after many rather more vulgar options were discussed) and Ruth built a pea-stick wigwam and popped in the first five plants.

Fingers crossed that they thrive, as I really want Ruth to re-live her treasured memory, and share it with our boys as well.

Now we've popped in some sweet peas, flanked by a few sunflowers, and we're waiting for a few more peas to mature enough to plant out. We're also going to plant a sugar snap wigwam as soon as we can.

Ruth's Pea Patch is up and running!

New Balls Please!

We all know that poking out your own eyeball on a stray cane is one of the perils of allotmenteering, thankfully a rare occurrence. But what do you use to prevent it happening? Old plastic bottles? Plasticine? Dolls' heads? (Is that too sinister?)

As previously described we have named our growing beds Tom, Dick and Harry. We wanted to have some eye protection but to make it a little individual and special to Plot 13D. After much discussion among the whole family I (the head gardener, obvs) decided that we would use cheap ping pong balls, and paint them to colour code the three beds. Everybody agreed, after I told them to do so....

The table tennis balls were obtained for a ridiculously low price on the Interweb, and we used our modelling paints to create our masterpieces - yellow for Tom, green for Dick and red for Harry. They certainly have brightened up our space, and I like them. We've had no opinion form our allotment neighbours yet....

Our First Attempt At Comfrey Tea

We'd heard all the rave reviews for this free wonder-food for plants, with the odd name of "comfrey tea" - what the heck is it? Well it turns out that you need a comfrey plant or two to get going (unsurprisingly) so we got one planted and it has come back thriving and healthy this year.

Step One - Find a nice clean bucket/container, with a tight lid. Alternatively a nice plastic milk bottle will do absolutely fine. Allow both parties to spend a little time together before the magic happens, so they can exchange family details etc, and generally feel comfortable in each other's company.

Remove comfrey leaves/stems about 20cm long (that's eight inches in old-fashioned), half a dozen is ideal. Comfrey leaves have a LOT of tiny soft prickles on the underside, so wearing gloves is recommended. Pop them into the bottle (or container).

Add water up to about a couple of centimetres from the top. You DO NOT need secateurs at this point, no idea why they are in this picture. Shake the bottle to agitate the leaf and water mixture.

 

Final step is to store somewhere secure. In five weeks there should be a lovely liquid plant feed, which you dilute in water to the ratio one part comfrey tea, ten parts water. What a brilliant, cheap, natural aid to help your garden grow!

 

16 Apr 17 - What's Growing?

 

This year "Tom" is for our root veg, there are three rows of potatoes in nearest the camera. Bit further away there are two rows of onions, one each of white and red varieties, and at the far end two rows of carrots which seem to be doing well. On the right we planted way too much garlic, and there's also half a row of spring onion just sown. We just want some lovely growing weather now!

 

In the middle is "Dick", this year's legumes bed. Nothing here so far except the bean frame that Sam built last week (good work dude) and next to that half a row of newly-sown cos lettuce.

However, the runner beans seedlings are going great guns at home and we're looking forward to seeing them in the ground at Plot 13D....

 

And finally there's "Harry", which in 2017 will be home to brassicas etc. Just one row of radish and half a row of spinach sown so far, within the last day or two.

 

And on the other side nothing is happening apart from the rhubarb and strawberries - disappointingly, JP has so far done nothing with the area that he pestered us to let him have for himself....

15 Apr 17 - Long Day, Hard Work

I spent five hours working on the allotment on Saturday, the time flew by and the results are rather pleasing. The far end veg bed (aka "Harry") was completely overgrown when I arrived, but by the time I left it was cleared, levelled, fertilised and sown with a row of radish (Scarlet Globe).

We've placed some spare thick planks in between Tom, Dick and Harry, they act well as paths and add definition and good looks (in my opinion).

The strawberry box was weeded, fertilised and the strawbs given a nice new cosy bed of hay (90p per bag from the pet shop in Seaford).

The rhubarb is in full growth and was intruding onto JP's section of ground, so I dug a trench and boxed it in a little with yet another plank. I also plucked the first three stalks, and they'll be eaten later on Monday in a crumble for tea.

This chap was also spotted nestling bold as brass in amongst the garlic, we're not sure if it is harmful or not but as long as he doesn't cause any mischief we're happy for him to stay for a while...

Competition Win - And The Spuds Are In!

We struck it lucky on Friday when we won a packet of lovely Purple Prince zinnia seeds from Mister Fothergill's Seeds. There will be way too many for us so if you fancy some small plants to place in your own garden let us know!

We also popped our first earlies and maincrop potatoes in at the weekend, first earlies are Pentland Javelin and the mains are Maris Piper. Have you any experience of growing these for yourself?

Very chuffed to see our onions apparently romping away and loving being able to stretch their roots in open ground. All the white onions have taken but only 15 of 21 red onion sets have made it.

Fertiliser Experiment - Miracle-Gro Chicken Manure or Westland Jack's Magic?

 

We are experimenting! We're using two off the shelf fertilisers on our growing beds Tom, Dick and Harry, and are fascinated to see if there is a difference in performance. It's Miracle Gro's Chicken Manure versus Westland's Jack's Magic fertiliser....

The recommended amounts have been applied to the beds, splitting each in half, lengthways. Our rows will be crossways, so each crop will grow in equal amounts of both competitors.

You can barely see the dressing but it's there. So interested to see if there is a difference in yield.

Perfect Garden Day

What a beautiful day Sunday was, dawned warm and sunny and stayed that way all day long. For the first time this year I enjoyed the first cuppa of the day outside, among the feeding birds and a garden full of new season potential.

I just pottered in the home garden all day long (with a break to watch the Australian Grand Prix, obvs). We've decided to remove the rampant holly bushes this year, so I attacked the first blighter - which proved to be rather stronger than the aged fork that I have been using to work the compost! Ooops. Another one bites the dust.....

Next job was to empty out the pots then refill them with compost and fertiliser. Ruth will probably be all creative when it's time to plant them up.

We saved a lot of seeds from last year's tallest sunflower, so these were popped in today. Everybody loves a sunflower right? Wrong! My son Sam thinks they are the work of the devil! Hard lines Sam, we're growing them anyway.

The tomato bags were also refilled and fertilised, and moved into position. Our tomatoes last year were fabulous and gave us more fruit than we could manage. Same again in 2017 please.

My final little project was to turn the compost. Everyone else sees this as my crazy little scheme, but they will love it when we have a lovely source of homemade crumbly plant food. It's doing OK but is a little on the slimy side, so there will be much more brown stuff going in this week. Back in you go....