Save London Allotments from Development

There has been a petition raised to save Granville Road Allotments in Southfields, SW18. It is only a little site, but Wandsworth only have a small number of allotment spaces, and for the most part a 10 year waiting list. Of course the biggest problem here is that these allotments are privately owned and therefore do not fall into the remit of how allotments are managed within London, especially in the Wansworth area who have farmed out the running of their allotments to an external contractor.

The number of allotment spaces within London is rapidly dwindling as land is converted to a higher income by selling it off to developers to build housing and commercial interests. This is relatively easy to do as the land only needs minimal clearance to turn once fertile land into sterile brick and concrete. If this last year is anything to go by, the amount of plots available will shrink, whilst the demand increases.

So it's time to take a stand against this commercialisation of the land. Sign the petition today.

Temporary Netting

 Yesterday I potted on the Pak Choi. Today something else needs to start getting transplanted. It's the Edamame.

I planted them in toilet rolls, because they really dislike root damage. So I put them outside into beds. However I don't have enough for a full set of both beds, so in fact they're going into one and a half. I may have to find something else for the other half.

They're still a bit too small (but too big for the rolls and trays) so they need some protection from birds, so I had to rig a temporary net. I don't have anything really suitable to hold the netting up, so instead I'm using one of my old troughs on it's side to help keep the netting up. By the time the plants are big enough to survive any kind of avian onslaught then the trough can be removed.

Potting on Pak Choi

 Looks like the Pak Choi has got off to a great start and needs a new home.

Time to get it spread out a bit more. Unfortunately I kind of underestimated exactly how many I had. I was only expecting two of the big green trays worth. But I had to steal a couple of The Wife's extra trays.

But there are still more seedlings in the greenhouse. But there are also a few which haven't done so well. For example the Tomatoes. The Sweet Millions that I sowed have failed to germinate. Same goes for the Ailsa Craig, and the which the Money Maker's only have a couple. So I planted some more to see whether I just planted them too early.

It's still not too late to get everything sown. But it looks like the Edamame have got off to a great start in their little toilet rolls and tomorrow I'll have to plant them out into beds.

We have a few of our regular courgettes on the go. As well as a reasonable amount of cucumbers. So it's not all lost.

But as for the Peas or Soya... nothing. So I still have no idea what the future will hold for the full planting. We'll just have to see.

A matter of Life or Death

 Last weekend, the Bank Holiday weekend, was pretty sunny. This weekend was... well not sunny but not overly miserable either. But between then and now there was some downright miserable weather. Not rain, but temperature wise. It got cold. So cold in fact that we had a frost.

So I have the new sweetcorns growing in a row of plug tray on a shelf at the end of the greenhouse. And sprout they have done. Pretty much all of them have sprouted. Of the 54 planted (2 trays of 3x9) all but about 4 had started. But that frost must have hit them quite bad, because the ones nearest the eaves of the greenhouse got some severe frost damage.

Really though, it doesn't matter too much. It's still early in the season, we still have plenty of sweetcorn seeds from last year's kernels, and we already have a load of extra plants anyway. So a few here or there is nothing. 

But even though it's been cold, that hasn't stopped some of the other seeds from galloping away.

This is the Snowball Turnips and the Pak Choi. They're going great guns. Soon I'll have to consider transplanting them. The Pak Choi will be put into the green trays for the other greenhouse, whilst the turnips will be put into one of the beds outside. Yes, I know the seeds say "sow outdoors" but really when you have foxes walking over the beds and cats scratching them up as well, I'd much rather give them a bit of an indoor start before raking the beds flat and planting them in.

But one set which will definitely be remaining in the greenhouse will be the cucumbers. Unlike last year when mousie had a good rummage into them and we were only left with two, this year we have at leats 4. There are two other packs of 4, but I've yet to see signs of them.

Here's hoping.

Seeds, Seeds and more Seeds

 With a break from regular English tradition, it's a Bank Holiday... and it's not raining. Despite a cold wind blowing, it's blue skies and sunshine, so time to keep warm and sit in the greenhouse planting up loads of seeds. This time it's Edamame, Soya Beans, Peas, and Crown Prince.

The Beans and Peas were done with the old toilet roll trick. Well not quite, I had run out of actual toilet rolls, and used old coffee cup holders. These had been sitting in the shed for the past three years, but were still perfectly viable.

And of course, the old milk bottle were cut up for label and as temporary use as a water holder and support for the odd number of left overs for the Beans. The packet said there were on "average 50 seeds". So I'm guessing somebody ended up with 25 seeds if the average is anything to go by.

3D Printing for the Plot

I've had a 3D printer for a while now. I'm a big table-top board gamer and got the printer so I could make additions and improvements to the various games I own. I also made the mistake of printing specialist Lego parts for my neighbours children and they now keep peering into my window asking me "What have you printed?" At least I managed to give them some custom printed stuff for their respective birthdays.

Now Prusa is currently running a competition for Gardening Tools, which got me thinking about prints for the Allotment. There are definitely some needs here. First off, we have just had new gate locks fitted at the site to make it a little more secure. The old locks were simple padlocks wielded to a metal chain attached to the gates. Well the padlocks saw quite a bit of abuse over the years and the new locks are much better. As a result we have new keys, so I need something to distinguish the allotment key from my house key. Here's a simple keyring. (Placed along side one of my warning signs of course). I couldn't choose which colour combination I liked best. The Orange/White combo is good if you happen to drop your keys at dusk. But pretty much any combination of colours works.

But that begs the question what else could be made for the Plot?

Plant Labels? Yes there are numerous types there. It's dead easy for me to create labels of all shapes and sizes with OpenSCAD. There are also loads of clips, hooks, fittings and fasteners for Greenhouses.

I suppose I could also make some warning signs.

So what would you want making for your plot? Leave a comment below, or if you want me to make something for you, then get in touch.