Daikon under attack

Remember last week when I said the Daikon was off to a great start? Well I reckon the slugs must have heard me. Because today's visit to the plot showed that they'd been busy munching their way down one of the rows.

Hmmm. Well at least there are a few left so hopefully we'll get something out of them.

Meanwhile the Tomatoes are on a roll. Today's harvest of Toms, blackberries (and a few apples).

Still not sure about the sweetcorn though. The cobs do not appear to be fully formed, despite the plants looking great. Time will tell.

The 2016 Courgette Tally:

46

Daikon off like a rocket

It's been rather warm recently, so I pop down the allotment on Tuesdays and Thursdays to do a spot of watering. Sometimes the plot gets a bit thirsty.

So imagine my surprise when last Thursday I popped down the plot to find that the Japanese Daikon Radish had sprouted already.

Two things are surprising about this. Firstly that it's been a mere 5 days in the ground and already you can see the sprouts. It also shows where I failed to space them out properly, which means I've got a spot of re-arranging to do. But that's a different matter.

But the second surprising thing is that these seeds are out of date by SIX YEARS!

Yes these seeds I bought as a "10 pence special" back in 2012. There were already two years past their "use before" date. But not to worry. If seeds are kept cool and damp free then they should keep for a very long time. As these have shown. It's not unheard of for archaeologists to find seeds from digs hundreds of years old and then those same seeds go on to germinate and grow.

Anyhow, looking forward to some winter radish.

Elsewhere on the plot, things are trugging along as per normal. Which means that the courgettes are churning them out (though some I've now let alone to grow into seed marrows). The tomatoes are fruiting. And the Blackberries are now ripe and ready for picking.

The 2016 Courgette Tally:

38

Jammin'

There is a horrendous amount of Blackberries around at the moment. So over the weekend I made enough Jam to last me until the middle of next year.

Of course this has now presents me with a new problem. Namely the fact that I now appear to have run out of spare jam jars for the making of the pickled courgettes and beetroot which need to be done. I always keep spare jars and tuck them away of top of the kitchen cabinets until the time comes to re-use them. I rather favour the Lloyd Grossman pasta sauce jars as they are of a decent size. But I also have a lot of spare honey jars too. I find that these do not work as well for jam due to the screw lids on them. They have a tendency to lock down too tight. I asked a friend of mine on the allotment who has a hive about whether he can re-use them for honey... but apparently there are strict regulations which means that honey must be provided in brand new jars.

Oh, and I've also got myself a nifty new little label printer. Pretty useful little beastie. Dead easy to use. But certainly not the first time I've used these. In my guise as a web developer I've used it for a client to automatically print their order labels. Now I have one of my own to print labels for my concoctions.

Maybe it's about time I sorted out a logo for Plot 30?

Allotment Week Day 1: Brambles and Beds

Today, as promised, we went down to the Lower Morden Garden Centre first thing. Had a spot of early lunch whilst perusing the wares. Just some compost this time, but a voucher for £5 if we spend £25 within the next month. Like the man says "I'll be back."

Down on the plot, it's a glorious sunny day. But there is still a lot to do. Good job I have the whole of this week off work and can get cracking. So much to do.

First off, we have an infestation of brambles. Along the southern border. Though it would be nice to have a Blackberry wall, these are just too much of a nuisance here. So they really have to be cut down to size.

Easier said than done. There is a lot of long, dead grass mixed into it all. The thought occurred to me, why not burn it out. Or at least burn back some of the dead grass to see where you're cutting. So I liberally sprinkled some of my cooking juice over the area and set a spark against it. Much easier on that clump.

Unfortunately I can't do the same on the other clump as it is right next to next-door's beds with the weed fabric covering. If I were to torch this, then it might burn the weed fabric too, which is not something I want to do. But in the end, after four barrows of spiky bits, I got most of it down to ground level.

Meanwhile the wife was getting her flower bed ready. She's going all out on flowers this year (I'm still a veggie only guy. I don't do flowers unless they're edible).

She planted Lily-of-the-valley and Ranunculus, but has a whole load of other bee-friendly flowers ready to go in. It's going to be a right old mixture this year.

In the greenhouse, the infamous Courgettes get planted.

Well at least the first wave of them. We still have loads more seeds.

Spuds are starting to chit.

But outside, there is sooo much to do. Got to get new beds made, the mound needs sorting out. No courgettes on there this year. It's probably going to be green manure and meadow flowers.

So long as Mr Fox doesn't dig them up.

And yet more to do tomorrow, if the weather holds up. But at least the Strawberries seem happy.

Really diggin' it

Well there's a play on words for you. A really lovely sunny day to be down the allotment. But to start the day off you can't beat a cup of coffee and a breakfast.

Now in all my perusing around teh intarwebs, I haven't really come across many articles or videos that deal with cooking at the allotments. It may be that this is a little too complicated for most people, given the lack of facilities. Well I come from a Scouts and Venture Scouts background and have an active interest in camping, hiking and stuff like that. So I am keen to see what my little alcohol stove can do apart from brewing the kettle for a cuppa. So this morning I decided to have a go and cooking Bannock for breakfast.

Bannock is a Scottish bread traditionally cooked by pan frying it. So maybe it would be ideal to cook over an alcohol stove? There are many different recipes but they all come down to the basic same two ingredients. Flour and a rising agent. My mix is plain flour, milk powder, baking powder and a sprinkle of salt. So I took the dry mix in a bag ready to be used, mixed it with a little water and put it in one of my cooking tins.

Now this is where it all starts to go wrong. The alcohol stove puts out a very intense heat, albeit for a short duration, so it's ideal for heating water. But for cooking like this it doesn't seem to do well. The first thing that happened was that the base burned. The heat was kept in the billie due to the lid so it warmed up very fast. This cooked the outside well, but unfortunately it didn't heat the middle which was still a bit gooey. I think I'll have to find a way to make a small oven system to cook Bannock with this method. But breakfast wasn't all that bad. Have to figure out alternative recipes to cook.

The remains of breakfast.

The coke can alcohol stove in full burn.

Meanwhile outside...
It's been raining and my water barrels are full. I'm pretty sure it's going to rain some more at some point so any more rainfall would just be lost unless something is done about it. Well in the opposite corner of my little plot, actually on plot 30a, there is a water tank. It has no tap of means to fill it. It is simply dumped there. So I decided to siphon off my barrels into this tank. The next time it rains then these will fill up again. So we end up saving even more water.

That grey thing with "30" painted on it is a spare water tank.

As I mentioned in my round up, the Raspberries are not doing very well. So it's time for them to come to an end. But no sooner do I get down to their roots, do I find endless rhizomes of couch grass throughout. So the digging just keeps on getting bigger and bigger. After about my fourth wheelbarrow of rubbish I decided that I'd had enough digging for today and made a start on getting rid of the blackberry runners that were infesting the boundary between myself and my neighbour to the south. Spiky little buggers but I did manage to cut a lot back. Guess I'll have to do more digging to get the roots out. But as the light is beginning to fade in these short autumnal days, it's time to head out.

What started as this...

ended as this...

But as I was leaving I bumped into Paulina who was just arriving. We had a short chat about the Walnut Tree problem. More specifically about the Allelopathy problem it creates. My only source of info about walnuts comes from the RHS and Wikipedia. Neither of these say about the best way to remove the insidious chemicals which inhibit the growth of plants.

The Good, the Bad, and the Other Stuff

So this is the first full year of growing stuff. What worked out well and what didn't?

The Plot:
The Greenhouse. This was an excellent improvement. It allowed me to get things up and running in terms of seedlings. Protected me from the rain at times.
What wasn't so good was keeping plants in there longer than was strictly necessary. Must try and get them outside earlier next year. Also need to create a better doorway to allow bees in fertilise the plants, especially Tomatoes.

The Shed. Well it was a place to throw things to keep them out of the way. Nothing especially important about it, other than it's use as a support to the grape vine. The addition of the vine supports and wires held the shed together even better than it was normally supposed to do so. Although improvements will have to be made to the inside... such as clearing out the rubbish and installing some shelves.

The Beds. Well they kind of worked, but there are serious issues. Firstly the bed I placed next to the green house is just plain wrong. It is way too close to be used properly as I cannot get round it properly.

The Mound. The mound was really an accident due to the scraping of the topsoil last year. I needed to deal with the overgrown plot and scraping it all off seemed like a good solution. Well it worked, but only after a re-working later in the year. The mound then became the home of the Courgettes and didn't it do well. Well next year the mound will be reduced as I dig it out and sieve it into the new beds.


The Plants:

• Apple Trees - The crop from the main apple tree was superb. But most of the apples suffered from a severe infestation of critters. I'm loath to spray but that may be the only solution. The main apple tree needs a damn good pruning this winter. The third one needs to be staked upright. And all three need to be super mulched (not just the cardboard and wood chippings) to prevent brambles and bindweed.
• Artichoke - Produced a superb set of flowers. But the huge infestation of black fly prevented consumption. But the bees really loved those flowers. Not sure if the plant will regrow as it put up two huge flower stalks and promptly fell over. Will have to read up on the vagaries of Artichokes so see how it fares. 
• Basil - Started off well. But the excessive heat in the green house during July caused it to bolt to seed. Said seed has been duly harvested and we'll try again next year. Will have to consider splitting it. Some inside, some outside. Seems to grow well but attracts aphids like nobodies business.
• Blackberries - Well the brambles kept trying to take over. And I kept cutting them back. Needless to say they did not produce anything close to edible.
• Chillies - Grown well. A few small chillies. The plants should improve as time goes by.
• Courgettes - Slow start but once the got outside took off like a shot. Must consider getting them put outside earlier next year. Although they definitely need to be in a weed proof environment. The amount of courgettes produced meant that we were eating (and giving them away) for the better part of a couple of months. Maybe less plants next year. 
• Garlic - Started out well enough with green shoots. But then gave up and died. Perhaps it's better to start with seed rather than garlic corms that were left too long to home.
• Ginger - Failed dismally. You are supposed to be able to grow ginger from a spare root corm. Tried 5 separate pieces all of which simply rotted away.
• Grape Vine - Considering that previous years it has simply been growing on the ground, this year giving it something to grow up and support it seems to have helped immensely. Also the extra carpet mulching seems to have helped in keeping down the weeds around it. Gradually being trained to grow up and over the shed. 
• Lettuce - Planted in the wrong place. But still grew true and tasty. Kept us in salads during the summer months.
• Nasturtiums - Did well - for the black fly. Not much use with anything else.
• Onions - Grown from seed they seemed to do OK, though they never reached the size stated on the packet. Still I did get a nice pot of pickled onions to go with my fish & chips. 
• Oregano - Sadly it did not do so well. A combination of too small a container and the July weather meant it really didn't do as well as expected.
• Peas - Well the peas did get off to a reasonable start. The only problem was that I expected the sweetcorn to do better and provide them with better support. Unfortunately it also provided support for the bindweed as well and having the two together (peas and bindweed) made for a bad combination. As pulling out the bindweed inevitably meant that the peas were also unearthed. 
• Raspberries - Dismal. Bound in bindweed. Small straggly things. They are just taking up space and will be ripped out.
• Rhubarb - Superb. Even the new little plant at the back of the plot seems to have recovered due to me removing the surrounding weeds. Kept us in Rhubarb and ginger jam and the odd extra batch all summer. Have to chuck a load of compost on it over the winter to ensure it does the same again next year.
• Rocket - Did not go well. Bolted to seed just like the Basil. 
• Spinach - Planted mixed in with the lettuce. Not a good move. Also planted in the bed right next to the greenhouse which meant that getting at them was nigh on next to impossible. 
• Sunflowers - Seemed to be ok, but could have done with being put outside a little earlier. The rogue sunflower outside the greenhouse did much better. Will try and get the seeds from these to germinate next year.
• Sweetcorn - Went well(ish). Though they could have done with being turfed out of the green house a lot earlier. Got a few good cobs off the plants but they didn't seem to thrive and grow as tall as you would expect.
• Tomatoes - Varied success. Whilst we had a few, the keeping of the toms in the greenhouse meant that, although we had loads of flowers, they didn't get the necessary visits from the bees to allow them to set. I'll still keep some of them in the greenhouse, but I'll make sure that a good lot are outside.
• The unknown plant. Yeah that oddity. Not edible. No flowers. Made a one way visit to the compost bins.
• Weeds - That damn bindweed gets everywhere. Planting directly in the ground just encourages it and you constantly have to keep pulling it out. Very time consuming. The brambles kept getting in the way as well. Will take serious work to keep under control. 

Things to do:

• Build better beds. The beds at the moments are open to weeds. Need new beds with enclosed borders and base to stop errant weeds from getting in.
• Clearly defined border. On the north side of the plot is an access pathway. But the south side borders my neighbour. It is overgrown with brambles and bindweed further hampered by the apple trees. A clear border and mulched base needs to be installed to prevent weed encroachment.
• Paths. Get the place laid out a little better and have some clearly defined paths.