An extraordinary thing...

Imagine my surprise. a British Bank Holiday completely unspoilt by rain. Time for a trip down the allotment.

Well there is plenty to do. Firstly the warmer weather means that the greenhouse is getting hot. Almost too hot. Time to put the window in that I missed off when I built it.

 Ahhh, feels a little cooler now. But at least the warmth in the greenhouse has sent to seedlings off on a massive growth spurt.

Time to get the next batch started so I have staggered plantings.

Oh, those Sweetcorn are doing well. (Front foreground above) time to take them out and put them in the ground.

At the base of each one, I also planted two or three peas. The idea is that the corn will grow up and shelter the peas somewhat as well as giving them something to climb around. It may not work but I have plenty of peas available for planting.

So what else needs doing? Ah yes, the other small apple trees need protection from the hoards of weeds.

Newspaper and then bark chips. Hopefully it will keep them at bay. The Apple is just coming into blossom now.

Maybe I should submit this image to the Monthly Photo competition.

I really need to tidy the shed somewhat. Bit of a mess in there.

The rhubarb has gone rampant. It's almost ready to harvest the first stems.

And finally there is that big mound of soil that is sitting in the middle of the plot.

I kind of messed up when I got the digger in to deal with this. I should really have put it to the side of the plot where I could throw a weed proof membrane over it and use it to grow courgettes. Fortunately there is somebody else on site who has hired a mini-digger. 15 minutes later and it's all shifted.

Of course the uncovered ground now makes excellent hunting grounds for my new little friend.

Looking sorry for itself

The winter hasn't been kind.

It's been a typical British Winter. ie. Rain, Rain, dampness and more Rain. All in all it has meant that I still haven't been able to get that huge pile on the allotment sorted out. So when I recently popped in to check everything out, I notice that there is now a light coat of green over the pile. This in the dreaded couch gross trying to re-assert itself again. Well it's not going to happen.

In part of the plot which has been cleared, the constant rain has turned it to a sodden mess. There is now a faint soft sheen of mud across the lower areas showing faint footprints on the foxes. Yes, they're back. After the digger came in and ripped up their old place they moved out. But now they have dug themselves into the soil mound. Well sorry you four footed foxy friends, but as I clear that down you're going to have to move again. Guess I need to get that shed up so you can move in down below.

But the Winter months allows me to asses what I will be growing over the next year. What I want to grow is heirloom varieties of veggies. Why? Well for starters why grow common varieties which you can buy at the supermarket? Possibly they could be grown tastier given the fact that a lot of veggies are picked whilst unripe and left to ripen in transit, but there is no way a small scale grower could compete with modern farming techniques. It's a losing battle. So it's better to go for better taste in terms of plants that you would never come across in the grocery aisle.

That's not to say that I won't be growing stuff that we wouldn't eat. That is just pointless. So have been trawling through a couple of seed sites to determine exactly what would be suitable. Two of the most useful are Real Seeds and Just Seed. I think I will end up ordering from both of them.

Lets talk about soil

When I took over this plot, it was overgrown. But the chap who owned it before me certainly did one thing right. The soil quality is fantastic. Something I really want to keep. After all it is the soil which makes the whole thing work.

But people don't appreciate the value of it. Now is your chance to start doing something about it.

It is Global Soil Week. OK, it was. But that still doesn't mean you cannot be complacent. Learn about soil. Better yet. Learn how to make it. Composting is a vital part of the process. We have a compost bin at home. All of our organic waste goes into it and the Council then take it off to a big recycler and produce industrial tonnes of it. You cannot beat it. But people still abuse this process. There have been reports of people who have bought this compost and found plastic, metal and allsorts of rubbish in their compost. Garbage in. Garbage out. It applies to many things as well as the old meme in computing.

We have waste bays at the allotments. But all the council do is come along and scrape up everything and take it away. Why? Because people treat it simply as a bin. Why waste essential material like that. We really do need our own, industrial strength composting system on the allotments. Perhaps it's something I should propose for the future.

Pruning the Vine

So last week I put a plastic cover over the pile in an attempt to keep the rain off. It worked. But it didn't solve the initial problem of the fact that the soil was too wet. Of course having the cover on did keep a lot of the rain out, as evidenced by large puddles in the dips of the cover, but is also prevented the soil from drying.

There are still too many large claggy lumps to allow it to be worked properly. But one way or another I'm going to get those roots out.

So I need to turn my attention elsewhere if I'm to have a productive day down the plot. The only other work that needs doing is trying to sort out the mess known as the Grape Vine.

It's been left to run wild the past couple of years. Fortunately grapes will withstand serious prunage. Its also the right time of year to deal with it. So out with the secateurs.
A short while later and it's looking a lot clearer. I also pulled out as much of the dead bindweed as I could get. There is a huge metal guide buried in there which will take some serious cutting with a hacksaw to get out as the vine has grown through and around it. But for the meantime I can leave it in there.

Last thing to do today, is protect the rhubarb. Not having any straw I opted to an upturned bin.

It's not ideal. But hopefully it will do. Next year I want to enjoy the rhubarb again.

Water water everywhere...

The is only one job on the plot at the moment. Sieve the soil. Except it's been too wet. I can't force the soil to dry (cue mental image of extra large solar dryer frying the soil) but I can stop it getting wetter... sort of.

One of the pieces of rubbish I inherited when I took over the plot was a large piece of polyethylene sheet. It's split down the middle but on the whole it's pretty serviceable. So it's time to put it into action as a rain cover.

A few bits of wood to hold it in place, and next week I should have some nice dry(ish) soil to work with.

Digging up roots

So now I have two big piles of "stuff" on the plot, I gradually have to start clearing it. Not as easy as you might think.
Last week we made a good start by sieving the soil. This week there is just myself, and it's been raining. The soil is like glue. Big claggy lumps of it. So sieving is well and truly out of the question. So instead I opt for simply digging through and pulling out the long couch grass roots by hand. Due to the digging by the mini digger the soil is pretty loose so I can easily grab hold of the roots and pull without fear of breaking them.

But even so, it's still back breakingly hard work. And I've barely touched the pile. Guess I'm going to be doing this until spring.

Clearing the Plot - Part 3

So now we have two huge piles of "stuff" in the middle of the plot. What do we do with it?
Sieve it of course. I don't know how many tons of earth and associate vegetative matter we have, but one thing is clear, it's going to take weeks to get through it.

I managed to persuade the Other Half to come down to the plot today to help out. She's never done that before. It's only ever been me. But she was justifiably proud of the sieved pile she made. She did the sieving, I did the shovelling and carting away of the rubbish.
But there is still a long way to go.

It's about time we started on the getting the wood for the beds. But I have a nasty feeling that we will have to put down a plant root proof membrane to prevent the couch grass growing back in via the bits under the soil. We have taken off the topsoil, but there are still the odd roots showing through here and there. Guess I'll start Googling and see what other people suggest.