Bank Holiday Weekend

This past weekend has been a bit of a mixed set. Whilst dodging showers, and pulling a two hour stint in the Allotment Shop, I did manage to get a reasonable amount of stuff done... it just doesn't look like it.

I've started sowing a second round of seeds of all the favourites. Beetroot, Courgettes, Carrots etc. Some of it to bring on to stagger the output, but mostly to produce stuff which didn't germinate. I am suspecting the compost from the office. There is a high amount of spent coffee grains in it. So much so, that when you water it, you get a very nice dark coffee like liquid seeping out, and a nice smell of coffee. Whilst this may do wonders for the smell, the coffee tends to make the acidity of the soil rather high and as a result, a lot of seeds failed to start... most notably, the Leeks, Pak Choi, and many of the wife's flowers.

The courgettes have been loving the soil though, and have gone off like a shot.

Outside it's still a little wild. the weeds have definitely raised their heads, to it's all hands to keep them under control. Unfortunately that also means the brambles. I borrowed a mattock from a friend on the site and started doing some major damage to those invasive bramble roots.

The mattock was brand new, never been used. I'm not convinced that they have the right handle for it though, because the head of the mattock was somewhat loose and it didn't go to the end of the handle. Needless to say though, it certainly did the job of hacking through those deeper roots with ease. Once you got into the swing of things, you could really work up a sweat. Mind you, it played hell with my asthma too.

I started putting down the beds into the more wilder parts of the plot. A new delivery of wood chip went down over cardboard to try and keep the bindweed under control. Even though it still keeps making an appearance, I just have to keep plucking it wherever I see it in an attempt to get rid of it. This will be a long term game though.

The first bed went in OK, but as I am working my way across the plot, it gets a little harder as we get into wilder territory. There is also a hazard of left over spuds.

These must have been left behind after last years Charlottes failed to work properly in the ground. The bags worked well, the ground not so. But it seems that some in the ground obviously did survive as they have poked their heads up right where I'm trying to build beds.

So I guess I'm going to have to leave a hole in the layout to handle the rogue spuds. Mind you judging be the number of grass tussocks that I've dug out, I am considering simply raking the far side level and then covering it with weed membrane in an attempt to compost down the grass. That might make for a better option. I'll let you know how it goes.

Building stuff (and weeding!)

A little bit of rain and the weeds go crazy.

No I didn't bother taking photos of the weeds. You all have your own, so you know what they look like. They're popping up all over. Out with the hoe and bring 'em all back down to size... except for the bind weed which is popping up shoots no matter where you turn. I keep pulling them out whenever they rear they're ugly little heads, but as the ground is so full if it, it seems a never ending task.

Which is why I'm building the beds. However I left the wood out yesterday after building one bed. Today I need to cut lots of the corners. But of course, cutting wet wood is not fun as the saw tends to stick, so instead I turned my attention to wood that is inside.

I've had this little stack of pallets for a while. It serves as a table of sorts, in that it holds the cooker and kettle. But it's not very practical because it takes up so much room. Time for a little creative attention I think.

There are 5 pallets stacked there. So I chose two with long slats to turn into the legs, and two with short cross slats to work as shelves. With a diagonal brace at the back to stop it all shifting around, it seems to work well now... and I have a pallet left over.

Kettles on. Time for coffee.

Meanwhile, the strawberries in the greenhouse, have flowered and started producing.

Beetroot seedlings are coming on a treat. They'll soon be ready to go outside. Time to plant some more.

Outside, the Apple tree is now in full blossom.

And what's this?

Potatoes are sprouting. Things are finally starting to get going. Gotta get the rest of these beds made so I can get my beans in. Of course, now I want it to stop raining and dry out so I can cut this wood. Typical! Never satisfied.

Building stackable raised beds

It's time to get some more beds made. The last lot of stackables are currently in use, so I need some more. This is how to make raised beds which you can stack as high as you want. Grab your weapons of choice.

Firstly choose your wood. It doesn't really matter about size with this guide, because it is applicable to any size, any depth and any combination of beds. The thing you need to look out for is consistency of construction. For my beds, I chose 1.8m gravel board (that's 6ft in old money). Now you could make the beds square, but for me I want my beds easily accessible so .9m wide is suitable. Simply chop them in two.

Next you need to make corners. You can use square posts, but I chose triangular posts since they seem to blend in a little better. Cut them the same length as the width of your bed boards.

When you have a nice pile of them...

... then you are ready to start assembling. This is where it starts to get tricky. If you were an expert craftsman and measured everything properly then you can fix everything together perfectly square and it should all be a nice tight fit. However this is cheap rough cut wood, cut by eye with almost no measurements. Cutting the boards in half was a rough guess, the cuts were not perfectly square since it was done with a hand saw. So nothing is at it's best so we need to take this into account when putting everything together.

The corner posts need to be screwed (or nailed) to the boards at a slight angle. Because the length of the posts is exactly the same as the width of the boards they need to be slightly offset to allow for the stacking of them. I find that pre-drilling the holes helps immensely.

Put two screws in to hold the post in place. There needs to be a consistent offset (I chose the length of a screw - top right) and the top part of the board should be level with the edge of the post and the other end of the post sticking out a small way, about 1cm is fine. What this will do is place the posts at an inward sloping angle to allow for any mis-measurement to be accounted for when it all comes together.

You could build the whole frame straight away, but I chose to make up a whole load of end-pieces first. Building in small sections makes things much easier.

It doesn't matter whether you choose the small lengths or big lengths as the main part of you beds, but when you make your choice, you stick with it throughout.

Now you need to build the bed itself. Take your other boards and do a similar offset when you add them. Using a table or saw-horse is essential when trying to put these together.

Again the top of the board should meet the edge of the board already attached to the posts. This means that the top of you bed is a consistent size (1.8m x 0.9m in my case). Whereas the bottom of the boards are now slightly wider, with about 1cm additional space all the way around. Your beds are now stackable.

All this was pretty easy except when you get disturbed on the plot. Fortunately today's disturbance was a welcome sight from a fellow allotmenteer and blogger. Jerry from the Allotment Gardener website dropped by.

We had a good old chat about allotmenteering and stuff. I suspect we may meet up again at other event around London. Especially the Sutton Chilli Fiesta.

Meanwhile in the greenhouse, Mr Mouse is trying his hardest to hide the sweetcorn seeds (left over from making popcorn) in the Sweet Pea seed tray.

We put the sweet corn kernels down as a kind of distraction to stop him getting at the courgettes and digging his way through the other seed trays. Well it seems he's just making a nuisance of himself now. Time for traps.

Not that the apple tree cares... it's just starting to come into blossom.

Allotment Week Day 7: Shed and wrap up.

Today was supposed to be the building day for the rest of the beds. Just one problem. B&Q didn't have the right size of boards. They had 3m and 2.4m boards, but I was after the 1.8m boards. So as to not have a wasted trip I decided to get some wood preserve for the shed.

The shed was put up in my last Allotment Week back in 2013. And since then it's withstood the storms, clear outs, and slow stood in the sun and rain and got faded over time.

So it's time for a bit of a face lift.

Before...

After...

Much better looking I'm sure you'll agree.

Although I didn't managed to get a lot of what I wanted to do on the plot done. There has been enough changes that the plot is now looking slightly organised. Certainly a lot better than the ramshackle that it was.

However the beds are getting somewhat important as I really need to get the beans in. So I guess that will have to be done without fail next weekend.

Allotment Week Day 6: More seeds on the top shelf

So Mickey has done quite a fair bit of damage over the past couple of days. Out of the 60+ courgettes that were planted, only one (yes one) survived being dug up and eaten. Time for a different strategy.

Time for the Top Shelf.

Hopefully Mickey can't get up there to get his tasty treats. If that doesn't work, then it's mousetrap time.

It's a bit windy today. We had rain first thing, but by the time we got to the plot it was blue skies. But the wind started blowing things around again. The bamboo canes that I used to mark out the Soya bean patch were all blown across the plot. So it got me thinking. If I lean them up against something then they'll get blown over again. I need a place to put them. I've seen some people use wood pallets as cane storage. Nice idea, and I've got pallets to spare. But no real room to put them out at present. I was toying with the idea of using wire and making a couple of loops on the greenhouse to put them there. But there is no suitable gap where I can put the wire through. But how about the shed? Problem there is that the shed is covered with the grape vine.

But the shed is raised off the ground. Tadaah! I have an idea. Out with the wire.

Keeps them off the ground, and ready to hand.

I've dug the rest of the plot over, so now we're ready to get the beds done and start planting out the beans and such. Beds? Err, none around. Got to get cracking making some more beds. Drill on charge tonight, and a trip to B&Q in the morning. I hope they sell mouse traps too.