Bed Prep

It's been a glorious sunny day. So I pushed the reluctant Wife out of bed at about 11am (she likes a lie in!) to get ready to go down the plot. We have a lot of work to do.

First we need to decide what to sort out, because there is a lot to do. The Greenhouses need a good sorting. We've been using them as dumping grounds.

But we eventually decide that we may as well get on with bed prep. The beds are nice and soft after all the water we've had, so it's pretty easy to dig through all the weeds and get them sorted out. I also finish dealing with the compost which I started last week. All of the beds get a liberal bucket or three of the compost whilst all the big bits go back into the new compost bins. We've already fill one of them, but the second has plenty of room.

The beds are looking ready for the year ahead now.

Sadly though, I have to say goodbye to some old friends. I've had this pair of gloves right from the very start.

They are basic no-brand gloves, but they have survived well since 2012. They are now more hole than glove. Fortunately I have a few spares. They're not as tough as this pair, but they should still keep me going for a while.

Anyhow, The Wife has been doing her part in her raised flower bed.

So the plot is gradually coming back to life after the long winter. There are some signs of life returning.

So we're on our way. It's going to be a long haul. But we'll get there in the end.

Bit of a hair cut

 I need a hair cut. I haven't had it cut for over a year now. Nor have I shaved. So at present I look like the Wild Man of the Woods. I'm going to have to try and stop the birds nesting in there come spring. But that's not the only thing that needs a haircut.

The Grape Vine hasn't been trimmed since it lost all it's leaves last Autumn. So finally today the weather is good enough for me to venture out (with mask of course) to get to the allotment for a while. Needless to say the Vine was in dire need of trimming. So that was first on the To-Do list today.

So with my trusty secateurs I gave it a good going over. I also fixed the hanging roof board which you can see in the picture above.

Next job was the compost bins. I've been filling them non-stop since, I don't know when. At least a year. And they're now full. So the oldest one I unearth and started a new bin. Some of the large pieces I dug out went into the new bin and the remains I dug into some of the beds which were last seen under water. They were a bit stinky, but the soil was loose and easy to turn. With the new compost they should be OK. I was rather gratified to see a large number of worms so it looks like they'll be OK.

By the time I got round to dealing with those I got the call from The Wife to go and pick her and shopping up. So thats all for today. At least with the weather getting a little warmer and the daylight getting a little longer, I may be able to get down here a little more often. Mind you, there were a lot of people on the allotment so I'm guessing there will be a bit more company down here. Masks at the ready!

Snow and Ice

 It's not often that I go to the plot in Winter these days. But today I had to do our bi-weekly trip to dump the compost bags which were building up in the kitchen and were getting a little, shall we say, fragrant. But today also was when London got that rare commodity known as snow.

The plot is of course flooded. It usually is during the winter, but the ice has put down a covering across it that makes it look as if solid... it's not. Nothing like putting your foot down into a pile of snow and realising that it's not snow after all and now you have ice cold water in your shoes.

Remind me to come back in February.

End of year roundup

 So once again another year has passed. Oh boy did it pass. This year has been unprecedented in so many ways. The Pandemic has meant that the allotment is the only place I can escape to.

As I mentioned in last year's roundup, I have some serious health issues, and the Covid virus would really see me undergoing some serious issues if I caught it. So I have been on lockdown since the start of March. The only places I can go is Home and the Allotment. I can't go shopping. I can't go see friends. I am essentially trapped. So the only way I can escape is by going to the allotment.

January - This was the last time I met anybody on the allotments officially. Yes I had a few distanced chats - shouting across the plots etc. - but this was the last time I met anybody indoors. It was also when I started thinking about turning the plot into a weather station and remote monitoring/wildlife camera station. An idea which still hasn't fully come to fruition, but I have made some significant steps towards achieving it.

February - As is typical for us, Feb is when we really start work on the plot. The Winter is just really too damp and wet to be doing much down there otherwise. So we started getting the beds ready for the year's planting.

March - This marked the start of my first and only holiday for the year. I had two that I had to use up before the end of the financial year. And even with that I was still carrying over 5 days to the next year. And this was also the time when Lockdown started. I was kicked out of the office at the start of the month, well before the lockdown was ordered. Given that I was a high-risk person, my Boss ordered me to go home. So when my "holidays" started I had pretty much planned to be at the allotment anyway. So the end of March saw the daily trips to the plot to get things up and running. This was also the time we started planting our seeds.

April - Still more bed preparations as my "holidays" continued. A couple of days were lost to weather and dodgy knees, but we managed to get the plot back into shape ready for the rest of the year. The way things were looking, we would need the food. It's not often you get pictures of the insides of supermarkets that have totally empty shelves. Towards the end of April we started planting out some of the seedlings that we had germinated in the greenhouse and we had our first major setback of the year if the form of a hungry mouse.

May - This was our second major setback. Although no frost had been forecast, there was a cold wind blowing from the South and it killed our Crown Prince squashes and Courgettes that we had planted out. Steve sent me some replacement Crown Prince seeds which were gratefully received. However after this the weather got warmer. A lot warmer. We had a small heat wave that sent a lot of our stuff straight into bolting to seed.

June - The rains came. And so did the weeds. Whilst we could now enjoy our strawberries of the Strawberry Empire, it was offset be just trying to keep the weeds under control. The earlier heatwave from the driest spring on record had put paid to any New Zealand Spinach. We had completely lost the whole crop. Either it didn't germinate properly or the heat killed it, but we ended up ripping out the bed and eventually planted replacement tomatoes in there.

July - Yet more weeds. It seems that the weeds have embedded themselves quite a bit due to the previous year's lack of attention. We really have to be more ruthless in the future.

August - The courgette harvest was well under way and this tine I tried my hand at pickling them. I'm not sure how well the pickles turned out as we only ever seem to eat pickles with Fish'n'Chips and we haven't been anywhere near a chippy for the whole year. So I guess they'll have to keep a while longer. Meanwhile our potato crop was started to be uncovered and we found that although we had a pretty reasonable count, all of the tubers were on the small size. Not sure why they turned out that way, but even so, they were quite delicious.

September - we were still collecting huge amounts of courgettes and tomatoes. Indeed they formed a huge part of our meals this month. Throw in some pasta and you pretty much have a ready made dinner. And the biggest surprise to the show was the Crown Prince squash. Were were delicious. This is the first year we've tried growing them, and I can say for a fact that they will now become a staple part of our regular growing season.

October - We were still dealing with the weed issues. When we inherited the plot our three main problems were brambles, bind weed and couch grass. The brambles we managed to deal with within our first couple of years, the bind weed has become less of a problem as the years progressed, but the couch grass is still as persistent as ever. This was the month when we got the final crop of our chillies. We've had quite a decent result this year. Not as much as in previous years because we didn't get the planted into large enough pots. Those that we did made a good show, but the others were only so-so. The main idea here is to plant them in tall/deep pots at least 25/30cms (10-12 inches in old money) and keep the bottom parts of the pots moist/wet. People say keep your chillies dry, but I've found that if you keep the bottom of the pots wet and only ever water from the bottom upwards then the plants will take as much as they need and produce a decent number of flowers and fruit.

November/December - we had planned on growing over the winter time. Field beans have been recommended and I was all for it, but the shear amount of work I have on my plate due to the Pandemic has meant that I have not had chance to do much in the way of outside interests, so sadly the plot is getting neglected over the winter time and we'll see how things progress next year.

The Pros:

• Crown Prince - These will now become a staple of the allotment. Tasty and they keep for ages.
• Tomatoes - Next year we are going to be growing a larger number of Toms. Normally we go for the cherry toms, but I am going to be growing some of the larger varieties so we can start making some passata.
• Chillies - Once again a good crop from our Apache chillies. We've kept a whole load of the seeds so same again next year we hope.
• Sweetcorn - We actually got proper sweet corn this year. Not the pop-corn style we've had before. So, we'll be going for those again next year.
• Strawberries - The Strawberry Empire keeps going from strength to strength. Although the beds are getting a little weed infested, so next year we might have to do some serious digging and re-planting.

The Cons:

• Our New Zealand Spinach failed to materialise. Not sure why, but it just didn't happen.
• Also the loss of seeds from the mouse put back our cucumber harvest.

Objectives for next year.

• Bigger Tomato harvest. Mainly for canning purposes.
• Bigger Crown Prince harvest. Because they are so damn tasty.
• Less Courgettes - because there is only so much that you can eat and/or give away.
• Try and turn the back of the plot into a seating/cooking area rather than the wilderness that it is at the moment. Of course that means that I have to be able to go shopping to get materials for seats... which is dependent on how well we can control the Pandemic. At the moment infections are rising because people just don't seem to be taking it seriously despite "Tier 4" lockdowns.

Stay safe people. See you all next year.

It's looking a little un-loved

 Well we've been having miserable weather. And what with the new lockdown, it's all looking a little forlorn, forgotten and unloved at the moment.

Indeed, about 2 minutes after I took this photo the skies opened and it absolutely threw it down. But by that time I was just getting to the allotment gate. I dashed out of the car to close it, getting a bit of a soaking in the short duration, then cranked up the heating in the car to dry off.

W're not growing anything over the winter. Whilst I did briefly entertain the idea of growing Field Beans and/or garlic over winter, this year has been a bit of a washout. So we decided that we're going to give the plot a bit of a break and concentrate on fixing up the house a bit. We'll start again in January.

Or February.