Radish

Update to first patch. Have now added a row of radish in between the broccoli and cauliflower as a bit of an experiment. Just used half of the seeds and will sow the other half under cloches in a few weeks when we have cleared more patches.

Have also successfully installed the water butt next to the shed and have rigged up some guttering and pipework, just need to wait for it to fill.

Yesterday also saw the acquisition of a key to the storage container at the end of the allotment site. It is good and secure and be very useful for storing our equipment in.

First patch planted

After a good 3 hours or so of toiling we have planted the first set of veg into the allotment. Quite a few weeds had sprouted over the week during the rain but we dug them out, turned the soil and raked it smooth.

 We now have a patch containing the Broccoli, Cabbage & Cauliflower Collection, carefully guarded from the weeds by some of that weed supressing fabric that we found in the old shed. Put down a good covering of homemade compost as well as some organic fertillizer. I will be making some cloche tunnels to protect them as soon as I’ve scrounged some polyhthene, but had to get them in today as the plugs were delivered a couple of days ago and were screaming to go in.

Field Trip

Just returned from 10 days visiting my parents in South West France. Went for a break but also managed to get lots of good info on growing things by looking at their veg plot. The climate they get there allows them to grow stuff we’d have no chance with, such as watermelons ect (although they’ve had a bad year this year, too much wet) I have plenty of tips for home made cloches, straw mulch, using old branches as cains and have also been able to collect a variety of seeds to try in the spring. I also have managed to scrounge some netting to protect our fruit bushes which they will bring over for me when they are next home.

will add pics soon

Clearing update

An updated image of how the site clearence is going. It’s taken the four of us less than a week and we’ve really cracked on.

 

Seed Order

Had a ‘meeting’ last night to decide what we wanted to start growing over the winter ready for next spring. I put in an order with Dobies today and we should be able to get planting over the coming month or two.

Seed order

174271     Onion Sets: Dobies Autumn Champion

173772     Garlic – Spanish Roja

438401     Radish Rougette seeds

480422     Oriental Leaf Vegetable Collection

480432     Broccoli, Cabbage & Cauliflower Collection

173861     Shallot Bulbs: Griselle

Organic or not?

Weve been having a long hard think over the past few months over weather to have an organic allotment or not. I think it finally came to the crunch yesterday as we started to clear some of the weed mass from the site.

To start of with, due to the sheer scale of the clearing job, we are going to use a chemical weed killer to get us going. Hopefully this will break the back of most of the work and then we can go on from there using only organic methods. I could do with finding out how long after using chemicals you have to wait before being able to have an organic claim? possibly a few seasons?

Ive built a makeshift compost heap where we can break down some of the smaller bits that we are pulling up but the remainder will have to be lugged to the tip. I also need to find out if we can burn waste in a drum on the site. This will certainly make things much easier and give us some ash to chuck on the compost.

First Action

Finally started work today, lots of clearing to do but are making good progress. Here are some before images showing some of the work done today.