The reason for all this frantic marmalade making (below), redcurrant jellying (right) and, as soon as I can get round to it, bramble jellying and pumpkin chutney making is that we are intending to move house.

We've accepted an offer on our house and started an inexorable process of clearing out 26 years worth of junk from the loft and goodness knows how many years worth of fruit from 2 freezers.



As we haven't yet found anywhere to move to it looks likely that most of our stuff will have to be packed up and put into storage. I'm far too frugal (mean) to let my stored fruit go to waste so I'm suddenly terribly busy in the kitchen.

...and the garden. We're carting the wonderful home-made compost up the hill to the allotment, where the quality of compost is pretty iffy at best. (You put grass cuttings and sticks in and they come out again several years later looking very similar but with an added ants nest)

We live in exciting times!
Happy gardening (if only I had time!)

Animal antics

I had an argument with this fox. He wanted to tear up the plastic sheeting on the next door allotment. I told him he was a naughty fox and he was to leave it alone. He grinned and lay down to wait for me to go home.

Earlier I had been digging over where the leeks had just been lifted. I dug, then raked the soil and a robin who had been watching me couldn't contain himself any longer and flew over, landed on the rake I was still holding and picked one of those ginger wiggly centipedey things from the tines of the rake!

Somehow I feel that these creatures have got the upper hand!

Happy gardening  

fat mouse

 If you leave a load of fat balls in the shed and forget to put them into an airtight tin you get a very happy and over-fed mouse!


Happy gardening

Sitting in the sun.....

I planted broadbean seeds today, straight into the soil.  I usually sow seeds at home and then bring them to the allotment as young plants but this year our garden is in mid transformation so there's nowhere at all to put seedtrays. They should be ok, the ground wasn't too soggy and forked over quite nicely.

The surprisingly warm February sun had brought out lots of people, oh, and frogs. Our pond was busy with seasonal froggy business, but no spawn yet. The pond next door, however was completely tapioca'd over. I wonder what makes them choose a particular place? Strange beasts, frogs.

Roo and girlfriend Helen came up to check out the view, and stayed for a while to sit and enjoy the sun.

Unfortunately they sat on the bench!!

Oops!!

I think I should put a sign on it in case anybody else fall through it and sues me

Happy gardening

Another year, another post

Rainbow with dark clouds a few weeks ago while I was
preparing beds for spring sowing.

Beautiful ice circles placed in the dead plum tree. Made me want to make fused glass pieces to hang here as a more permanent feature.



Happy new year and happy gardening

Ten past five and it's dark. The clocks changed last night so winter's really on it's way but this morning our little bunch of allotment gardeners were basking in the warmth of another lovely Sunday. Tee shirt weather.

I collected these squashes last time we were up there. I forgot to take the camera again today so you'll just have to imagine photos of us clearing away the runner bean canes, harvesting the last of the sweetcorn and placing the badger proof cage over some brassicas. I don't think the brassicas are in any danger from badgers, whitefly are more of a problem, but it had to go somewhere, so that's where it went.

That's probably it till next weekend though. The days can be wonderful but oh dear, the nights are so long.

Happy gardening

Successes and also rans

An amazing weekend of record-breaking temperatures and lots and LOTS of clearing up after a very mixed summer.

I've decided I'll just make a list of what went well and what didn't do so well this year and number one on the list has got to be this poor old blog. I don't know what's happened really, inertia maybe. I keep forgetting to take the camera with me and I seem to be spending quality blogging time on facebook these days!

So....a strange growing season weatherwise, but good results from:
climbing french beans - Blue Lake
onions - Red Baron and Stuttgarter
garlic - from previous season
potatoes - Charlottes
broad beans - Meteor and Bunyard's Exhibition
lettuce - Lollo Rosso and Little Gem
runner beans - Scarlet Emporer
apples - the big tree (unknown) and James Grieve
raspberries - Autumn Bliss
strawberries - unknown (I got them all muddled up when I moved them)
spring onions
radishes
artichokes
rocket - self seeded (all over the place)
rhubarb
beetroot
Squash - Crown Prince and Pattie Pan
spinach beet
oops, forgot the leeks. Bit small but loads of them and they went on for ages.


Also rans:
giant pumpkin (only one)
carrots - they may be ok but they'll be very small
lettuce - Webbs
pak choi
butternut squash
courgettes - really, really rubbish this year
tomatoes - gardener's delight and moneymaker (hit by blight just before they ripened)

The windowsill yield was small but tasty, a few peppers (black and white, weird colours for peppers) three cucumbers from one plant and some very long, thin aubergines. Oh, and a couple more tomato plants, very leggy but not very productive.

Still in the ground at time of going to press:
a selection of brassicas, sprouts, purple broccoli, Greyhound cabbage, Romanescu broccoli
parsnips - Tender and True
celery
this year's leeks (planted out today)

So...overall it looks like the successes won. Sometimes you need to write things down to see the whole picture and it's not as gloomy as I'd thought. I'm glad. The distinct periods of cold and wet and hot and dry certainly took their toll, but not on all of our produce. Some even benefited.

And it's been great being there, up on the hill in all weathers, digging, weeding, chopping the grass and picking the crops. I've enjoyed it. It gives me great contentment

Happy gardening. ( I bet I left something off my list)

Pattie pan squashes

These little squashes are in a basket in the kitchen at the moment because I haven't looked up what I should do with them yet. They seem more pumpkin-like than courgette-like, but I think I should read some recipes.

I bought a few interesting looking squashes as plantlets and this one has been very successful, lots of little pattie pans are forming, all very jolly and yellow.

Cute.
Happy gardening

Potato harvest

The spuds are lovely this year. I only did Charlottes, and of course they're all ready at once, but yesterday I dug up the first few plants and brought them home to sort into "eat immediately" and "store in a sack for later" My habit of discovering them by sticking a fork right through them leads to quite a pile of "eat immediatelys".

I've filled the space already with a wigwam of mangetouts. If I can get two crops from most of my beds then I feel I've done ok.

Dinner last night was mostly home-grown, the first time this year I think. Delicious new potatoes with mint, broad beans and spinach. I can't claim to have grown the duck though!

Happy gardening (whatever you grow)

Connected

Sad, isn't it? Here I am, crammed into the shed in the rain checking my email!

Oh the joys of a smartphone!

I used to be quite contented with a cup of tea and a spider for company before I became connected to the other sort of web.

happy gardening (and surfing in the shed)

Anteaters?

Unlikely, but there was an ant's nest at the bottom of the hole!
Happy gardening!

Too windy

We've been away. We came back yesterday and went to have a look and see what's to be done. Lots!

So....today I cut the grassy edges and did a bit of weeding. I planted out the sweetcorn too. Some strawberries were ready and lots of rocket too. But mostly, the new plants are getting on with their business of growing...slowly, because of the lack of rain. Oh, and the WIND. It's been windy since before the 1st of May! The runner beans, french beans and courgettes are all suffering from wind scorch. The leaves discolour, the plant fails to thrive unless sheltered in one of the many plastic bottle cloches we've used this year. The little brassicas in the photo are ok but mostly, everything this year is struggling on our exposed hillside. I do wish it would calm down and let my plants grow!

Happy gardening (and hope the wind drops)

Weed of the month

Forget-me-nots. All over the place. I'd have hauled them out weeks ago but I read somewhere that they're very attractive to honeybees so I've given them a reprieve.

Only for a little bit longer. Watch out little blue weeds - your days are numbered!

Happy gardening

The compost fairy

Well, so much for sowing seed! Of the seeds sown last time I posted, only three tiny parsnip seedlings have appeared and I don't know what happened to the rest. So I've sown some more, just parsnips this time and I also added a row of beetroot next to the potatoes. Over the last week or so I've been planting out pak choi, spinach beet and lettuce seedlings, but the big job has been watering (an hour and a half each time I go) and there's still no sign of rain!

The big thrill this post is that the compost fairy (burly bloke called Joe) has been, so I've now got plenty of good organic matter to dig in or spread over my plot. Just in time to enrich the bed I'm getting ready for the cane beans. Excellent timing.

Happy gardening

J admiring Sandy and Roger's plot next door.

Our own plot is now strimmed (thanks J) and dug over (that was me) and is looking nice and tidy but a bit empty. The garlic, broad beans and onions are coming up. The potatoes are yet to appear but the rest of the beds that aren't given over to permanent planting are waiting for their new occupants. I've sown some seed, carrots, parsnips and spring onions but they haven't appeared either and I think they may have dried out during the very hot week we've just had. So.......




.........I've been popping seeds into pots at home like a crazy obsessed thing. I didn't even stop when I ran out of windowsill (there's more under the piano) I can't wait till they're big and strong enough to plant them out. Let's hope there's going to be enough room for them all!





Happy gardening (exciting, isn't it?)

Rhubarb rhubarb

This week, I've been mostly eating leeks and rhubarb. Actually some of the rhubarb's still sitting in the fridge waiting for me to do something with it. The leeks are good though.

Both my rhubarb plants were flowering but I cut the strange, knobbly flowers off because I'm told they waste valuable stalk producing energy. Probably a good thing, but I often don't really know what to do with my rhubarb. This week I bundled up a little pile of stalks and took them into work. Somebody there knows what to do with them. They disappeared anyway!

Happy gardening. Enjoy your rhubarb.

Early drought

It's been another lovely day but already the dry weather is adding the extra job of watering to all the other work we do at this time of year.

During the last couple of weeks I've put in some Charlotte potatoes, the rest of the broadbeans (Bunyards Exhibition) and sown a couple of rows of parsnips and carrots but the ground is now so dry that I need to go and water every couple of days. It is really, really early in the year for all this watering. An effect of climate change maybe? Or just weather, which as we all know, can be unpredictable.

Whatever the reason, I can't just leave my newly emerged plants or germinating seeds to dry out!

Happy gardening (and watering)

No excuses

Really, no excuses. It's spring. I've had the week off work to get the allotment started for the year and it's been great. There's been real warmth in the sun and the soil's turned over nicely. And I feel great too, aching obviously, but purposeful. Invigorated.


At the start of the week I did a lot of digging and forking through the great clods left by winter, hoiked out all the weeds that had taken over and started a tiny bit of planting. So far, only broad beans (Meteor) and red and white onions (Red Baron and Stuttgarter) But most of the groundwork is done, my potatoes are chitting and there's another packet of broad beans ready to go in the moment I get time. Oh, and today (this is the icing on the cake) we have frogspawn in the pond!


I wish I had another week off next week!
Happy gardening

Ice Ice baby

This little iceberg was on the water tank this afternoon. It was a glorious day, cold but sunny and the first time I've ventured up the hill for ages.

I kept warm by digging up leeks and sprouts and then clearing some weeds.

My neighbour was planting asparagus! Very exciting. There are a couple of asparagus beds already on our allotments but I don't think it would work terribly well in my rather clayey soil. I'll stick to the leeks and sprouts for now. Maybe next year.

I returned home to a house that's as icy cold as the allotment. The wretched boiler hasn't worked today so apart from one room that we've managed to warm up with a fan heater, I might as well be spending the evening in the shed!

Happy gardening. Brrr.

Freezing fog

Sunday morning. Freezing fog hung over the city and wrapped the allotment in a cold, wet blanket. Sounds were either muffled or strangely amplified. I went for a walk and spent some time listening to snorty gruntings from some bushes near the compost loo but didn't see what was making them. Whatever was making them was probably complaining about the cold!

The parsley was completely frozen so I harvested it and put it straight into the freezer when I got home. Herbs freeze well and seem to taste exactly the same as fresh. I've never found dried herbs to be as effective.


I also took home a nice big stalk of sprouts but gave up on taking any leeks. I would have dug up a few if they hadn't been frozen solidly into their beds.

I have yet to put in my garlic. It's getting quite late in the year for planting it but so far, it's been too wet, too dry or too frozen every time I've been free. Or too dark, most of the time when I'm not too busy, it's dark! Next weekend maybe.

Keep warm!
Happy gardening