Hibernation

Long time no post.
Why didn't I post?
As others have reported from time to time you just run out of energy.
Nothing much was growing - even the beans.
Nothing got watered at the right times - the eternal battle of the taps.
Yeilds were low.
Motivation within the ranks of the small (and bigger) helpers was low too.
So no posts.
But now I'm back.
Onions and garlic at the ready, 2012 is go!
Hibernation is for hedgehogs (and do check those bonfires at the weekend).
I'm going in...
(Well technically up to)
THE ALLOTMENT BECKONS.

How many beans make five?

One bean, two beans, a bean and a half and half a bean. That's how many beans make five.

That will probably be the sum total of my harvest this year too as some toothed critter seems to have slunk by and mowed them all off at about four inches high.

This is what happens when you let the internet sway you. Yes I blame you lot out there in cyberspace with your talk of crop rotation and soil starvation.I have always grown beans in the same place, by the fence in easy reach of the water supply. This year I read about crop rotation again and thought that even though all the old boys always grow beans in the same place year after year and even though I get great harvests I would move them.

So no beans this year then.
Not enough water and "what lies beneath" seem to have done for them.  I have put a few spare plants in and sown some more in hope than anything but...tonight I will be dreaming of plates of runner, french and borlotti beans drizzled in butter steaming in a dish in front of me and next year at about this time  will be moaning about a glut of bl**dy beans and what on earth will I be able to do with them all.

Funny old game isn't it?

Pooh! Is that you?

We made some stink food.
You know the stuff - stinging nettles ferment in water for weeks, small boys pee in it when they are caught short at the allotment, the odd beetle and raspberry drop in it on passing and it really stinks?
We use it to feed the pumpkin growing in the compost heap.
Tonight I spilt it down my leg. I smell. I smell bad. I have bathed. I have rubbed in body cream. I have showered and soaped and still I smell. OH will be home later - hopefully his cold will not have improved...

YS's current favourite book seemed appropriate.

techno torment

Haven't been posting so much this year but am experiencing the usual gluts:

Raspberries - 24lb of jam and fresh ones given away to relatives and people in the village.

Broad beans - the children are rebelling - I am freezing bagfulls to surprise them with later - oh and there are another two rows not ready yet as I did successional sowing.

Lettuce - another crop to be distibuted widely.

Sweet peas - make good gifts for teachers and grandma/nanny/aunty

Courgettes - and this is just the first week of that bounty.

The techno torment? Well currently no camera and no internet connection. If I'd wanted a job in IT...

He loves me

Whilst I was at w*rk one day last week OH made this for me -

my own private potting bench. I love it! And I love him for thinking of it and making it happen. Onwards to the potting bench, I have lettuce to sow.

When I said weeds...

When I said weeds I meant weeds. I guess the only thing to do is a bit of public humiliation and then I might just get on with it!

The raspberries.

The strawberries.

The critter damage.

So these are the before pictures. Who knows how long until I post the afters? Wish me luck, and let this be a lesson to you all  - don't take holidays in June.

Optimism

What is the definition of optimism?
Me hoping to get onto the plot without a machete after not visiting for a week?
Or my 91 year old neighbour frantically giving away tomato plants? "I've grown too many - I just enjoy growing them..." (Estimate of around 250 plants)
I hope when I am 91 I still have the optimism to grow for another season in magnificent volume and can share my plants with the village and don't get overtaken by the weeds in the meantime.

And of course tomatoes were my never again plant. 2008 blight, 2009 blight, 2010 blight
but how could I say no? Here we go on the emotional rollercoaster once more.

They're here again

You would think with the lack of rain in these parts (24.2mm since April 1st) that the weeds might be a little more subdued this year. But they aren't. I have just spent 2 hours weeding and I'm still too ashamed to post the pictures...

You can do a lot in half an hour.

As alluded to in the last post, time is of the essence these days at the allotment.
It is productive - look radish! ( Don't you just love the pained expression? "But why do you want a photo of me holding radishes?"). It is also still very weedy.  Grass paths were definitely a mistake and at some point this year they will go.
So the plan for managing an allotment in half hour slots?
1. 10 minutes weed what is already planted. Most important.
2. 10 minutes water. Else it will die. Hopefully a higher authority will help me out on this soon, otherwise OH will have to fix the hose.
3. 10 minutes harvest. Radish & rhubarb - savings to be made here my girl!
4 10 minutes sow/plant new crops. Ahhh...

Wait a minute my bean counting makes that 40? That'll be why I'm still behind then.
Maybe tommorrow?

The covers are on

OS signed up for another season of cricket on Friday. Tonight a ground frost is forecast - is it just me but is the start of the cricket season always bad news for the garden?
Anyway, armed with the weather forecast I rushed to the allotment, earthed up the potatoes, covered the courgettes, cloched the lettuce and fleeced the strawberries, and depressed a plot neighbour who had just finished watering. All in a world record time of 27.5 minutes.
I once read a book called " The Half-hour Allotment" (here should you be interested).
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Half-hour-Allotment-Royal-Horticultural-Society/dp/0711226059/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1304448700&sr=8-1
Half and hour is for softies...

Where the green woods laugh, and cry

We live in a lovely part of the country and in bluebell time it becomes even more beautiful. So after the boys had tolerated a good amount of Royal Wedding watching, we hot-tailed it to the woods where they could collect sticks, drop stones down holes and bury dead frogs. This is an ancient woodland, part of a mediaeval deer park and linked to Lady Jane Grey (the 9 day queen more famously associated with nearby Bradgate).
The boys of course are oblivious to the history of today and yesterday.

And so to the present.
We took the cucumbers and squash outside for a watering - they will be going in again though - it has got awfully nippy in the evenings lately. A reminder it is not summer yet.

The crying? Eldest was investigating a ditch looking for an old fence.  He found it, unfortunately by tripping over it, and landed in a patch of nettles. OUCH!

I'll have a pea please!

Was very short of time (again) this weekend. It's a dilema, the garden is crying out for attention now! But so are the family, the housework, the olds, you get the picture...
So the sum total of my gardening achivements for the 4 days I have not been at work are:

1. Installed Mum's new compost bin - more complicated than it sounds - a sorry tale involving a barrowload of twitch (couch grass) I hate that stuff.
2. Mow both of Mum's lawns.
3. Prune some of Mum's shrubs
4. Fill Mum's new compost bin with a mix from old composter - now deceased in a fallen to bits and on pile to go to dump kind of way - prunings and grass clippings.
5. Fill garden dustbin with twitch - ha! good riddance!
6. Mow our lawn
7. Install our new compost bin - much less complicated (thank goodness)
8. Fill our new compost bin with kitchen waste and grass clippings
9. Only then arrive at allotment for a scant 1 hour time slot - planted two rows of peas which were escaping their toilet roll root trainers.
10. Picked some more rhubarb.

I need more time at the allotment. Please stay fine tommorrow amd no more family crisis so I can go after work tommorrow.  Pretty peas!

How do they know?

We were up at the allotment briefly this morning and chatted to some of the old boys, after harvesting the rhubarb and getting some chives for lunch.
"It'll rain later" says one,
"How do you know said OH-what signs are you looking for?" (hoping for some old country saying I think)
"I listened to the weather forecast!" was the reply.
"Ah!" says OH

I'm late! I'm late!

I booked an appointment in at work yesterday. "See you next week then - that's the 6th April".
6th April next week? How did that happen?

We haven't made many visits to the allotment this year in fact when we visited two weeks ago it looked like this,

Oh dear!

We cleared a bit

but didn't make much of an impression.

So as I had a day off today I thought I 'd better get the season under way.  

I dug and planted and composted and emptied compost (it was lovely stuff!) and dug some more. I had done some gardening so I had things to plant, chitted parsnips, beetroot plants, broad beans, garlic, onions, shallots and chitted potatoes. Oh and a yellow raspberry another blackcurrent and a thornless blackberry.

I also sowed seeds of radish and spinach. After that little lot it looked like this,

Still plenty of work to be done but at least I have made a start. The old boys enjoyed it enormously they kept coming over and admiring my soil - now they could see it.
I pulled some  rhubarb and dug some Jerusalem artichokes - hurrah for first harvests!
Then it was home for a cup of tea and a quick bath before getting the kids from school. A most satisfactory day.

It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas!

Not much action at the plot lately.
Well to be honest no visits to the plot for quite some time but in my defence this happened.

I managed to salvage my Christmas potatoes - but we've eaten them - oops!

Now we are spending our time visiting polar bears

and that man in the red suit - oh well there's always next year.

We will be digging the bean trench on Boxing Day (providing I can get the spade in the ground).
In the meantime hope you and yours have a Happy Christmas. Here's to good gardening in 2011.

A century

This is my 100th post - and boy has it been a long time coming!
We have been very busy this year with family and work commitments but have fitted in quite a lot of travelling too so the blog has had to take a back seat.
The allotment is winding up for the winter now - I wasn't in the right place at the right time to plant much to over winter just a few parsnips, brassicas but no sprouts (disaster - we love our sprouts) and that's it. the boys picked grandma a boquet when we were clearing up at the weekend . But who would give it to her?

as you can see they have their own way of sorting these things out!

Tonight we have been making preparations for the weekend. The pumpkins may be small but they look quite good I think.

We have two parties a disco and a school non uniform day to prepare ourselves for - Hallow'een was never this important when I were a lass. So off to polish up my face painting skills YS wants to go as a "zombie ear basher with a scythe" ,whatever one of those may be.

Bean at the plot

School holidays, holidays, w*rk and family have all combined to make the visits to the plot less frequent than ever this month. Tonight, after returning from the annual bank holiday camping trip we all mucked in to try to get some winter crops in the ground and see what there was to harvest.
The harvest was beans, beans and beans (oh and courgettes) and then some more beans. So now I am of to chop blanch and freeze, leave carrier bags for the neighbour, Mum and Aunty and work out how much of the remainder I can realistically get through and how much needs to be gifted.

We did manage to plant leeks and winter caulis and a few sprouting broc plants but I need to do some land clearance before we can finish the rest of the winter planting. I am trying enviromesh this year in an attempt to foil the butterflies/pigeons/ everything else that made last years brassicas a near write off - the cost made my eyes water but I'm hoping it will last for several years (it had better!).

Soon YS will be off to school and I may be able to sneak an extra lottie session in each week which should make next season a lot more comfortable/ productive/ planned but the best laid plans... We shall see and in the meantime we shall eat beans.

Visit to Tyntesfield

On the way to the French ferry a couple of weeks ago we stopped off at Tyntesfield Estate near Bristol.
We had a game of football (obligatory OS's choice), climbed the scaffold tower to the roof (YS), visited the tea room (OH) and finally visited the kitchen garden (Me!).

They were selling homegrown fruit and veg but we weren't impressed with the prices!

The cutting garden was spectacular - this in no way does it justice.

They have more staff than I do.

Up the tower

Cute box in the shop

Where are the photos of the veg?

This was as close as I got - there is a fan pruned cherry in the background...

I think I was so busy admiring the straight rows and lack of weeds I must have forgotten to take one. My, but their onions were big - you'll just have to take my word for it!

We had a lovely time there is a lot of walking involved in the visit, the gardens are a long way from the car park etc but well worth it.  The guide even took the trouble to show the boys where the 10yo gardeners boy would have slept in a cupboard above the benches in the potting shed when it was his turn to keep the boiler going during the night. OS pronounced this "cool". If you are looking for a stop of the M5 this summer it's well worth a look.

I've got a red one!

Tomato that is. The reason that this deserves it's own special post?
Last year I got not one. The dreaded blight swept through whilst they were all still green.
I watched Alys Fowler's programme and she said that this year she wasn't even going to try, and I felt the same, but then...
Isn't gardening always like that? A series of disappointments and small victories.
Today was a victory.  I hope Alys changed her mind too.

Courgettes

Today we had courgettes for lunch.
Today we had courgettes for tea.
Today we had courgettes for pudding too.

I guess the courgette season is here?

Lunch : Pasta with ribbons of courgette fried in olive oil with a cream sauce, chilli flakes and black pepper. Served with a green salad, smoked salmon and a wedge of lemon.
Pudding: Chocolate courgette cake, raspberries, cream.
Tea BBQ sausages, courgette marinated in olive oil and a little lemon, salad, potatoes. And ketchup.
Pudding BBQ chocolate bananas, toasted marshmallows.

Yum!
Today I am liking courgettes.

(camera is broken again - but I guess by this point in the season you all know what a courgette looks like...)