Birds...The Birds...

Hi All,
Another week, another issue..

Diaster has struck 13, like something out of a Hitchcock movie we have been attacked by birds... Our brassicas to be precise, not content with plucking out our onions they have now taken a liking to our tasty cabbages.. A poor little soul here..
Another larger one here...

Some have survived..Those ones where underneath string with bags attached:
So defences back up (Aka Nets) now I love birds but I tell you I want my shotgun readers...
So looking out over the plot we have a lot of flickering bags that should help keep the birds off.
Hopefully they will recover as long as they have not pecked out the heart of the cabbages we should be ok..

So that should help I hope, if not I will be getting out the shotgun..Although the lottie cat does help..

But it is not all negative news...Our Leeks and Onions are doing well...First the leeks, they are surviving the rust well...
They are getting thicker by the week Rich will have a good crop...Our onions are taking off as well!! They remind me of daffodils or tulips in how they are growing..
The bed has row upon row of Sword Wielding onions...
So we are looking good for a good harvest currently, but we'll see how it pans out..Another addition to the plot today was blackcurrant's, for those of you interested Ben Sarek variety, a nice compact variety that only grows to 3ft tall, so thats pretty cool. We got 5 into Bed K
And three more into the fruit bed...Each one looks like this:

Titchmarsh's book says they are heavy cropping so hopefully we will get a load of currant's downside is it takes 2yrs :(

What else...Rich has been working very hard double digging the asparagus bed, he has taken out a load of stone from the bed, it is on the side of the plot by a bank where the electricity board just buldozed a load of stones and earth years ago, so it is hard work, had to delay the delivery of the Asparagus until December...

But this is the most sheltered spot on the plot, they apparently are ferns and grow about 3-4ft tall so need some support...Amazing what you learn about your food as you grow.

We should do really well here, remember another 2yr wait for these guys :( So thats the currants and the asparagus we have to wait for but boy what a year it will be in 2010.

Finally the plot looks like this we have a covering of leaves, Rich did some hard work today (Not shown here) clearing up the paths, but autumn/winter is definitely here..

Finally we had a special visitor today, buttercup, George's teddy from Nursery, Buttercup, helping with the brassicas and general stone clearing..

Until next time...Good night all!

Another Day Another Bed

Hi All,

Another bed in today, bed O as it is on the map I have not yet uploaded...Sorry... Anyhow here it is in all it's glory (2hours graft)..

Took out around 8-10 bramble stumps...Thing about bramble stumps is they don't go deep, typically, but they do spread wide, so making it difficult to pull them out, but once you get underneath them it is relatively easy.. Here is the amount of roots taken out...


Some more plant pictures...Here is one of the cabbages planted three weeks ago...Survived the current winter weather well...

Couple of weeks time it'll look like the other cabbages quite large and healthy. Rich has finished the greenhouse, the temperature difference is good, i went in there today and warmed up quite quickly...He put in the louvers in we'll put auto openers on those later in the year as things will bake inside otherwise..
The pit in the middle is for the heatsink, where we may have a pipe coming up out sucking down the hot air then recirculating it back up to the roof again, apparently helps the temperature variations.

We'll need another opener for the opener on the left here..

Not bad for an e-bay purchase...

Finally looking at the culvert we did a lot of work in clearing this out, it is now totally cleared at the top anyhow, underneath it is still quite muddy..Drains out into a lake at the back of the sub-station on an industrial estate..

So hopefully it won't overflow, the more mud we take out the more water it will hold, so it should reduce the ability to spill over..

Next time, the asparagus bed...

Been A lot going on...

Hi Readers,

Sorry about the delay on this this month, it's been a busy month for me at work, end of year, end of quarter, planning, batteries failing in the camera, been a whole load of pain. But, that has not stopped the march on Plot 13. We have put in 7-8 beds worth of plants, cabbages, onions, garlic, purple sprouting broccoli.. So on with the show...

These pictures where taken last week, I'll try to get up this weekend but it's autumn and the weather is horrible and wet. Here is a picture from the LeakShack looking out.
Has a certian autumunal feel to it, see the leaves etc, the oak trees that provide us with shade are also a bit of a nightmare, the cabbages are doing well in the middle there...
We are really happy with these cabbages, remember grown from plug plants and our first attempt at growing on a large scale.. A page three cabbage picture is below revealing all..

The area that is a bit more difficult the Cauli's is not so good, but they are suriving well, known as the queen of the plot due to her requirements, she is not doing too bad..

Now the bit that we haven't discussed, about three weeks ago I recieved two lots of plug plants from the supplier, 128 brassicas in total, as well as two bags of seed onions, so going back to the leak shack and looking right you get this view of what looks like open ground...
Well there is a story, we recieved them on a thursday, and had to plant them there and then, it was then I realised it gets dark early now, we had half of them in the ground but then it got really dark, so we where pushing plants into the ground in the dark, fortunatley it turned out ok..
We have four beds like this and for three weeks old it is not looking too bad, again the survival rate is very high, so the soil and the plants are very good...Problem is we'll have nearly 200 Brassicas come march...If they all survive...Cabbages anyone? Suggestions on recpipes welcome ;).

Richards Leeks are soildering onwards although we had our first disease on the plot, leek rust, we get small pustules of orange underneath the leaves, which then kills off the leave,s not pleasenat, I have seen it before on Roses. We just pull off the affected leaves and it controls it, one warning don't put the leaves on the heap, it'll spread the disease..
Moving to another member of this family the onion beds, we dug two of these out two weeks ago and put in furrows, the idea being (According to gardners world) is raising them up like this makes their roots grow better and offers them some warmth against the cold, ie they get warmer quicker after a cold snap..
The other advantage is the leaves capture in the middle also making it easy to clean..

The only issue is the birds think they are worms or something and pull them out regularly, but we just pop em back in again.. Looking from the back of the plot, and boy what a grim day it was (Raining) it looks like this..
In the front there from right to left are four beds, the first will be BlackCurrants, they like the moisture and it is quite damp down there, then two beds of onions, and finally the garlic bed which I planted last weekend, a whole bed of cloves, from elephant garlic (x2) to hardneck white, courtsey of the www.thegarlicfarm.co.uk, nice packaging and plants, hopefully we'll manage to keep a load alive.. Strange thing is why plant now? Well apparently they like the cold to split into bulbs, strange huh?

Finally, the old bean bed has almost had it now, they provided us with a load of beans, lasted around 4 mnths from seed to finish, tasted fantastic, but next time we see this in any big detail we'll be planting fruit in it..


So thats it for now...Hopefully a more speedier post this afternoon plans hopefully to get another bed in and upload the latest plan..

Sweat and Roots

Hi Campers,

Well yesterday was another good day on the lottie. Got bed I in as planned..


But it took a lot, takes about 2 hours per bed, contrary to the last post the beds are 4x1.5m approximately.. As I discussed earlier, having the top growth off is only half the job...Here's the other half..

Roots from the bed, a big pile, the main root systems for the brambles seem to run long and wide, with a main deep root sinking about 1.5 feet into the ground, took a lot of effort to get them out, but it was worth it I is now in..

I thought I have not done a decent wide angle picture of the lottie for a while, so here is from the front...


Looks good huh? Remember just double click on the photos to see it..This shows the leek bed into the leak shack and the greenhouse in the background.

We are going to re-draw the plot, now the brambles have gone I have taken some ..ahem..accurate (ish) measurements of the plot so we can plan the rest of it..Dr Rach can assist on the drawing operation..

Results published soon...

Have fun

Bed By Bed...

Today was a glorious day so after taking george out to the park we went down to the lottie, george has his own little bed he can dig in, so off he went.But what a suprise when I arrived, the Greenhouse almost fully glazed...Rich didn't say anything about that...

It's looking good, quite a few panes missing but that was due to how we transported them... Oh my camera is working today so lots of pictures!

So a quick check of the plants...Starting with cabbages...

They have launched in the last couple of weeks..

French bean bed looking grand..
This has been a really successful bed, shame it is converting to a fruit bed, but hey we'll get blackcurrants, redcurrants, white currants, gooseberries all in here, oh and Raspberry canes at the back.. Anyhow back to the beans..
The beans look great, Amanda has harvested quite a few and they are really nice...I'll collect some probably tomorrow.

Where next on the plot... Ahh the leeks, these guys are doing really well, a couple look like they might have problems but on the whole doing ok..

So I dug out bed H today, last week it was a flaming pit of fire and ash...Today it is transformed into a bed H.
Took two hours of hard graft, remember each bed is 1.5x4m long.. Good and bad news...Good news the old bramble bush roots aren't too bad, some are deep, bad news, lot of them..GOing to be hard graft, but the soil is perfect again...That pile in the middle is bed G our nature bed, at the moment it is a pile of remains from the beds we have dug out.

So now looking from the back to the front of the lottie we look like this..

Thats Rach and George, the green covered plots are the Brassica beds...
Looking from front to back we see this..


Where the brambles is like a waste land, I'll move quickly to turn those into beds otherwise it looks very scruffy, cannot be helped of course but we want to be good allotment neihgbours...That is the old greenhouse in the background, pity it didn't have a roof, we'll talk to Bob and see if he knows anyone who wants to scrap it.

Finally, here is how the vision is looking with the leak shack and the Greenhouse..


Alloment 13 is getting there slowly but surely, we have the blank canvas, we have the spades and forks to paint the picture, all we need now is time.....Tomorrow bed I, Hopefully, next to the greenhouse.

Good night all!

This Weekend

First time in weeks it has not been raining and we had a couple of good days of sunshine. Unfortunatley not many pictures today, battery ran out on the camera.

We went up for a couple of hours on Sunday, Lotties around us looking good, harvest time, there is maize, beans, courgettes squashes everything around the place, our plot on the other hand is producing some nice Dwarf French Beans, Salad leaves and we are experimenting with Radishes, we have some golden burpees and some icicles in. The leeks are looking good, but sorry folks no pictures.

But what we did do was to burn out the last of the brambles, rachel dropped in a couple of firelighters and seconds later this happened:

We worried at one point that the fire would hit the trees, but it died back quickly. Within minutes it was reduced to just a smouldering pile of ash. A bit later Richard and amanda arrived and rich watered and weeded, amanda helped rach with the bonfire. I chopped out the final amount of the brambles and let the girls burn them.

When all said and done it now looks like this:

She's clear...Of brambles, still got a fair few nettles to go, but for the first time in years, you can see from corner to corner..In the distance there is rachel and george just watching the final smoke.

So in the next couple of months, the following will happen:

Sept: Onions
Oct: Garlic
Oct: Raspberries & Gooseberries
Oct: Blackcurrents/red currents.

Ongoing; Dig out the beds to the layout designed back in July/August, it still looks good..

More soon!

Dave

Hard Work Day..

Today I have been able to do a fair bit of work on the Lottie for the first time in about 3-4 weeks, and boy did I attack it, and have the scars to show.

Cleaned out the culvert again today, was a bit clogged up due to the rain and winds we have been having blowing in branches and leaves, but it is still relatively low compared to what it was when we took on 13, so that is a good sign. Tried to burn some of the old brambles and leaves but they where too wet so it went out quickly (even with firelighters). So that aside i decided to tackle the brambles. I started in the middle and three hours later we can view the majority of lottie from the leak shack..

Here it is looking out to the right towards the culvert, ie nearly the full length of the plot.

Looking from the front of the lottie we can see the work rich has been doing on the plot with the brassica beds (more later)



Looking from the culvert to the leak shack you can see the amount I cleared today, just a few small bits left now (probably about 2-3 hours work max), of course we haven't dug the roots out yet thats the hard bit..


On the left is a small patch, the big patch is to the right also the mountain of bits that need burning..

Now on with the rest of it, the dwarf beans are growing well and some have been harvested I think and taste great..


The brassica beds look really cool, hopefully they will be productive, I put some more slug pellets on today, seems the slugs got them really quickly when we first planted them..
And they are doing well....The army of cabbages and Cauli's..

Another view from the front (I green manured the herb bed today, that means I put some beneficial plants, grasses and the like into the bed so when we hoe it back in later on it fixes the the nutrients into the soil).
Also the leek beds are standing to attention and growing really really well..
They are the size of pencils at the moment...Rich looks like he'll have a good crop.

Finally, I must hijack the blog for a moment.... Here is a parsnip I took from my experimental beds at home, only took 9 months to grow it from seed in January, transplanted in March and nurtured for months..

Let this be the first of many things we grow and lets hope we get better in the Lottie!!