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..