Daffs in! Potatoes Died :-(

The title says it all really.

I wasn't expecting much from the potatoes really - it was the wrong time of year, but it was worth a shot. It means that I can now use the potato bed for the strawberries when they arrive - always a silver lining.....

The raspberry canes that I put in are looking healthy, so that's good. The picture in the previous post was actually taken today, so they have been in 2 weeks and are looking healthy.

The blackcurrant cuttings are also looking healthy. The buds are green, so that's good, and I'm assuming that spring is when they will spring. Can't wait to see if they do!

And I should have some daffs for the kitchen in spring!

Raspberry Canes

I have very kindly been given some offshoots from a friends raspberry canes, which I have duly got into the ground. Unfortunately, I didn't get up to the allotment on Wednesday, so I didn't get things done that I was hoping to do. On Thursday morning I dragged lil'girly up, but she was pretty unimpressed at being there in the cold. I therefore created a much smaller area for the raspberries than I should have, and they are crammed in a little too tightly. Oh well, if they grow big and strong I'll separate them some more next autumn.

Bed finished, Onions in

Today I got up to the allotment for a little bit, and finally finished off the raised bed. That's 3 raised beds in place and copper taped. I am going to have to find something to keep the tape in place as it just isn't sticking to the wood. Can I use nails? Somewhere I have in my head about a nail causing the tape to lose its electric attributes..... It's probably just me being mad though.

So having finished the bed, I put in my onion sets. For the record, these are Early Crop Radar onions, which should be ready for mid July. The 200g bag nicely filled the raised bed, so the quantity was just right.

Seeing as the bed looks the same with the sets in as before, (except for the copper tape) I didn't bother to take a picture. I'll take one when they start to grow.

Grape Vines!

We eat quite a few grapes, so when I saw a grape vine in Wilko's, I bought it. A bit of an impulse buy maybe, but free (ish) grapes? Can't turn that down! I am curious to see how well it grows though. Staffordshire is hardly Mediterranean weather...... It went in the ground a while ago now (June?), and it's looking fairly healthy, so on to next year and some fruit! (hah!)

Another bed in!

I got up to the alotment yesterday for a half hour of digging and finished up the next raised bed. It still needs copper tape around it, but other than that, it is ready for the onion sets. So that's the next job to be done!

Current State Of Affairs

The lettuces are in one raised bed.
The potatoes are in another, but I don't think they are growing.
I have almost dug over some ground for another bed.
The tomatoes are dead (as good as!) and need taking out.

To go in I have onions & strawberries, but the strawberries aren't here yet. I also have some clover that I'd like to try out as 'green manure'. That needs to go down soon.

That means that I need to finish up the raised bed for the onions and get them in the ground. Then work on the tomato area as a green manure area.

The strawberries can go into the lettuce bed, methinks, as the lettuces should be done by the time the strawberries arrive (november?).

Okay, thoughts are organised. Wonder when I'll get up there to get some work done.....

Lettuces

In late August/early September I put my first raised bed with copper tape in. I have planted this with little gem lettuces on one side, girly1's Wall flowers in the middle, and some mixed seed lettuces on the other side. The mixed seed lettuces are supposed to be cut, and then they grow back again.

The lettuces are my first venture into my copper tape trial, so I'm hoping the lettuces don't get munched! So far so good, as I now have a lovely crop of lettuces! My second success of the year!

The mixed lettuces said that they could be cut at 2-3 weeks, and then every 2 weeks after that. I think that's a little ambitious, as they were still tiny at 3 weeks. At 4 weeks I thinned the little gems, but the seedlings were too small for munching really. Last week I thinned again, and had a lovely lot of leaves to munch on!

Note for next year - the seeds go in very thinly to save on thinning later on..... Still on that learning curve!

Raised Beds & Copper Tape

So I have an overgrown jungle of an allotment that I need to tackle. Now that I have some chance of getting up there, I need to get it under control. But how? And those damn slugs!

I've had an idea, and that idea is raised beds with copper tape around them. My brother in law got some pallets for me, which between my husband and I have been dismantled (not as easy as it sounds!), and slowly put back together as squares for raised bed borders.

It's taking me about 1-2 hours to dig out the weeds for the 1m sq area, to get the edging in, and to get the copper tape around the bed. It's quite time consuming, but if it works, I'm a happy bunny!

The idea behind this is that:

• the raised bed creates a nice well defined area to work in
• it may hopefully stop some weeds blowing in, as it is a little higher
• the copper tape should 'sting' the slugs, an therefore deter them from coming in to eat MY booty!

Anyway, I hope it works. So far, my lettuces are largely untouched. They have been in the ground for 6 weeks now, and on one visit after a hard rainfall I found a load of little slugs and 2 big slugs, but other than that they haven't been munched. On that day, I also noticed a patch were the tape had come away from the wood. Hope that isn't going to be a problem.....

Potatoes

I got some main crop potatoes from a friend, but I put them in the ground late, very late, about July. Oh well. But the slugs got them. Damn slugs.

I put some more in the ground in September, but I'm not holding out much hope. The second lot are in a raised bed to try and stop the slugs of doom.....

Blackcurrants

I love my Mum's home made blackcurrant jam. Therefore one thing that I would love to grow are blackcurrants so that I can make jam with them. To that end, one of the first things I bought were 2 blackcurrant bushes.

I didn't get much fruit of them this year unsurprisingly, but hopefully they will be nicely established/establishing next year. We had a blackcurrant milkshake with this year's handful!

When I was visiting my Mum's, I suddenly though 'why don't I try taking cuttings from Mum's bushes'. I'm all for cheap ways of getting plants, and the costs mount up pretty quick when buying these things. So I read up on the internet, and it looks pretty easy (if it works!).

So the details (for future reference) are that I took the cuttings at the end of August, from bushes that look like they are on their last legs. They must be about 30 years old, so it's no wonder that they look old and hard done by! I took them home, and about 5 days after I cut them, I stuck them in the ground. At the moment they don't look too bad. I don't know if they will start growing now, or if they are supposed to stay dormant till spring. We'll wait and see. The cuttings should be taken during autumn, not end of summer, so this is an on the off chance thing. Let's hope it works!

Gooseberries

The one good thing about my overgrown patch of jungle is that it came with 4 mature gooseberry bushes. While gooseberries are not instantly something I think of eating, I'm not going to turn them down!

I left them to their own devices this year, and picked a huge amount of berries off them in July. I stewed the berries down, with a load of sugar, and froze them in 400ml batches. Note for next year - freeze in smaller batches! The kids didn't like the tartness of them, which is what I thought was best about them. Delicious! So freeze in smaller batches so I can eat them when the fancy takes.

The bushes have grass and weeds growing through them, so one of my tasks that I need to do is to weed around them, and to prune them. I may also take some cuttings to propagate them. So the gooseberries were a success! At least I got something from this year!

Pumpkins

The pumpkins were also started off on the window sill, and grew from strength to strength up the window. They were in 3" pots (I think), and did really well. Once I got the allotment, I tried to acclimatise them outside. I also didn't get much chance to get them into the ground. I think they got too big for their pots, and by the time they made it to the allotment, they had changed from wonderful thriving plants, to barely alive things. They died, or got eaten by the slugs. Sob! I felt their loss deeply.

It was still early in the year, so I tried again. This time, I put them outside early, and put them into the ground early. They died too. I think it was a mixture of too small, and too many slugs. Grrr, I'm starting to dislike slugs!

So no pumpkins for our lanterns this year. Maybe next year! Learning curve, think learning curve!

Tomatoes

In preperation for possible allotment, I planted some tomato seeds indoors. They shot up and grew really tall and skinny. They were in little seed pots, and I tried to prop them up, but they kept falling over.

Anyway, when I got the allotment, I planted them out. They weren't very prepared for the great outdoors, and took a bit too adjust. But they grew. What they didn't do though was produce loads of flowers, and therefore grow tomatoes.

I've read now that if they are allowed to go skinny and tall, they don't flower well. So next year I will try and put them outside in a greenhouse type affair to acclimatise earlier.

I also found it a pain tying them up, and I never did quite get round to pinching out the side shoots. Maybe that's why they didn't fruit? Anyway, I believe that there are 2 types of tomato plants - bush and ?non-bush tall skinny? plants. I think I had the tall skinny ones, so next year I'll also try a bush type variety.

The tomato plants also seemed to die of something towards the end of August, and I don't know why. Maybe it is the constant rain we have had. Maybe a disease, but I don't think so. Ho Hum.

Here's to a bumper crop for next year!

The Allotment Generally

I love the idea of growing my own stuff - low food miles, organic, watching it grow etc So I decided that I would get an allotment. I put my name down, and in late april 2007 I was told I had got one - woo hoo! It was worked for the first part of last year, but had become overgrown since then.

So what now? I had some tomato plants growing, so they were the first things in to the ground. Unfortunately, not long after that, I was told that children aren't allowed on the allotment. As I have young children, including one who was with me all the time, this severely limited my opportunities to go to the allotment. Thus my excuse for why the allotment continued to be overgrown and covered in weeds.

My youngest has now started playgroup though, so I have 2 opportunities a week to go to the allotment. I must now tackle the jungle that it has become, and bring about order from the chaos. Hah!

First Post

So here's my attempt at a blog! Wonder if I'll keep it up?

Anyway, incase anyone is reading this, I'd better explain the aim of my blog.

You see, I have this allotment. It is increadibly overgrown, and I'm new to the whole grow your own fruit'n'veg thing, so I want to keep track of what I've tried, and what works and what doesn't work. I'm doing this for my own records, but if anyone else gets something from it, that's great! (I won't be suprised though if no-one does!)

Anyway, that's it for now. I'll make some notes sometime soon on what I have achieved (or not!) this year, and what I'm hoping to achieve in the future.

Suzy