Day 33 on the allotment!

onions!

seeds going into the roots bed

potatoes!

beans and sweetcorn

the garden flowers at home

Wow what a busy week! Lots of rain too so not really an opportunity to get to the allotment so I am a little behind on potting on and planting.

A quick update; My onions are peeking through the soil, I have had a chance to get the seeds in I wanted: carrots, parsnips, lettuce, beetroot, chard, celery and some French marigold for good measure. My potatoes are really going for it and need ridging up, the beans and sweetcorn are a little slow-growing tho.

I have been working hard and buzzing around a lot (and someone texted far too early this morning) so I am afraid it all caught up with me a little today, I wasn’t at the allotment for as long as I would have liked, I still had daylight hours and a jobs list to complete! I decided to leave a few tasks for tomorrow, but did make a point of raking over the beds again, particularly where I plan to add in a greenhouse, I am trying to level this off.

I also decided that I want to plant more peas and beans, I have the space to do so if I plan carefully, and I have the extra plants anyway. I added in some canes in between the corn and beans/peas as far away from the mounds as I can so to minimise any light being blocked from the corn. Tomorrow I shall plant the legumes in this structure.

I still need to finish off planting my onions, and would like to try to squeeze some more into the bed, I am thinking instead of adding more rows perhaps I should interplant the sets between those already growing, i.e. did I plant initially with too much space… I shall have to read up and find out. I also still need to sort out my strawberry plants.

I was gutted to find another allotment holder had moved some pallets on my plot and destroyed all my courgette seedlings (and the rabbits have finished them off), he has offered to sow some more for me which is lovely but it will make me a little more behind schedule. I shall have to go ahead and plant the squash and hope the courgette can catch up without being smothered.

I helped out again at an allotment in Haddenham again this morning and gained some borage plants and some Jerusalem artichoke plants from a plant swap there. I need to get them in the ground pretty sharpish so they get going.

Tomorrow I also need to head to Buckingham to start dismantling a greenhouse I was offered through Freecycle, this would be really good for my tomatoes so I am super excited about this!

Green Garden Gate Waddesdon

Baby spiders and sweetcorn

my first ever baby sweetcorn!

sweet peas looking promising, frost damage on French beans and nasturtium

frost damage on cucumbers

Baby spiders

I took these photos about a week ago in the garden, not long after our last frost, unfortunately I lost most of my cucumbers (apart from two that were still in the mini-greenhouse) and I had no seed left. My friend kindly gave me some of hers (‘Masterpiece’) so I have sown them, hopefully they will catch up!

There were some baby spiders that had made some garden string their home for a day, with a bit of forethought I should have put a couple in the greenhouse, one or two made it in with my tomatoes – which also didn’t look too happy with the frost but survived, I had hardened them off pretty well, but the last frost was a lesson learned.  The frost also caught a good proportion of my French beans, but they are still growing new leaves so hopefully no lasting damage. Lastly, I lost a couple of squash plants, but the rest look happy enough and will need potting on soon.

I am very excited by my baby sweetcorn plants, they look very cute! I shall plant them on the allotment using the 3-sisters technique, a type of companion planting with beans and squash, as mentioned in another post.

In the garden the broad beans are growing very fast, as are all my potatoes, I should have earthed these up already but have been so busy I haven’t gotten around to it, they by rights should have also been affected by the frost but no issues there at all. All my salad plants are growing bigger, but not ready for harvesting yet but there will be spinach and rocket and radishes soon. The herbs seem to like the longer days and are responding well, soon I shall be using my garden herbs in cooking.

Finally I have noticed a few lavender seedlings starting to germinate, perhaps I sowed these a little early, but it is two months since I sowed them.

I am really pleased at the pace at which everything is happening, I just need to speed up my soil prep in readiness, it’s a shame I didn’t get the allotment even a few weeks sooner so I wouldn’t be playing catch up, and I could have used the frost to break up the soil, it’s slower waiting for rain and sunshine to do so!

Green Garden Gate

Day 1 at the allotment!

The beginning

One bed weeded, on to the next

Two beds weeded

View from the far end of the plot

I was at the allotment for about 6 hours today, lots of digging and weeding and getting to know other plot-holders. One bed was manured last year and may have had potatoes as their last crop so I shall probably put peas and beans there, the other had bolted brassica remaining on it so I think that will be good for my potatoes.

Another allotment holder offered to rotate a bed or two for me once I had dug the weeds out, probably tomorrow, it will be lovely if he does, I’m back there on Wednesday so we will see. He also gave me some spare onion sets, so I have promised him tomatoes in return!

My allotment came with a shed, a couple of water butts a couple of compost bins, a couple of chairs, a couple of rhubarb plants, assorted bamboo, pallets, frames, an old incinerator and paving slabs. After digging two beds clear I pulled up some old beetroot crop on another bed and added them to the compost bins, moved a few of the slabs to the other end to create a little patio and piled the weeds up neatly before I packed up to go home. I have no idea what I am going to do with them, possibly make a green water feed with one of the water butts, I shall have to read up!

Whilst I was there I saw red kites in the air, robins & wagtails spending time finding food in the soil and swifts flying rather slowly over the freshly dug earth. I also saw big black slugs twice the size of my thumb. I have never seen slugs that big before.

Green Garden Gate Waddesdon

Veggie Plant Sale

This afternoon I held a little plant sale, I had been worried whether to hold it at all due to the weather forecast, but the day before I decided to go for it and advertised.

Thank you to those who popped by, a reminder; plant info is located here.

The sun showed it’s face for a while and in the end it didn’t rain! I sold a few plants, enough to pay for my allotment for the year anyhow!

I must say I rather enjoyed it, it was lovely that a friend popped over for a natter, plus in the downtime I had the chance to plant my beetroot seedlings and pot on my nasturtium.

There’s still quite a few plants leftover so I might see what the weather is like next weekend, maybe another sale will pay for some organic compost from Haddenham Garden Centre, any leftover can go in the allotment if not!

Green Garden Gate Waddesdon

Allotment dramas

Well. I added myself to the Parish allotment waiting list a while back, I understood there were people ahead of me so it could take a while. There’s a site that the National Trust manages in the village too – I think it’s part of the Waddesdon Manor Estate – so I added my name to that whilst I was at it.

Suffice to say, there was a lot of to-ing and fro-ing due to a misunderstanding about where plot 12 actually was – turns out the plot shown to me might actually be half of plot 4 and plot 12 might be overgrown land that hadn’t been worked for at least 4 years and had brambles growing on it. During this confusion I had started growing plants in readiness to plant.

In the meantime whilst I’m waiting to hear back on what’s happening with the plot, I have spoken to the Clerk to see where I am on the council list (next in line!) and I heard a rumour in the gardening community that one of the allotment-holders might be handing his plot back rather than paying for another year (it’s the time of year for renewals)…. finally this evening I had a surprise call to say I was all good to sign up, and that the last person would be leaving me a shed etc. very exciting news!

Well of course I had to nip over to the plot straight away to check it out! There were slightly raised beds (with winter weeds and some manure), a couple of compost heaps, a couple of rhubarb plants and a water-butt – allotment heaven! As soon as my agreement arrives tomorrow I’m signing up, in the meantime I can get digging on it in the morning!

Green Garden Gate Waddesdon

 

Companion planting

I have been doing a lot of reading up on companion planting recently to refresh myself on what plants grow better together, those that don’t like to grow together and those that help deter pests. The garlic already sown should repel slugs (as well as cats!) and carrots and garlic grown together helps both. Onions sown with carrots helps to mask the smell of carrot fly (and the carrots confuse onion fly) and there is some evidence that garlic may help peas, but possibly stunt the pea’s growth, so it’s nearby, but not too near. I also read that lettuce helps onions and carrots and vice versa. I have sown in the marked rows: spring onion, Lilya on the left, then carrot, early Nantes 5, then spring onion white Lisbon, then a row of Garden Lettuce seeds – a lucky dip from a seed swap, all I noted down was ‘Lactuca saliva’ so it could end up growing as anything! Around these rows I have transplanted a few French marigold seedlings, with the hope that the slugs might give them a chance to grow, if not, I have held plenty back and have enough seeds to re-sow if needed. Finally at the back I added in 3 types of peas (in soda bottle cloches) with the intent of training them up the fence. There’s room in the bed to do successive sowing.

the layout

French Marigold, Naughty Marietta seedlings near garlic cloves

Once the carrot and onion seeds start to grow, I will consider what other herbs I might want to grow interspersed between the veggies. The garden still seems to attract bees and a Peacock butterfly even landed on my head the other day as I was watering. I just wish the slugs and ants would find a new home! The cats are learning not to visit so often, this could be garlic related, or it could be that I just made their favourite facilities too wet for their liking. I had a chance to try some herbal medicine today; I stung the back of my hand on a nettle whilst planting and it wouldn’t stop itching, so I did as I learned as a child, found a dock leaf and rubbed the bruised juices on the sting – instant relief! Green Garden Gate Waddesdon