Kailyn

BECAUSE I CAN SAY IT.

So, mental picture post today. Making up for radio silence for a few weeks. I’ve been poorly, horrible head cold with mild fever, suspect virus, it’s been over a week now and still all snuffly. Plus the weather has been abysmal – storm over the weekend, and heavy rain all around. Rubbish – allotment was flooded with standing water over the celeriac and fennel seeds so I think those are probably dead, but potatoes are starting to peak up and some seedlings are growing where the carrots and parsnips were sown, hopefully not just weedlings! The asparagus has made a second attempt to emerge, bless it, after getting frosted last time. Not sure it will be any more impressed with the swimming pool it’s emerging into…

The little coir pellet Jiffy propagator I got for the tomatoes and peppers worked too well! The seedlings were potted on very deep this Monday:

Leggy seedling, coir plug placed on a thin layer of MPC at the bottom of a 2 inch pot.

Gently push the seedling leaves down, without putting a dot of pressure on the stem, coiling the stem (see loop under my thumb) so the leaves are held roughly at the level of the new compost.

Fill and gently firm. Seedling should root from the stem now, which will put it in better stead than trying to exist with a 3-4 inch stem.

I also potted on 6 sweet pepper ‘California Wonder’ and 6 chilli pepper ‘Cayenne’ and many tomatoes; something like 3 ‘Yellow Stuffer’, a heritage tomato that looks like a sweet pepper, 6 ‘Pomodoro’, a bush cherry plum tomato, some ‘Gardener’s Delight’, a cherry tomato, some ‘Money Maker’, a normal tomato. The Aubergines hadn’t bothered so I recycled their coir. I was rather impressed by the Jiffy propagator/my office combination so I’ve bought some new coir pellets in case I want to use it, maybe for some flowers.

The blowaways are both full of young plants now – if only the weather would perk up so they could go out! I’m not allowed to sow a single seed now, I even had to put a pot on top of a quiet seed tray there was so little space. Here are some highlights, testing out this gallery feature, if you click one you can navigate through them if you want (they have comments):

So I decided to buy seed trays and try tomatoes etc. indoors. Picture 1 was 17th April. Picture 2 is today. Left them as no-shows on Friday and got back on Tuesday to find them 3-4 inches tall and leggy as anything! Too leggy. I killed the tallest of each plug (and accidentally beheaded a couple that had their seed cases stuck on their leaves) and they’ll need to be potted on this weekend to try and save them. Can’t complain, at least they bothered to germinated!

Yesterday was my Aunt’s 60th – we (Mum, Ding, Dong and I) made an afternoon tea with sandwiches and cakes and scones and everyone met at our cousin’s house. It was all very civilised and rather pleasant! Aunt seemed to enjoy it.

Cousin B ran the London Marathon today and finished in just under 6 hours – woo! Very good considering she’d only done up to 16miles before.

I finished my last puzzle last week – called I Love Gardening, of course :

Obligatory plant update for my records:

No sign of anything in the root bed on the lottie yet, bar couch grass which appears to be enjoying itself :/ Mixed advice on that, whether to dig it up (and sow seeds again) or leave it be and let the carrots fight it out. For now I’m leaving it be. Asparagus hasn’t made a reappearance also – I think all this hail has scared it off. The last raspberry cane is slowly starting to come into leaf though, so that’s a good thing! I also filled the second and started the third dalek – so that’s all three daleks in use now – excellent.

At home, things are more productive. The turnips were looking sad this morning but are happier after a drink, I moved the potatoes out to make room for more seed trays and topped them up and gave them and some pot grown over wintered garlic some BFB. I abandoned the tomatoes – I have some in coir plugs in the office that should start faster so no sense persevering with the stubborn ones in the blowaways, and besides, I needed the tray. I planted sweetcorn, courgette sunstripe, sweet dumpling winter squash, and cucumbers gherkin and crystal lemon. I really want to plant stuff on the lottie but must be patient – the weather is not so nice at the moment, and the sharp hail showers we’re having would be too traumatic for my little ones!

Bad weather for plants, excellent for photos:

Bit blowy!

Sowed some more seeds today – spring onion White Lisbon, basil, oregano, chard Bright Lights, borecole (kale) Dwarf Green Curled and poached egg plant. The brassicas are doing well, turnips a good 2 inches, the rest 4-5 inches. Beetroot, peas and bagged potatoes are up, mangetout and nasturtiums doing well. Got some more horse poo also. The asparagus spears that were up however now look like they’ve been frost struck – soggy and dead :/ We did have hail however this week.

All go!

This blog is basically turning into an allotment blog… ah well!

Today was a momentous day. And I didn’t take any pictures, mostly because I’d buried most things so it would have been rather uninteresting… Today, the potatoes went in. My little chitted babies, who’ve spent the last so many months on the tumble dryer in the garage, went into the ground today, to take their chances with the drought and frost, both of which are forecast. The parsnips (Duchess F1, free from a magazine), carrots (Early Nantes from Birdseye of all people, Healthmaster came free with my asparagus, Ingot F1 left over from last year and Autumn King 2 free from a magazine) and small onions (Paris Silverskin for pickling and stews and Crimson Forest, a sort of red, mini-leek-like spring onion) all went into the carrot bed also. I put some compost in a drill (or in the case of Early Nantes, a wide tray), watered as best I could with only two cans of water (tap still off, bah), station sowed the parsnips and scattered the carrots and onions and covered with dry soil to keep the moisture in. Optimistic? We shall have to see.

So that’s two out of six rotation beds in use, assuming they germinate. Big times. I also came home and sowed 20 peas (Swallow) also from Birdseye and three types of Beetroot in modules (Detroit 2 free from a magazine, Bikores, left over from last year and Golden, a yellow version).

Also got some sweetcorn from Birdseye also but I’ve misplaced it, and I need to work out if planting them (I think they are supersweets but didn’t notice their variety) with my Lark F1 tendersweets will cause them issues. For those not obsessed with veg, sweetcorn has several types, and the cobs can reflect both parents i.e. if supersweets cross-pollinate with other types the cobs are small and rubbish. Tendersweets are reliable either way.

Oh! Four asparagus spears are up! Looks like they are from two crowns (of five). No eating them this year unfortunately, must resist, but it looks like we have viable crowns anyway I can’t work out which crown is which but I think it’s two of the three crowns that came with a magazine rather than the two crowns I’ve transplanted repeatedly. Very pleased

And yesterday we (Dad and I) finally sorted out the under fence Alfie issue. Alfie can dig, yes, with one front paw, the monkey, and spent much of last week trying to dig under the fence, presumably to meet next doors Beagle. The fence is actually slightly sunk already, but with the drought and the dog undermining the soil level from the other side, the clay soil has shrunk away. Several hours and several metres of wood planks later, and the fence is now 3-4 inches deeper all the way along.

Lastly I racked the crab apple wine – it is a pleasing 1.005 ish now, which is a dryish wine. When I eventually bottle it I think I’ll include the quote Mum gave me today:

“It’s not bitter at all!” Mum.

I’m not stopping it yet as it was happily fermenting before being racked so may well continue. Apparently getting it below 1.000 would be good, as alcohol is lighter than water and sugar is heavier (and water is 1.000) so at 1.005 there is still sugar in it. And I hate sweet wine. No rush though – still needs racking again to keep clearing it.

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My Aunt bought me a book, gave me another book and a poncho. My Aunt is sometimes hit and miss with things, but this time it’s at least two hits (I haven’t read the last book yet). I love the poncho. The book she bought me was a vampire book by Nora Roberts, an apparently prolific writer (sort of like Danielle Steel) I’ve never heard of. My aunt bought me Morrigan’s Cross, first in a trilogy of a prophetic fight between good and evil, with vampires (the evil, mostly), witches, sorcerers, shape shifters, princesses and alternate universes, set in County Clare, Ireland. What I like is that unlike pretty much most vampire fiction, it does not make out that vampires are just waiting for that one girl to turn them good. These vampires are not very nice at all. They don’t really have any redeeming features for the most part. They would eat the girl. So yah – good fun. I finished the book and have ordered the next two already.

More random things – we went to the Circus on Friday – Cirque du Ceil. Excellent. I’m very picky about what I see at the theatre – I love RSC Shakespeare but very wary about seeing any one else’s performances, and I don’t like farces, murder mysteries etc. However I really really like circuses. I spend pretty much the whole time vacantly grinning. I love the music too, reminded me of when Mum and I randomly went to see Mugenkyo, a Taiko group (Japanese drum music) – I bought the album. Worth a listen.

What a lovely weekend eh? Saturday saw me and mum pop out for wool and ski gear and come back with a boot full of shopping, including several plants. We had scone and tea at the garden centre too. Lovely day! On Saturday I re-planted the hanging basket for mum, and put a honeyberry bush in a pot, and potted up a second blueberry – the centre was selling bushes (very small ones!) for £1.99 so I figured might as well get them.

I finished the new allotment plan! I think I must have been there for about four or five hours, ended up with a sun headache, but it’s finished! Sort of!

For reference, this is where we were:

This was half time, when I popped home for a banana (egg for breakfast) :

And this is the end result! I’ll add the updated plan to show what it’s all about in a bit – LeechBlock will lock me out soon Basically the middle path is now a North path with permenant stuff above it, and then five paths stretch South to separate the six beds.

For the bits of impacted earth that make up the old paths I used the no-dig method of wet cardboard (or dry cardboard when I ran out of water) covered in soil. The worms then sort out digging the hard stuff, the grass is killed by the cardboard and I work on the top stuff.

The onions are still in the North corner mucking up the new paths but as soon as they are out in May I’ll be able to unfold the paths and complete the layout. Yay!

EDIT Here you go:

You can hopefully see where the onions muck up the paths in the bottom right corner, but they’ll be out in May. I left the strawbs where they are for now but will be bringing them back to the house as otherwise we’ll never remember to eat them.

Bed plan is from left to right:
1 – potatoes with perhaps mustard to mulch
2 – curcurbits (squash, cucumbers) and sweetcorn
3 – legumes (beans and peas) with chard and spinach to mulch
4 – brassicas
5 – aliums (onion family) with beetroots to mulch
6 – umbellifers (carrot and parsnip family) with spring onions and maybe celeriac and fennel as I got a bit carried away with seed buying.

I also mulched the beans (still doing badly) the onions again, and the bushes, and filled the second (middle) compost dalek with manure and oak leaves.

Finally the days will be longer than the nights! Yay!

Some photos from the weekend. Firstly, my cats are cute. Spock was sleeping in his usual sphynx pose, and Alfie decided that he’d make use of those legs as a pillow. Spock is a very tolerant young man…

Despite the dismal weather over the weekend I did get a fair bit done gardening-wise. Dad had mowed the lawn (first mow of the year! Spring is here!) so I filled the dalek with clippings, leaves and cardboard, lasagne style, and mulched the onions and fruit bushes:

I’m the only person I’ve seen that mulches on the allotment (and the only one with over-wintering onions and shallots). I suspect people think I’m a loon.

The raspberry bushes are alive! Can you see? Photo may not be good enough:

Little buds! These three bushes came to me bare root and then got left dry for a week or something, so I’m pleased they appear to have survived that mis-treatment.

I also used some grass to alternate with compost in potato bags, since potatoes really don’t care what they grow in (they’ll grow in straw or shredded paper quite happily. I already had one of those 50l potato sacks but I got a second sack with a recent asparagus purcase, and was very pleased to open it out and find it’s a 75l bag or something. I put 2 King Edwards (a bit early, I forgot maincrops go in later) in the small one and 3 Anya and a random tiny Charlotte in the big one, then put them in the cold mini greenhouse. I noticed the grass was already generating heat even overnight so decided to attempt a Victorian-style hot box to heat the warm mini greenhouse – a black box, then layering cardboard and grass and adding a touch of water. It’s on the bottom shelf now. We shall see!

The brassica seedlings were borderline leggy (1 inch and leaning) so I’ve moved them to the (brighter) cold greenhouse which is hopefully less cold now it has bags of potato grass decomposing in it.

My beans however aren’t doing so well. First half got got by frost (although they are attempting to make a comeback), now the rest have been munched. Hurumph.

This is couch grass roots. I’m not sure whether to chuck them or make a liquid manure out of them. I’ve opted for the last two weeks to leave them drying on the membrane, perhaps as an example to other couch grasses.

ETA: I forgot to say – I also took what was left of the weed membrane in the garage and started to make paths out of – my plan is instead of string and posts (which I keep tripping over/stepping on) is to lay out the paths with membrane and keep the beds clear. I made four 0.4-5m x 4m paths with the edges folded over and taped every 10cm or so with duct tape (intermittent taping purely to be economic) to stop the stuff fraying. I need to make one more 4m path and then make the long main path, but I’ll have to harvest the membrane on the plot for that.

And the required progress shot:

In other news, I’ve got a bit morning mental – I’ve been going to the gym in the mornings, leaving the house at 7. This morning (early start) I was out of the house at 6.40am. People who know me well will no doubt be flabagasted by this. I know I am. I run-walk 3km in 30 minutes, shower and go to work. The reason for the early start is not wanting to pay for parking – I never have any change – but now I think I may now be a bit addicted to dawn…

Ooooo….

I have a new aid. LeechBlock. Blocks sites (specified by you) that leech time. it’s rather cool – allows you to specify what days the block should be active on, whether it should be time limited (block 9-5 for example) or whether it should block by proportion (I have it set to block me for 50 minutes out of every hour). I have added a lot of sites. Including this one. I have 40 seconds left to post this…

I left work today around quarter to five, en route to lovely dinner and Masterchef evening with sibling Ding, and found myself driving west into the sunset. So nice was it that I put down both windows for they entire drive on the M25, radio off, just enjoying the sun and wind and it not being proper winter any more. I wouldn’t call it proper spring; bit to parky for that (though I stubbornly kept my windows down the whole way), but it’s definitely on that way. Wing. Or Sprinter.

I may or may not have sung “The sun has got his hat on” a couple of times…

A new camera (Samsung SH100 – supposedly wifi capable but I haven’t yet got it to work :/) and a day planting seeds means lots of photos!

I have these 24 cell trays, and am testing out a combination of peat free MCP (B&Q’s Verve – own brand) to half fill the cells, then topped up with seed compost.

For peat free MCP it’s not too bad – bit woody but nothing insurmountable.

First, some tomatoes! 16 cells with 3 Pomodoro in, a determinate/bush forming cherry plum tomoto, then 4 cells with 4 Money Makers (cordon normal tomato) and 4 x 4 Gardener’s Delight (cordon cherry). Last year all my toms didn’t fruit (maybe because I thought they were indeterminate and pinched their side shoots out…) and then got blight. Finger’s crossed for better luck this year!

Then another set of cells; 6 x 3 Sweet Pepper Californian Wonder, 6 x 3 Cayenne Pepper, and 12 x some Turnips Petroski. A bit random, but it’s how it worked out.

Then yet another tray, this one with 18 x 1 Mangetout Shiraz and 6 x 3 sweet pea. I’ve gone for Shiraz this year, with it’s purple pods, as last year I had trouble finding the pods in the mass of plants! The Sweet Peas are saved from last year’s garden plants, my first ever seed saving exercise! These were just planted in MCP – I figured legumes could care less about seed compost.

Onward! These are mushroom trays recruited as seed trays for nasturtiums, French marigolds and comfrey. The comfrey is for home grown fertiliser and the marigolds and nasturtiums are companion plants.

Aubergines! Five in this pot. That’s it – I’ve only room for one or two plants so five seeds is enough. This is Aubergine Black Beauty.

Almost there! These are the herbs. Two trays with fussy seeds Sage, Dill and Chives in one, now covered in cling film, and Coriander, Mint and Thyme in the other, uncovered. The little pot at the top was to have Rosemary and Oregano in, but just has Rosemary as my Oregano pack was empty! I’ve contacted the makers.

A quick drink and a sunbathe for everyone, including the onions, leeks and brassicas…

…and all tucked up in bed!

A quick check on the allotment to sprinkle some BFB (blood, fish and bone meal) on the potato bed and overwintering onions, garlics and shallots.

I am very pleased to see that after just 2 weeks the little cut offs from the gooseberries are already budding! Very pleased as I just stuck them in the ground and wished them luck…

And last but not least, I managed to unstick my stuck fermentation crab apple wine by moving it to a different house, taking out a pint of wine, adding a tea spoon of yeast and some water, then adding that back in after a few hours and topping up the demijohn. And here we are… BUBBBBLES!!!

And that was my Sunday.