Weeding the strawberries

Mmmm, our strawberry crop is coming…. Cambridge Early, Florence and Honeye, although I’ve not figured out which is the earliest yet, since they all seem to be coming into fruit. 

There’s me!  I was allocated weeding last night while Deputy Gardener propped and shot, and Holly (pooch) scampered around with bits of plastic bottle (huh, what else has she been eating?!).  The fruit cage isn’t covered yet – first job on saturday, to save our strawberries… and I am fretting about pea moth, too… gah, monsters.

The plot does have a healthy frog population which, I have come to realise, is to account for the extra-super-healthy salad beds (yum, yum, yum) and which we are delighted about.  We eat soooo much salad all year that this is a great saving, and we’ve never EVER managed to grow salad in the garden.  The solution is, obviously, to get frogs and sow saladini by the handful. 

Ooh, here’s another gratuitous strawberry shot.  Don’t look at that weed, will you.  I missed a few.

 

Saladini with everything

 

Saladini is such a great crop.  We’re growing the Oriental (the Original version developed by Joy Larkcom, cut-and-come-again expert) and have just sown another salad mixture from T&M to see how it compares.  I have a couple more packets of Italian and oriental mixtures, although this saladini will take some beating, you know.  It’s not too peppery but there’s bite to let you know you’re not eating iceberg.  The chard (yellow stemmed) adds a nice soft note to the salad.  This saladini, sown early April, is running to seed now, so we’ll have to hurry and eat it all up, so we can sow a couple of new lines. 

You can also see Rocky, our faceless scarecrow, in this picture.  And quite a lot of weediness.

Plot view, February 2008

We finally got a replacement camera cable, so I’ll be uploading photographs at last.  Here (above) is a view of the plot in february, and below is the view yesterday.  Please try not to look at the weeds.  Instead look only at the vegetable gorgeousness.

Plot view, May 2008

Afternoon off

Good grief, the plots are a swarm of happy-go-lucky retirees on a sunny afternoon.  Apparently (and I quote), “when you’re retired, every day is a bank holiday.”  Hmph.  Not that I am jealous or anything.  I’m fortunate enough to be my own boss, which means – when the sun comes out and the telephone quietens – I get to trundle down to the plot.

To work, of course.  In-between sitting around with a bottle of blueberry juice to watch the robin flutter between the runner bean canes.

So here’s what I did, and I expect you to be mighty impressed:

First, I cultivated a new patch for yet another packet of French bean seeds that have been lurking in my seed box.  These were ‘Cobra’, the beans that Joe Swift raved about on Friday’s Gardener’s World.  (I didn’t put grass underneath the bed.  I was too tired and finished by the time I remembered.)  This New Patch of mine happened to be along the side of the rusty old shed that we inherited.  Formerly, this Patch was Official Dumping Ground, covered in rusty old poles, spoons (huh??) and other rubbish.  So the first hour was clearing all that off, spotting a frog trying to escape, and prodding the nearby rubbish to ‘encourage’ the frog to finish escaping.

Then a rest, and a little chat with the lucky retiree on the plot-but-one.  He told me we’d get a half-hundredweight of potatoes, which would be helpful if I knew how to translate into pans or handfuls. He was rewardingly impressed with all we’ve done on the plot – it’s absolutely enormous, and I’m not saying this boastfully, because we are not yet sure we can manage it all – but it’s nice when people can see how much work you’ve put in.

I finished digging the patch after another, like, hour and a HALF!  because the ground was solid as a rock.  I think it’s probably NEVER been dug, or maybe not for twenty years.  Another frog appeared and scarpered.  And I put in the French beans, with poles for support.  I might transplant some squashes to the bed at the bottom, too – that could work, and we have zillions of squash seedlings that have self-sown (thanks to someone who dumps squash seeds in the compost bin).

Finally I planted out some more peas – not grown in guttering, as everyone advises, but in modular trays, which seems to have been a big mistake.  They didn’t come out very happily so I’m not sure they’ll take.  And I’m so looking forward to eating our peas, too.  Anywhere I can squeeze in some more, I will.

The saladini continues to rocket (geddit) skywards no matter how much we eat it – what a great crop.  I’ve sown lots more alongside yellow chard (for leaves), extra rocket, icebergs and radishes.  I’ll try again with spring onions soon, too.  They just didn’t appear at all the first time around.  Beet, carrots and kohl rabi all doing nicely, as are the runners and squashes, and potatoes going crazy.  I’m looking forward to eating new potatoes with peas and broad beans – how brilliant that will be.  I’ll have the camera sorted out by then.

The Good Life

Last night we went to visit a man who’d put an ad in the local paper. The deputy gardener was TERRIBLY excited about it.  He said, “there’s another man going at 9, so we have to arrive before that,” but unfortunately, we kept getting lost.  We had to telephone twice for directions and every time we took a wrong turn and had to do a U-bend, Deputy Gardener pointed at the car overtaking us and shouted: “that’s the other man who wants it!  Now he’ll get the best one!”.  I didn’t really understand why he was so excited until we arrived.

We arrived at the man’s house and were invited in; we walked through his garage, which was all kitted out like a mechanic’s den!, and then we went into his garden to look at his two petrol strimmers.  It took him a while to start-up the (more expensive) model that DG wanted (“I liked it because it was more shiny,”), which involved tweaking some dials and then ripping the rip-cord until it went VVVVRRRRRRRRRUUUUM!!!  VRUM!  VRUM! VRUM! VVVVRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!

and lots of smoke billowed everywhere and I rubbed my eyes discreetly.  The man who was selling them makes a semi-retired-living from cleaning, fixing and selling old strimmers, rotavators and mowers.  He was very proud indeed when it went VVVVVRRRRUUUM judging by the number of times he had to show us the noisy smoky bit.  He also, of course, shows us how it cuts weeds/grass (“What’s the string for?” I asked and they laughed like mad.  Apparently, it CUTS the grass!  It’s genius.).

So we now have a petrol strimmer, just like Tom and Barbara.  I tried to convince DG to attach it to some sort of cart / pram with big wheels so it could drive us to Sainsburys and we could ditch the car.  But I don’t think he’s buying in to my whole self-sufficiency obsession just yet.  Give me time…

 

Ahem.

It’s been a while!  I’ve been put off posting because, while we’ve been taking lovely photographs of our hard work at the plot, I have no camera lead with which to upload them.

But that’s no excuse.  So here’s an update.  Lots to say, so little time…

Patience
Back in March we both had a big psychological set-back; unable to sow much yet, but finding it increasingly difficult to keep the weeds down, we harvested our first radishes – what was left after the slugs had feasted – and dug out our failed rhubarb crowns, which had simply sat and rotted away beneath the surface of our immaculately-prepared bed (see plan, below).  We came to the conclusion that patience is the allotmenteer’s most important asset.  And neither of us has much.  So, we sowed indoors, we carted bagfuls of manure and compost and sand up to the plot, and we tried to ready the remaining beds best we could.

Sowing…
We’ve also decided that we REALLY need a greenhouse.  The seed trays on our windowsills – every single one – aren’t enough.  Seed trays have spilled out onto the porch (where they seem happy) and then into the sheltered back garden as soon as I dared.  The difficulty is that we’ve added our vegetable seedlings to the already-dense line-up of plants that I usually grow for the garden; Cosmos, snapdragons, herbs and chillis.  And no matter how many it LOOKS like indoors, when we get them to the plot, they barely cover a sniff of gaping acreage.  Now we’re past the last frost for our area, and thanks to the recent 23 degree heatwave, the latest seedlings are germinating on the patio, and several more have been hardened off enough to sit in the garden.  Of course, now the second batch of sowing commences: brussels, broccoli, cabbage, squash and runners all to be started off under cover. Phew. 

Broad Beans
The trusty ole beans haven’t let us down.  They grew steadily over the winter and put on a glad rush of growth in spring; they’re now 1m+ and bowing with dozens and dozens of pods.  I think we have two 12′ rows, and next year I’m planning to have more.  Unless, of course, we’re still eating broad beans from the freezer.  Another difficulty in being an allotment novice is that we haven’t a clue how much to expect from each crop; how many courgette plants should we have; how much sweetcorn will we eat from six stems?  So we could be swamped with broad beans; or we could eat them in a week.  I haven’t the faintest idea.  This is one of those things, I tell myself, that we must learn in this first year, improving our planning for next season.  We’d love to be able to grow all the veg to replace our weekly box (£650/year), but – as we eat a lot of veg every week – this is a LOT.  What we need is the star performers, no radishes allowed.

Potatoes
Speaking of star performers, our potatoes – Lady Christl, Cara and Pink Fir – are going barmy.  They have a very radiant lust for life, so – if blight spares them – should be a good crop, I think.  We planted oodles of seed potatoes using my ingenious Bulb Planter (buy one now!).  And what other crops have we planted that are worth mentioning?

Asparagus.
Bless its spidery little hearts: every crown has come up for spring, reaching for the skies (seriously. how big do these things get?) and blossoming into their full-grown ferny selves.  (I never knew what asparagus looked like when it grew up.)

Beetroot, carrots, kohl rabi
V-e-r-y painfully slow but finally in evidence.  I hope to harvest some of these in the summer and re-sow for maincrops (except kohl rabi).

Peas, onions and garlic
Onions failed miserably but the shallots are putting on a brave show and the garlic has looked ready to pull since November.  (I am relying on Carol for the fact that it wasn’t, and that it’s just been pretending all this time.)  the peas are beautiful – we realise we didn’t sow enough, going very strictly by the packet rules, and have now sown another thousand all over the place.  (I exaggerate.)  we saw peas growing at RHS Rosemoor a couple of weeks ago – they’d been broadcast-sown in a 60cm circle and surrounded neatly with twigs, which seemed a very efficient manner of doing it.  Ours are in lines – 10cm apart – and I think the sociable little things would have appreciated the support they receive from one another.

Salad, radish, rocket and swiss chard
All doing exceptionally well – the rocket beat everything; it’s in our back garden from last year (didn’t re-sow, no idea what happened) and I can never pick it fast enough.  Even when we’re eating it every day.  And we only have three plants.  The Oriental Saladini has done brilliantly, although I’m wishing that I kept up with the successional sowing, as we’d happily be eating this daily too.  Have bought more packs ready to sow as often as I can remember, all summer long.  The swiss chard is growing a little more slowly than the salad and rocket, but it’s very beautiful – the yellow-stemmed one went in first, and it’s a lovely sunny colour.  Half of the seed is in the salad bed (for small leaves) and half in another chard bed (for full plants).