Busy day on the plot

Wow - a whole day of sunshine! I made the most of it by spending almost the whole day at the allotment. I cleared out the shed and took the wire shelving that wasn't being used to the plastic planthouse to be my new staging. A few tent pegs and it was fine. After that, I got my old bath out of the junkpile and took it to the plot. I chiselled out some drainage holes and wedged it so it would be stable.



I sowed:
beans french
broad beans aquadulce
chives
coriander
brussels sprouts can't remember variety
leaf beet (perpetual spinach)
leek Autumn giant
lettuce cos
stock
night scented stock
french marigold
poached egg plant
sunflower
dwarf sunflower
delphinium
nasturtium
hollyhock
convolvulus
sweet pea

I also planted up two hanging baskets for the front door with plug plants (impulse buy from the Garden Centre) and left them in the planthouse to get a head start then repotted a clematis for the archway to the back garden. Now the plastic planthouse is getting rather full.



I used leftover bamboo slat edging to make plant labels.



A very nice bloke from freecycle brought me some bags of topsoil, carried it to the allotment and tipped it into my old bath. I gave him a bucket full of leeks in exchange. Then I scrounged some sharp sand from a neighbour to add to the soil for better drainage. A good mix up and the carrots & salad onions can go in with a perspex cover on to keep the cats out and the heat in.

New Plastic Planthouse

I planted some grasses and bulbs around the tree.


Not quite visible but the lillies I planted last year are coming up again.


I have a new plastic planthouse - bigger than the old one and with tent pegs & guy ropes. Due to limited staging space it will hold fewer trays than the wardrobe-style one, but that is easily fixed!


I'm trying a successional sowing approach this year so that (hopefully) I'll always have a choice of what to crop - unlike last year's glut of greyhound cabbage. You can have too much of a good thing...

Today's sowing session for the allotment:
Cabbage copenhagen market
Cabbage greyhound
calabrese marathon
cauliflower grafitti
cauliflower snowball
cauliflower sunset
chili anaheim
courgette Zuboda
florence fennel zefa fino
lettuce ice king
lettuce lollo rossa
lettuce red salad leaves
peas meteor
squash winter festival
tomato Gardener's Delight
tomato Sub Arctic Plenty
basil
parsley


and for the garden:
3 different kinds of dahlia (5 tubers)
6 montbretia "lucifer"
10 pastel trailing begonias


I'm always watched when I'm in the allotment - probably because I've got into the habit of feeding the chickens with leftover leaves through the fence.


Still to sow:
Potatoes and onions - the ground is still too wet
leeks
carrots
salad onions
parsnips
PSB
beans - broad, French and borlotti
kohlrabi
sprouts
leaf beet
chives
coriander
lots of flowers!

It must be Spring again!

The pond has been full of Very Busy Frogs since Friday. I counted over two dozen at one point.





Can we eat these?


I found a pretty purple Christmas Rose hiding under the leaf pile so I planted a white one next to it.


Still alive!

Recent activity

In the allotment:


Dug over half of the far plot and removed what remained of last year's leaf beet. There were still a lot of twisty white bindweed roots, but (I dearly hope) not as much as last time this was dug over and certainly not as much as when I first attempted to clear it.
Had a bonfire with the hedge trimmings and some woody stuff that would take too long to compost.


The view from the plot. Guess where the leaf beet went?


Ooooh freshly dug... Can I?

Manured. What's wrong with the litter tray, you little ***?


Hunt The Garden Cat.

In the garden:


This shrub was being crowded by a penisetum in front of it and a dahlia behind it so I dug out the broom (dead) that was here and put this (alive) in instead.


I've split some ornamental grasses, bought some herbs and potted up some bits'n'pieces.




The salad bar is at an increasingly jaunty angle. It needs moved somewhere sunnier and strengthened.

Esmerelda's spurs and Mathilda's wings

These are new - if you look really closely at her legs you might notice spurs about an inch long.






And the rest of old Esme...

She seems quite happy and is still laying but there's something not right about a chicken suddenly sprouting spurs.



You might just be able to see where Mathilda's wings have been clipped. She is the only one to have had the wit to get out of "Borkatraz" and now we've raised the mesh, extended it, plugged all the gaps we could find, shears provided the final option.

What's going on

Wotchalookin' at?


The goldfish are awake.


Not sure but these might be tulips.


Yay! I didn't kill off the rhubarb when I moved it!


My house. My perch. Why can't I go inside?


The daffs are flowering already.


Bathing.


Pigeon-proofing

Things To Do That I Should've Done Already...

... plant garlic
... dig up, split and store the overgrown dahlia tubers
... dig over the far end of the lottie
... tidy up the ornamental grasses
... move a plant that is being crowded out by the grasses and the dahlias
... take more photos - notably of the daff that is flowering already in the garden
... have another bonfire and spread the ash over the plot
... make a bed for squash plants ready for the spring

Actually I did plant some garlic but it completely disappeared after the shoots reached about 3 inches high. Some of the other jobs here are traditionally autumn jobs I think but it has been really mild here and not too wet so I think I can just get on with it.

It's been a while...

...and I have been busy - honest!

The chickens are settled in to their new home and I think (fingers crossed) their playground is almost as escapeproof as we can make it. They're still laying - about 15 eggs per week at a guess. Still a bit baldy in places! I'd upload pictures but the blighters won't stay still long enough to get decent closeups.

In the allotment not much is happening. The leeks are brill (having some with dinner tonight). I dug up the parsnips today and was actually quite impressed by them. Not great but I didn't expect anything worth eating since they went in late and the ground wasn't really suitable. They were small and forky but they'll feed us tonight. Also in the pot: jerusalem artichokes.
Cue mash!

The main job this week has been to erect anti-pigeon defences around the raised bed (spring cabbages) and the brassica bed (PSB and kale).

A step forwards

I have resigned from a job that I used to love but has been making me miserable for a year. From Easter, I will either be working elsewhere or doing supply work until the right place comes up.

Meanwhile, we have a bit more flexibility when looking for a suitable property.

Mathilda's Massive Egg

Can you spot the 100g monster? She clucked plenty over that one!

what's in the allotment

I moved the kale and PSB from its closely-planted "holding area" up to the ex-potato bed. This area has been weeded, dug over with compost from the garden and bonfire ash, covered with a cardboard mulch and left alone for a month or so.



The cabbage collars I used did keep cabbage root fly away but provided a nice home for slugs. There was quite a lot of slug damage so overall I'm not convinced that collars are worth using.


Something has broken this kale off at the stem. Slugs or pigeons?


Some of the leeks are big enough to use.


Kohlrabi


Slugs got some of the swede and some swedes just vanished. Rotted away or eaten? The ones I get to first were nice though.

I'll try again next season with better slug-defences!

Back to project 1...

Since the chickens are keen to remove all traces of vegetation from their vicinity and I actually want to keep the lawn, we have made them a permanent home behind the pond. This is the area I cleared ready for re-planting in the spring. Change of plan!

They have a bigger area now.


Scratching about


Garden cat no.2's reaction to flapping wings.

So what's in here then?


Garden cat no.1 supervising the digging up of insects and worms - the compost bin lived here until Friday.


I think garden cat no.2 may be deciding to change species.

free(ish) ranging

They're out! ScratchscratchPECK ScratchscratchPECK ScratchscratchPECK Do they never get bored?


Here's a patch of lawn they've not been on yet...


And here's a patch they have scratched over.

They have done a great job of removing the moss and they seem quite partial to dandelions too - even grubbing up roots. I've reseeded in places but the rest will have to wait until spring. We need to choose which part of the garden to sacrifice as their permanent home. The bare area behind the pond is looking likely! I just need to level it off a bit first.


Mathilda's baldy neck. The feathers are starting to come through. Mathilda lays the biggest eggs - wish I'd photographed the last one! Massive!

Laying - Mathilda: big eggs, nearly every day. Esmerelda: nice shaped eggs, thick shells, nearly every day. Clarabell and Henrietta: one is laying well-formed eggs sporadically and the other lays soft-shelled eggs almost daily but I don't know which is laying which. I'm giving them oyster shell grit and the empty eggshells get washed, baked, ground up and mixed with their feed as a calcium supplement.


Jealous? Moi?