What a whopper!

I harvested a parsnip for tea tonight. It was almost dark so I had to guess where the plant was and managed to put the tines of the fork through it as I lifted it but I was over the moon with the monster I dug up. It weighed 700g! I also picked 15 sprouts to try but as we were running late with tea and I suspected them to be full of unwanted bugs I’ve covered them in a salt soak . I think that’s what you do with fresh sprouts full of insects. Normally I’d just take them (the sprouts not the insects!) out of a plastic bag from the freezer once I’ve bought them from a supermarket!

 

Burning the blighters

Katie Thear suggests that an effective way of getting rid of red mite is to use a blow torch. Well, I didn’t have one of those but I did have a weedwand which is the same but with a longer tube so I’ve blasted the little coop out with that. The wand normally produces an intense blue flame but when held horizontally or, even worse, slightly vertical, the flames go from a nice concentrated blue to a massive, wide spreading yellow. Several time I almost set fire to the pen; at least the mites would be killed! I’ve never used a blowtorch and found it difficult to judge how long to hold the flame on the wood. As it was raining and very windy, I couldn’t tell what was steam and what was smoke. I didn’t actually scorch anything so I think I did well and fingers crossed that when the pekins go in, the mite have gone.

At 3pm I went over the lotty. I’ve been saying for months about all of the plot holders getting together and clearing communal areas such as pathway and the carpark. It was arranged at the last meeting (which I didn’t go to) to do that today. DFS had been there since 13:30 and when I got there there were quite a few people – which made a change.
There was us, KM, DK, RP, PH, JH,  E&GT, and TW which was half the plot holders and a very good turn out for us and a fair amount of clearing was done. It means we can now see the back fence and where we stand with the trees. There are a few small oaks to come out which will be fun!

paths, planning and planting

Today was a strange day; one minute it was raining and the next the sun was shining. DFS and I went to the lotty. Since it’s been dug DFS is very eager.  The plan today was to get the side path and a central path sorted.   I always chat to people so DFS went and got the rake and “levelled” the side path. It’s way better now but is far from complete as it needs firming and levelling. As you walk you sink into the soft soil the digger has left. I then suggested DFS plant the onion sets in one of the raised beds (RB1 for my records) only to find out he’d never planted anything before. I hadn’t even considered that when he didn’t get involved as he’s always been so anti-gardening. He likes a nice garden and buying plants etc but his punishment as a child was  to dig a part of the garden so understandably he’s left it all to me. I will never understand some people’s idea of discipline – gardening used as a punishment for a child?!  I try to make things like that enjoyable for the kids and anyone else that I can encourage to be interested including DFS and after showing him how, I watched him kneeling happily beside the bed meticulously measuring the planting distance and gently firming them in. So gently in fact that I think they will all fall over in a slight wind as the soil hasn’t been firmed down. Still, he was happy!

We then went on to tackle the mountain.  I want a central pathway from which I can access and mark other beds but the mound goes across where the path will be.  We decided to move it. DFS started by shovelling the soil from one place to another but I’m too lazy. I don’t want to move it twice so I sugested that we shake out any roots and use the soil to build up the lower side of the plot on the left. It took an hour or two but by the end of it we could put a string line up representing the path.

Some of the plans I made last night have now changed.  I’m not sure how to plan the site. I wanted to put a cordon hedge of soft fruit (raspberries, tayberry, black, red and white currants and gooseberries) but when I looked at it it will run from north to south and cast shade over the whole plot. I wanted it as a wind break but I’m not sure about the shade.  I’m thinking now of putting them at the bottom of the plot.

Power out

We had a power cut today. We haven’t had one of those for ages and I was a little lost without my internet to pop backwards and forwards to. I spent a peaceful hour or so in the garden instead; without electricity I couldn’t hear the normal 3 different types of music blasting in competition across the back fences. I managed to actually clear one side of the greenhouse which I’ve been meaning to do for a few weeks now.

I’m pleased with how the moneymaker tomatoes are cropping and harvested a whopping 6 kgs. I’ve washed and dried these and then put 1kg of whole tomatoes into ziplock bags with the air sucked out ready to be dealt with in winter when the dark nights and cold days keep me in the house for longer. Then the smell of tomatoes can remind me of the summer and give a promise of whats to come as the heat from the cooker warms the house.  It sounds very poetic and simply means I’ll get into a mess peeling skins off toms as I complain about frozen fingers and water!

I still have about the same amount of tomatoes left on the plant so I’m shutting up the greenhouse and hoping that they turn red.

I also found this little chappy under the mess and very happy I was to see him too! He’s been very busy this summer as I only found one large slug in the greeehouse which the ducks were very grateful for!

After clearing the greehouse, I planted up my cheap onion sets. There were 25 in each net which were reduced to 20p in Bradley Nursery. As there’s still no where for them to go while we wait for the plot to be ploughed,  I put them into modules which I’ve left outside.  When I came in the house I looked at the moon calendar and today is a root day so hopefully, these should romp away!

As soon as the power was back on, the boom boom of rave music blasted over the fence and the fan kicked in from the “social house” that the neighbours at the bottom of our garden have built so I had pleasant wafts of au de lager and cigarettes drifting up the path. I pottered around for a while but gradually got more and more fed up and frustrated with my neighbours lack of consideration and came in to cook tea instead.

Beans

I don’t really like beans. It’s probably not a fair statement as the only beans I’ve ever really tried are baked beans from a tin but I’m not keen on those. Trouble is, I’m reading all these blogs and forums and when people talk about them and describe themthey sound lovely. Perhaps someone can recommend some good recipes. I’d also appreciate someone explaining about what I think are different stages (which I used to think were different beans) shellies, haricots, driers, green, snap, flagelot etc etc?! How confusing is that?

I’ve also discovered the many types of beans there are to grow! There are lots of colours; green in varying shades, orange, brown, red, black and white, yellow and even blue. I want to grow them as much for the variety in the beans and the flowers. Again, I’d need to learn. Can I plant them all in my garden or plot and have the beans breed true or do I need to isolate and hand pollinate as I’ve read you need to for cucurbits such as courgettes and marrows?

On a forum recently I was reading about beans and they were discussing different types. When I said that I’d never seen one type of bean they were discussing, one member (TS) pm’d me and offered to send my some in exchange for the stamp and an SAE! Aren’t some people lovely!

I wish I’d been growing my own for years. I feel like I’ve wasted all this time buying and eating supermarket food and I should have been learning how to make our food from scratch and showing the kids as I did. There are so many skills that are being lost. I vaguely rememebr being a little girl and watching my great gran when she had a baking day. We were shoed out of the way but I remember bread and pastries covering the tables in the dining room and she seemed to just throw it together and it came out gorgeous. Sadly these skills weren’t handed down and most of what I cooked and served as an adult was “ready” meals. fish-fingers, chicken nuggets etc . Over the last year or two, that’s changing and I’ll learn but I wish I’d done it a long time ago when the kids were little. Oh well, it’s never too late to learn and hopefully the kids aren’t too old to want to help in the kitchen…

Rain stopped play

The rain, that we wasn’t supposed to be having today came down in dribbles or downpours so I gave the allotment a miss today – it will probably do my wrist good, which is still quite painful, .

Instead, I’ve spent the entire day trying to sort out discounts for the allotment then a way to send out the information I have! I scanned the discount seed catalogue we had from NSALG which ended up being 30 mb and I tried to upload it somewhere, anywhere, for members to download. The only place I could put it was on my website and I didn’t really want to lose my anonymity by giving everyone my web address. I dont even know thats me! I signed up with Yahoo groups but I dont think everyone will want to sign up, I found a free web hosting service for community groups and charities which looked great but I found out that it wouldn’t host files  once I’d set it up.

I  managed to get the file size down to 1mb and made another accoutn with another free provider but despite it saying it accepts files up to 8mb, it wont accept it.  Then I tried to use my BT digital vault. I tested it by sending an invite an alt email of mine an invite but 2 hours later and i still hadn’t had one so i did it again – that was an hour and a half ago….

so I’ve given up and sent the files via email – i hope I don’t upset anyone.

I was really pleased with the potato company I mentioned yesterday. They were very helpful and patient with my questions and sent out a list that I’ve also sent to everyone. I hope people order from them because they have been very accessible and friendly, responding quickly to my emails. I would (and am to the association) highly recommend them for service alone – lets hope the spuds aren’t rotten! Just kidding.

It doesn’t seem like I’ve done much does it?  Blimey, How time flies..! it’s 1/4 past midnight and I’ve been at my computer since about 1 this afternoon!
I have to go to tesco now to get something for dfs’s lunch tomorrow…what fun and just for a change, i’m tired.

In a follow up to the wasp and worms, i think the towel did the trick. Not sure because the rain today might have kept them at bay – hopefully the weather will improve tomorrow

what a plot of messing about!

Over 3 hours, yes three hours,  this morning it took 7 of us to measure the plots and it turns out that we can all have one the same size despite the illusion that the site tapers. DDJ came with me and must have been bored silly! The plots will be good sizes  at 10.6 x 26 metres with 1 m paths between each. We’ve allowed an extra metre on the one side of the site to allow for the conifers (I’ll have to get someone to hazard a guess as to how tall they are  but I’d guess, maybe, 30 feet?) and it leaves a good sized path up the centre of the plots. We didn’t hack into the brambles today to measure the last plot but the person who will be cultivating it has lots of machinery to do that himself. The posts don’t look like they line up but anyone is welcome to grab a tape measure and check their plot size!

After measuring I came home to sort out dinner and went back later for an hour before it got dark ( by 5 to 9 tonight it was too dark to see what we were doing – wait winter, I’m not ready!) . I was really disappointed because I went to have another go at digging the bed for these potatoes on my own plot and my right wrist is quite painful. I tried for a while and managed about 2m x 50cm which was hard going because I couldn’t get my fork in past all of the stones but in the end I had to give up because of my wrist. I’d already bent my fork trying to dig and I’m really tired because I kept waking last night; maybe I wasn’t quite as enthusiastic as I have been.  Anyway, I didn’t do much and now my wrist is painful to move. I’ve taken ibuprofen and I really hope it’s better tomorrow – they’ve forecast rain coming on Tuesday.

Just before we came home, DSK (whom I’d dragged over to keep me company even if he was just sitting on a deck chair with his nintendo ds!) and I went to harvest some comfrey leaves from the pathways to use on the potatoes. I’ve read you should line the base of your potato bed with them so I’m going to do an experiment (1). While we were wondering up the site, I noticed a fairly clean crisp packet blowing about and, thinking someone was littering the site, grumbling and went to pick it up. When I did I noticed the expiry date was 1996! The packet is older than my kids!

• Other news today:

• I emailed a well known potato supplier yesterday to ask about allotment discounts and gave the link to our newspaper article to show what we were doing (or rather, the papers take on what we were doing) and they have responded immediately and positively. I am very pleased and would publicly praise the company but I’m not sure they want hundreds of people requesting discounts!
• I’ve also been volunteered to be on television as the BBC are coming to do a story about what we’ve done. I really don’t think I can do it. I couldn’t even do a presentation at uni.  The thought makes me feel sick and what do I say?! It’s only next week too so I’ve got some thinking to do.

(1). I have two 4m x 1.5m beds to fill with these potatoes. I’m going to plant half in each bed with a lining of comfrey leaves and half without. Then one bed will be mulched with the hay that we’ve cut and left and the other bed will be earthed up with soil. Then we can compare whether comfrey makes a difference and whether we find earthing up of mulching to be a better way for us to grow potatoes.

wasps and worms

I thought I was finally getting the hang of the worm bin I set up before and was beginning to add large quantities of kitchen waste. Every time I took the lid of a mass of worms tried to bury from the light. Recently my kids discovered jam making and badgered me to buy fruit. So off I went and bought punnets full of strawberries which sat in the fridge for two days and went off. I threw them in the worm bin which has encouraged hundreds of wasps. I hate wasps.

When I was a teenager I was sat upstairs on the front seat of a full double decker bus. I could see the wasps on the front window buzzing around. Occasionally one would swoop across the seat at me and I’d try not to fly up in the air. Then one landed on me and I tried to brush it away gently but it kept coming back. In the end it flew up and behind me out of the way. A short while later I felt something crawl down my back through the neck of my top. I tried to arch away from it hoping I wouldn’t squash it. I was in my terrified creepy crawly stage but trying not to look like a raving lunatic on the bus! Of course it stung me and wasn’t satisfied with one sting but went on to sting several times across my back and my dignified appearance was the furthest thing from my mind as I bounced and jumped about.

Anyway, it means that if I see a wasp now, I normally run, arms flailing and squealing in the opposite direction. OK maybe that’s exaggerated but I try all evasive manoeuvres. And now I have wasps in small swarms just feet from my back door. The aren’t happy staying there either but want to come in the house and the car and follow you around. The lid to the wormery has gone brittle (cheap but very effective worm bin) and the clips on the edges have snapped off which means I can’t shut the lid snugly and the wasps are crawling through the sides. I noticed them last week but there has been more wasps each day. This morning I thought it was quiet on the waspish front as there weren’t any flying about. I wanted  to gently open the lid to check and then move the wormery down the garden away from the house and back yard. Of course, as soon as I flipped the lid up a miniature cloud of yellow and black burst into the air accompanied by my hasty retreat.  Once they’d settled back down to a particularly decomposed grape, I hesitantly approached to return the lid. Managing this with thumping chest and running shoes warmed up I reached for the broom to push the lid a little more firmly from a distance and managed to push a bloody big hole through the top!

Today DFS has had to shoo over 20 out of the kitchen and I was complaining about them to my neighbour who told me that they’re having the same problem but on the other side of the street. So maybe my worm bin isn’t to blame. This afternoon as I came through the back door from being at the lotty, I noticed a shadow on the rim of my baseball cap right above my eye and I realised what it was just as DFS went to warn me that I had a hitchhiker. With lightning speed I’d managed to whack the front of my cap with my palm and realise that it wasn’t going to come off as my pony tail was through the fastening hole at the back. A split second later I’d gained almost panic status trying to rip off my cap without touching it and within 3 seconds of being in the back door I’d hurled the cap with the offending insect right at DFS! Luckily the wasp had taken quite a impact as it hit either DFS or the kitchen cupboard and was walking around slightly concussed instead of trying to revenge itself for it’s treatment – get em before they get you I now feel.

Although I don’t like killing things and I know they do a good job, I have put up a wasp trap. I’ve baited it with overripe strawberries in the hope that it will distract them from the wormery and I can begin using it again for our household waste, or move the wormery or, if the trap is very successful, move the trap away from the house.

Once it got dark tonight, I’ve taken the lid off the wormery, placed a folded towel over the top and replaced the lid. I hope that stops them going in. I also moved the trap to the other side of the garden. Fingers crossed for tomorrow.

Home Grown Food

I’m pleased with myself! Everything on my plate has been produced at home. The eggs from the hens, the beans, courgettes, tomatoes, onions and even the herbs are from out of the garden!

New folk arrive – and so do me spuds!

I Know what you’re thinking.  Is that the new folk or the spuds in that photo? Well its the spuds!

I went to the site this morning to meet and greet new people  – I like that part. Already though, issues have been raised that I hadn’t considered.

The first related to the fee we are charging.  As we are a new association there are costs involved in setting up the site. I don’t know what they are all going to be but I can think of:

• security gates, posts and fitting plus labour and delivery of items
• access gates  plus labour and delivery of items
• locks
• pathways clearing, weed membrane (?) covering (bark). plus labour and delivery of items
• car park clearing, and creating some type of hardstanding
• rubbish removal such as skips
• possible water supply or at least have the water board survey the site.

There are probably lots more but as we are new to this, we don’t know. We have also found that although people have said they definately want a plot , some aren’t turning up to work on them and certainly aren’t helping with clearing the site – it ends up with the same people (less than 5…) to try to do all of it.  At the last meeting we decided to ask people to pay a fee (£50) to secure their plot, show their commitment and it would also help to pay towards the items we need to purchase.  Considering our council are charging more than double this amount annually, the fee seems fair although this could change when we’ve assessed everything involved. If the fee isn’t paid within a specified time limit (mid September which gave them 2 months) they will lose their plot.

One of the newcomers asked me how long the £50 rent lasted for and when he’d be required to pay again. I explained that our constitution says the fees are paid annualy in  January (which is when the council request the rent) he suggested that as he wasn’t having the plot for a full year, the fee should be reduced.  I wasn’t prepared for questions regarding fees and struggled to find answers on the spot although I did explain that we were all paying the same amount for the same length of time and that trying to regenerate the site costs money that we all had to contribute to. I didn’t suggest that he pick up a fork, rake, scythe etc and actually do the work with the other few of us for everyone, in his own time and for free like we are! I didn’t think to change his perception that the fee he was paying was an annual rent and he didn’t seem satisfied my reply. He suggested that the annual fee was a priority we should be sorting out and advised that we came to a better agreement at our next  meeting. I felt as if I personally was trying to rip him off – probably an over reaction. After discussing the issue with other plot holders, I feel that I responded correctly. The fee is not an annual rent but a holding fee that goes towards securing a plot and clearing the site – we personally have invested a lot more and if you include time and labour… well… At our next meeting we are going to try to make this clear.To be honest our priorites hadn’t been fees as we weren’s expecting new people to come along yet and if they did, we (well I) was assuming they’d feel the same as us that the site and it’s clearing etc was to be shared between us all. Our priotities so far were getting the council to agree to us using the land, then getting insurance and an official association in place so that the council agreed, then trying to clear the site and then discuss gates etc and thats as far as we’d got until people got wind of the site and turned up wanted a piece. Maybe new people see us as “a landlord”?

Anyway that was one issue. The other was plot sizes. I have been trying to measure and plan the plots on my own (well with DSK) and I think I’ve done ok. There are still 2 plots to mark out but you have to clear the land before you can access it with a tape measure! Like me, people want to know exactly where their plot is but again, I couldn’t give a definate answer. They had been told that the plots measured 10.6 metres by 27 metres but this isn’t correct. The site looks like it tapers so my plot which is midwaymight not be 27m long so those further up could be even shorter. One plot holder wanted to increase the width of the plot because of how much shorter it looked by eye but we’ve plotted the width of the plots and there will be people either side of him so that wouldn’t be reasonable. I suggested that once we know the annual running costs of the site, and calculated average fees, we could charge per total area  instead of per plot ( I hope that makes sense, I’m getting tired and I’ve had a couple of lagers! lol). Anyway, when everyone was gone and the regular few people were there, I told them what had happened and said I’d be there in the morning to try to clear the 7-8 foot high bramble covered debris to mark the plots which means making a  pathway 20 something metres back, then another 11.6m across, then another 20 odd metres back again and then repeating it). The regular reliables immediately offered to come down in the morning to help. So the plan now is to forget the sunday lie in, grab a brushcutter and get our thick clothing on and try to clear the perimeters of another two plots or three … What fun and who will appreciate it? No one, the way I feel at the moment I’m expecting complaints about the size and the fee but I am tired and grizly ao I could be miles out ! Oh yes. The plot that wants a reduced fee is the biggest on the site…

On a lighter note, my Bambino Winter potatoes came today from Dobies.

The catalogue says:

“Potato Bambino

Good all-round disease resistance

In field trials Bambino was one of the highest yielding varieties and showed good all round disease resistance which will suit those who prefer to avoid using garden chemicals. The tubers are round, medium-sized with creamy-white very tasty flesh. “

and

“Bambino – Organic Salad Potato
It is a light and creamy but less waxy variety to other new potatoes. It has good resistance to tuber and foliage blight and scab.”

There was supposed to be 20-30 tubers but there is more like 40. The courier gave them a bashing despite the fragile stickers all over the parcel and some of the tubers are damages. Now I’m gutted because I’ve spent so much time on everything else thatthe ground isn’t prepared for them and I have to try and dig a very large plot asap!

Just another snippet. It seems that our plot is inviting all sorts of interest. We were told tonight that a neighbour to the site stopped a few teenagers from carting off with some of the water butts. We knew that uninvited people had been on site taking the old metal but hadn’t realised that others were on site too.

Other visitors – or possibly residents – we have are rabbits (well at least one which has been spotted on many occasions) a fox, pigeons, a dead rat (live ones too more than likely but none spotted) cats, and I think a perigrine falcon, sparrowhawk or hobby which swooped the length of the site low to the ground last night, skimmed over my head and landed on my shed. It looked at me for a second or two and was gone agian. Whatever it was looked like a grey bird of prey.