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.

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.

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.

Mucking about

Wow! Sunshine two day’s in a row! Don’t tell the weather; maybe it hasn’t realised it hasn’t rained yet. DFS is already complaining how hot he is.

Yesterday and today we, I mean I, have been trying to empty the compost bins which we’d filled a couple of months ago mainly with horse manure. We want to relocate them to the allotment. I’ve monotonously walked up and down the garden with the wheelbarrow and a shovel endless times and filled the trailer.  Tonight,  DFS, DSL (who has returned home unexpectedly late this afternoon to “recharge” (I said nothing…) after disappearing  for 2 weeks – he was only popping up his new girlfriend’s (NGB’s) house…)  Friend J, and I took it all over the plot.  DDJ and DSK joined in too but the lads did most of the barrowing. With three of them, all with shovels and with two barrow’s what had taken me two evenings took them about an hour.  There seemed tons of the stuff when I was barrowing it up the garden on my own but now it’s sitting in a heap on a sheet of black plastic there seems to be hardly any! It was too dark for photo’s once we’d finished but we should be going over tomorrow to put the compost bins up so I’ll try to rememeber my camera.
We tried out the camping stove that we swapped while we were there and it’s not very good.

We were using the kettle we bought recently from hooty’s for £4.99 which was half full but it must have taken 25 minutes to heat up! We should have kept the old stove. I have another one somewhere which Ill try. DFS wants one with a grill…

Plot measuring.

12/Aug/09  – 21:32

We’ve been over the site again tonight. It’s raining so DSK and I were both wet and muddy when we got back.  We tried measuring out the plots again. We used a corrugated fence as the starting point and measured a 1m path followed by a10.6m plot and repeated. We marked each measurement with a can and continued up the site.  It seems that our shed is pretty much in the right place if we follow these measurements. Then we measured the same distances from the opposite end of the corrugated fence. This time it didn’t go to plan. The opposite end is what I call the conifer end, it’s the top end of our plot. When we measured it out, we found that our shed wasn’t even in our plot but spanned plot number 7 and the pathway between the two! Obviously the existing fencing doesn’t run square as there is no way that we all see that badly! I just wan’t it measureed and marked so that I know where to start and can get stuck in properly. If we go off the conifer end measurements, the 4m x 4m section we’ve dug isn’t even on our plot… I think I’ll have to do a diagram as I’m told this doesn’t explain it properly and I don’t know how else to describe it!

It also looks as if someone has been digging through the junk on site agian, probably for the metal. It wouldn’t  be so bad if they didn’t spread it out! We’ve now got to clean it all up again

Almost here…

We’re just waiting for the final signatures to the agreement and we will be allowed on site. It shouldn’t be long now.