It’s been a week of mixed weather consequently we’ve not managed to go to the allotment that much this week. However, saying that, we have achieved a fair bit.

With the weather rather unsettled I decided to play hooky and head to London to go to one of my favourite restaurants, Morito. I left London just over three years ago and sadly there really isn’t anything close to this type of food in Hastings. Morito serve the most delicious tapas, their style is North Africa meets Spain with a little Middle East thrown in. The restaurant, along with Moro, is owned by the culinary geniuses, husband and wife, Sam and Sam Clark.

 

My trip didn’t disappoint. We worked our way through the menu over the course of 3 hours…..totally inspired by their menu I’m planning to use some of the produce from the allotment to create some of their dishes such as

Beetroot Borani, served with feta, walnuts and dill

Potato and Courgette Tortilla

Turkish Sour Plums and salt

Anyway, I digress. After a lovely lunch I returned to the allotment and got stuck in, there is much to do. Last week we came up with a draft plan for plot two, which involves the removal of two huge couch weed and bindwind mounds not to mention a bath, bags of couch weed and bindweed roots, and old bits of rotting timber. We plan to construct some proper compost bins and a shed. Before any of this can be sone we need to clear the site and move the current compost area.

This is what the back of the plot looked like on the left hand side. It doesn’t really show the full horror of the work to be undertaken.

The bath has posed a problem ever since we dug it out. It is far too long to go in the back of my Mini. I’m not sure why we’ve never thought about this before, but someone suggested we break it up…. Genius! After all it’s only made from fibreglass and it already has some broken bits…. so I set to work. There was a bit of a tussle but after about ten minutes it was in pieces, sufficiently small enough to go in the back of the car. I loaded it up along with the all the other and took it to the tip.

So with the area cleared of rubbish I could start to dig out one of the mounds. These mounds were created just over a year ago, we cleared the plot by removing the top layer, so essentially sections of turf and weeds. In those days we didn’t really understand what couch weed and bindweed was so we just piled everything on the mound. ROOKIE error! It took the best part of five hours. I painstakingly removed all bindweed and couch roots, placing them in a bag for the tip. The weed free soil placed in another pile and any foliage from the surface of the mound on a new compost heap. So one down and one HUGE mound to go.

We spent some time on plot one over the weekend. We sowed more beetroot seeds and some Mikado Spinach, this is an oriental leaf.

The beetroots have suddenly started to grow really well, obviously enjoying the warmer weather and plentiful supply of rain

Grass is growing at a rate of knots and weeds are literally popping up everywhere. So the plot was strimmed and weeds removed.

Oh and I know this is getting rather dull, but I like to plant things in odd numbers. I found another Angelica. It’s going to make an impressive hedge! And plenty of stems to candy…

It’s almost time to plant out the 64 Swift sweetcorn plants I have sown, grown and nurtured at home. I also have grown 5 courgette dwarf Bush form Verde Di Milano, also ready to be planted out. They have been hardening off on my balcony. So it’s time to get the vegetable beds ready. I share the three plots with Sal, who LOVES straight lines. I have to say she did a rather marvellous job on this vegetable bed.

The strawberries are beginning to ripen; this is our first strawberry of the year!

On the orchard plot we didn’t do much this week. I earthed up the potatoes once more. The heavy rainfall is just what they needed and will help swell their tubers. The compost we are using helps retain moisture and warmth, as you can see they are going bonkers!

The pears and plums are still on the trees and the fruit is filling out………..

But only time will tell, ‘June Drop’ is just around the corner. So we will see how well the trees are this year. Hoping they have moved from being on the ‘critical’  list to at least stable.

So next week there will be more mound removal, it certainly saves on a gym membership!

We had a bit of a mini heatwave at the end of last week so we took advantage of the beautiful weather and got busy on all three plots. Trying to make up for last weeks lack of activity!

Plot One

I have finally managed to ‘hair-net’ the tayberries. I cobbled together a make shift fruit cage, yet again drawing from our large supply of twisted willow bean poles, some fruit netting and a few cane toppers, saves losing an eye!

I know it’s not pretty, but it still allows the bees to visit and most importantly it should keep that thuggish gang of magpies from devouring our precious crop of tayberries. I’m looking forward to enjoying them for breakfast with jumbo rolled oats and greek yoghurt. I hate disappointment!

YAY! The strawberries are beginning to ripen.

The Champion of England peas that I sowed in March, using seed that I saved from last years crop, continue to grow well.

I found another angelica plant at the garden centre, it was there all on its own, how could i resist….?  so I planted that and we now have two.

Something has trudged through the wildflower garden trampling down the Nigella. I think it was that very annoying Mr Fox wearing hobnailed boots!

The orchard plot

We finally have a bench to sit and relax on. It came flat packed…

I looked at the Farrow and Ball colour charts, and after much deliberation, I made haste to Trade Paints and got busy with a paint brush. 8 hours later it was transformed.

I popped it into the back of my Mini, which is surprisingly spacious, and off we went to the allotment with instructions, bolts and a hex key. How hard could it be to assemble? Just 5 bits of wood and 10 bolts.

In fact one reviewer said:

‘Was able to assemble on my own, and I am a woman’

Honestly, unless that woman is an octopus it’s IMPOSSIBLE to assemble on your own! There were a couple of tense moments as the nearly assembled boltless bench collapsed, I’m not the most patient person, but we soon figured it out and here it is……

I continued to earth up the potatoes and I noticed that the Premiere potatoes, they are a first early variety, are starting to form flowers. Our first early potatoes should be ready to harvest from late June to mid July. We need to wait for the flower buds to open or to drop…. unless of course they are eaten by those pesky birds.

Plot Two

We have spent the majority of our time on plot two this week. It’s been slightly neglected recently and the weeds have returned with a vengeance. So I weeded and dug over the front two vegetable beds, removing the bolting parsley, now in it’s second year.

I constructed more ‘wig-wams’, 6 in total, 3 on each bed.

We planted sweet peas in one bed and more Champion of England Peas on the other bed.

Whilst at the garden centre I found this aquilegia, it’s called ‘Blue Winky’! Despite a rather silly name it’s gorgeous and goes so well with the lavender. So we planted it in the flower border replacing the dead white scabious.

We removed the ‘bolting’ leeks and prepared the vegetable bed ready for planting the courgette plants, they are ready to go in next week. I’m just hardening them off on my balcony.

Then we sat down to enjoy the glorious sunshine and came up with a final plan for the plot. It’s a rough copy…. it makes sense to us!

The top end of the plot has been a mess for the past year. We created a couple of compost mounds when we initially dug over the plot. There is also an old bath that we dug out from the middle of the plot, bits of old wood, bags of couch weed and bindweed roots and a real compost heap. One could say it’s a bit of an eye sore.

This photo doesn’t show the true horror

So the plan is to remove these two couch weed / bind weed ridden mounds and then to move the proper compost heap, currently in the top tight hand corner of the plot, to where these mounds are. We plan to construct three wooden compost bins to allow for proper compost turning and rotation. However, the most exciting news of all is there will room in the top left hand corner of the plot for a fruit tree. Not any old tree, but my absolute favourite eating apple tree, the discovery apple. I’ve bored everyone rigid with my longing for one of these trees, so I am absolutely thrilled we are going to get one. There are mid season apples trees close by so this solves the problem of having to get a second variety of apple tree for cross pollination purposes. Where we currently have our  compost heap we plan to put up a shed.

So one thing is for sure, we certainly have our work cut out next week!

There’s not been a huge amount of plot activity this week #slacker.

Whilst I love being outside, I’m a fair-weather gardener. Cold winds are really not my thing, and it’s been a rather cold and windy week with a bit of heavy rain thrown in for good measure. Saying that, I have been fairly busy at home. I’ve taken delivery of a new flat packed wooden bench; it’s been transformed into something wondrous. I have also potted on many of the seedlings. Giant Bulgarian leeks (they grow a metre tall… I know!!), Amposta Sweet red onions, Bleu De Solaise leeks and various kales and spinach. However, I promptly killed the kale and spinach seedlings. I thought I would harden the little fella’s off but I didn’t anticipate the murderous coastal gale force winds. Borlotti bean and Moonlight runner bean seedlings suffered the same fate. Within hours my lovely healthy plants looked as if they had melted. Disaster! So I’ve been busy re-sowing all of the above! Talk about make extra work for myself.

So, on the few occasions I’ve made it to the allotment this week, I’ve concentrated my time on the orchard plot. Here’s what I did.

Earthed up potatoes

Hoorah, the potatoes are leaping into action. With lots of foliage appearing (As you can see the seed potatoes were planted in a lovely straight line!) it was time to start earthing them up….. rather hoping many little potatoes are beginning to form underground.

As the quality of the soil is so poor we are using compost to earth up the potatoes. This will not only provide the potatoes with lots of extra nutrition but the addition of organic matter will help improve the soil structure.

A bit random, but I built some ‘wigwams’ so I could plant out some more sweet peas…

Last year we bought loads of twisted willow bean poles. Rather than using the traditional bamboo sticks I decided to make use of these bean poles.  I tied them together at the top with tarred twine and used ordinary twine around the structure to give the plants tendrils something to grab hold of as they go skyward. The end result, things of beauty, I thought.

Just as I was about to leave a fellow allotmenteer wandered by and offered me some runner bean plants, 14 plants in total. The exact number of poles I had just constructed. How could I refuse such kindness? Especially as mine had ‘melted’ from severe wind burn the day before… hoping these are a wind resistant variety.

So in they went.

The orchard plot is now looking like this. Still so much to do, we need to clear the remaining couch weed and the final compost mound, but we are getting there slowly….

And most importantly, I’m thinking it’s missing something, a bench so we can sit under the fruit trees and enjoy a cup of tea, or in my case, a diet coke.

A large part of this week has been spent keeping the grass under control and digging out weeds. With warm temperatures, longer daylight hours and the odd day of rain nearly everything that we don’t want to grow is growing, and growing at quite a pace. We also planted the young rhubarb plants and dug out the raspberry bed on the orchard plot. We replaced a few of the lavender plants on plot one, and have done absolutely nothing on plot two!

The garlic continues to rust…. They’re not looking especially well…..

The leaves have started to turn yellow, suggesting the rust is now well and truly set in and starting to seriously impact the health of the garlic. Garlic isn’t typically ready to harvest for at least another 6 to 8 weeks depending on variety. I have cut all the infected leaves again in an attempt to nurse these sickly garlic plants through to maturity. You can see from the photo below, the amount of orange blisters is much more severe.

I think that this bout of rust will definitely have a negative impact on the size of our garlic bulbs. I’m just hoping that there is sufficient healthy foliage left to allow the garlic to continue growing and we end up with something.

On the plus side, the strawberries are flowering.

The tayberries are beginning to develop fruit. I shall look to net them soon to prevent the birds from eating our crop.

On the orchard plot, the seed potatoes we planted a couple of weeks ago are beginning to sprout up through the soil.

We’ll let them grow about 10cm tall before we start to earth them up.

We planted the rhubarb. These plants are rather small but they should grow HUGE, so we have spaced them quite far apart.

I also spent 5 hours digging out a bed for the raspberries. I wouldn’t mind but the bed is only 3 metres by a metre! The orchard plot is riddled with couch weed and bindweed so it’s a terribly time consuming task to clear the plot. We decided on a raspberry ‘island’ between the vegetable beds on the right hand side of the plot and what will eventually be the asparagus bed on the left hand side. There’s currently a huge mound of compost there.. that’s a job to be done in a few weeks time.

Now to get to the garden centre to purchase some bean poles and posts for the raspberry and tayberry beds. Cold weather is due over the next week or so, so I’m going to delay planting up the pea, Borlotti bean and runner bean plants. Just as well really as we still need to create the supports.

And finally, when we bought the raspberry canes I couldn’t resist this…..

It’s a herb called Angelica. It will grow large, up to 8 foot tall. I plan to candy its stems, soooooo 1970’s!  Or make a preserve. Alternatively it can be cooked with rhubarb or apples, to make crumbles. If it’s good enough for Mrs Beeton! The stems are impossible to buy so I thought it would be fun to try.

It’s a biennial, part of the parsley family, it LOVES heavy clay soil, and dappled shade. We have the perfect spot on plot one. So in it went. Now to wait for it to grow.