Annual report

I have been so busy over the last year that I haven't had time to even think about this blog. But I took a look at it today and realised my last post was exactly one year ago today - so here we go with an annual report!

2016 was not a great year on the plot. Two of the beds which I had used for planting out perennials for my cutting garden just weren't good enough. They still had too much clay in them (I had not added enough organic matter in other words) and were too wet for the perennials. None of the plants were doing well and some of them - like Scabious - died. I should have not been in such a hurry to plant them out on this plot. My plan is to dig what perennials are left out of these two beds and transfer them to my other (dryer) plot. I'll then grow potatoes on these beds.

Two beds which had a lot of manure and other organic matter added over the winter have definitely improved. They still need more but it is good to see them improving.

Another disappointment was the polytunnel that we had put up in October 2015. It was great to use it in the spring to bring plants on early, but by the end of the summer it was falling apart. It was just melting away in the sun. To my surprise it has survived the winter and is still standing, albeit full of holes. I will be able to use it to bring on some hardy seeds early - I plan to start off some sweet peas next week - but it won't be much use for anything else. Won't make the mistake of buying another one, I have to save up for a greenhouse instead.

Turning to 2017, the good weather in January has meant I have been able to get lots done.

Firstly, I created a new bed which I am going to use for Comfrey. Comfrey has many uses on an allotment. Firstly, it can be made into a comfrey tea - a liquid feed that is high in potassium, so good for flowers and fruit. The leaves can be put into the bottom of a potato trench where they help against potato eelworm. The leaves are quick to wilt so you can also just cut some down and use them as a mulch around plants. Sometimes I cut leaves off add just add them to the compost heap.

I am using Bocking 14 comfrey which does not spread by seed. The deep taproots make the plant difficult to remove once you have it, so you don't want it growing in the wrong place.

The site I chose for the comfrey bed is near a big clump of nettles (good to make a high nitrogen liquid feed) so that I have all my 'feeding' plants in the same area.

So far the bed is small, but I aim to expand it as the comfrey gets established.

The new comfrey bed

There was a good bit of couch grass and a lot of bind weed root in this bed when I dug it over so I am tempted to delay planting the comfrey for a while so that I have more time to clear the bed. Maybe I will grow an early crop of spinach here....

The second thing I have done a lot of work on is clearing a lot of the brambles and ivy out of the hedges. It was taken a long time but I think it will be worth it. The brambles have all been cut down to the ground and my plan is to poison it once it starts into growth again.

The hedge between me and my neighbour is mainly Hazel. Due to the amount of bramble, ivy and bindweed growing in the hedge, the Hazel is unable to grow upwards. Instead it grows outwards and gets in the way on the plot. So, we took the drastic action of cutting the Hazel down to the ground. It is a shame that, for the moment at least, I have lost my privacy on the plot, but if it means less ivy and bramble, it will be worth it.

Hazel cut down but stumps full of ivy

Ivy cleared away from tree stumps

The clearout is by no means complete and we need to keep working on it, but we have made a very good start. In addition, I have got a few good bean poles, lots of pea sticks and even some wood for our wood burner at home. Now all we have to do is deal with this:

We need to have a bonfire

The weekend just gone I was also able to complete the installation of our pond (a large shower tray).

The pond waiting to be cleaned out

I have planted some water lovers in the pond area (it is towards the bottom of a slope so should stay fairly damp) which I will use for cut flowers. I have planted mint, hostas, Lyrthum, arum lilies and  persicaria. I have a feeling they will all get swamped with couch grass and will need to be dug out again next year, but I have so many plants in pots, I just felt I had to get rid of a few.

So, lots of great work done already this year... but I haven't even touched the beds yet. I feel so far behind already!

Finally, dry enough to dig

It is wonderful to see some sunshine at last. I couldn't miss the opportunity to get up to the plot and get some digging done, even if there was a biting wind. What a transformation from the end of January - the soil is drying out fast.

I am creating a new hedge on the corner of my plot to shield it from view. This is not because I don't want anyone to see what I'm doing on the plot, but rather to entice people in. In my minds eye, given another couple of years, the plot will be well-established and growing some wonderful plants for flowering arranging, have a pear and cherry "orchard" in the centre, a wild-life pond, a bit of topiary and a soil that can grow some great veg too. As I say, the idea of the screen is to entice people to venture in and hopefully give them a pleasant surprise. Time will tell if that works or not.

The plot is surrounded by a tall hedge on three sides (the fourth side is metal railings and then woodland) so it is already private. So it would be more accurate to say that I am creating a screen across one of the two entrances. I'm using a green dogwood which has variegated leaves. I'm not a huge dogwood fan but the foliage is great in flower arranging.

Three variegated dogwoods to create a screen

I have also planted some Cornus alba Kesselringii (black-stemmed dogwood) to start a hedge round by Compost Corner. I may have planted them too far apart, but as it is a very easy plant to propagate, I'll just add more if need be.

Three black-stemmed dogwood to screen 'Compost Corner'

No work on the allotment until this has disappeared.....

Too wet to dig

I have taken to digging a small ditch along the edges of the beds as a means to stop the couch grass growing back into the beds (not 100% successful but it helps). But as the plot is on a slope, the ditches are now just holding water.

The ditch in the photo is running left to right along the slope, rather than down it. But it has given me the idea that I should create ditches from the top of the plot to the bottom so that water runs off more easily. It would run off into some trees so it won't bother any other plot holders and the trees would hopefully soak up the water. Hmmm.... something to think about?

Too wet to work... I went up to the allotment on Sunday but really, everything was too wet to get anything done. I spent a couple of hours putting up some more shelving in the polytunnel but eventually got too cold and came home. Very frustrating as there is so much to do!

One of the things I have managed to get done this winter is sort out the area that I call 'compost corner' (an homage to TISWAS). The area in question is a corner of the plot which was full of rubbish and overgrown with brambles.

An overgrown 'compsost corner'

It's not particularly clear in the photo but to the right is a compost bin I inherited with the plot. It is a great bin and very well-made but, as it is up against the fence, it has brambles growing in over the top of it which I find difficult to reach, and so difficult to cut back.

The council came and cut back the hedge (to the left of the photo) just enough for me to be able to get in and start tackling that rubbish.

Half the rubbish and half of the bin gone

It was a bit wet and slippy working down in this corner but as I don't intend to grow anything here, I wasn't bothered about doing damage to the ground.

That's better!

There were about 5 tree stumps down in the corner that I took down to nearer ground level. Now, as I empty the compost bins I have, I'll put them in this area. Nearby there is a nice big patch of nettles so at some point I will also add a patch of comfrey. 

Although it has been wet (too wet to dig the beds) since the end of October, there have been other things I've been able to get on with.

One of the things I have done is plant out my "orchard". There is a big area in the middle of the plot which is just "grass" - couch grass and other weeds in reality. This is going to be what I rather grandly call my orchard. In reality it is four fruit trees.

I have a plum and greengage on my other plot and lots of people are now growing apples on their plots so I have opted for two pear trees and two cherry trees. I've lost the receipt with the names of the trees already but hopefully the labels are still readable! Anyway, the plan is to festoon the trees. Festooning is a method where by you bend the branches over so that they grow towards the ground. That way, the sap rises more slowly and (not sure why) but this causes the trees to set more fruit. It was quite common in France at one point, so I am told. It also means that I can keep the trees to a manageable height and will be able to net them and harvest the fruit more easily.

The Orchard

There are a couple of artichokes in the orchard at the moment but they will go in the spring.

Although progress on the allotment has been slow - ridding the beds of plastic matting, couch grass, bindweed and getting organic matter into the soil is never going to be an overnight job - there are other areas where I have made progress.

In September we installed a polytunnel, which is something I have wanted for a long time. Although the site is surrounded by a big hedge, it can still be quite windy so the polytunnel is buried quite deep. It won't be blowing away over winter.

Buried deep and not going anywhere

Priorities... first thing in the tunnel was some seating

I have already learnt that having a polytunnel isn't all that it is cracked up to be. I sowed a lot of hardy annuals in September and thought they would cruise through the winter. But there are more slugs in the tunnel than I had expected so some of my seedlings were eaten. 

I wanted a polytunnel in part so that I could store all my tender perennials (pelargoniums etc) over winter. Despite the fact that we have had a very mild winter, we had one very cold night in November which froze everything in the polytunnel. I think the pelargoniums are done for.

The plot is very sunny so I won't be using the polytunnel much in the summer I don't think. It will get too hot in there and I don't want to leave the doors open - the badgers will get in and wreck everything. It will be more for spring/autumn sowing and over-wintering stuff.

My autumn-sown sweet peas are doing well so far. I'm looking forward to sowing more in the spring so that I can have an extended season this year.

It's January and the ground is far too wet for me to be able to do anything at the allotment so now is a good time to reflect on the last year, and contemplate the year to come.

In some ways, 2015 was a repeat of 2014. I planted the potatoes in a bed which I had dug over for the first time and the ground was far to poor for them to grow. The first earlies I planted did ok but by the time I got the maincrop planted out, the ground was rock hard. I couldn't plant them as deep as I would have liked. And when it came to harvesting, I had to wait until it rained before I could get a fork into the ground.

But the upside is that this was the first year I had been able to use that bed. I'm confident most of the couch grass has gone (it will always come back round the edges but I can cope with that). The bind weed and dandelions will need a lot more work yet. After the first earlies came out I sowed mustard as a green manure. Once that was cut down I applied a layer of newspaper followed by a thin layer of leaf mould then cardboard and finally a nice think layer of manure. The side where the main crop potatoes were still has the mustard growing, and I shall add the same organic matter here once I chop the mustard down.

Bed half-manured and half with mustard growing

I know already that my potato crop for 2016 won't be great as I will be planting them in a bed that is full of couch grass. But the bed has had some organic matter added to it so hopefully it will be easier to dig over. I also intend to plant less potatoes and space the rows out enough to be able to earth them up this time round!

And 2015 was a repeat performance of 2014 for my onions too - the badgers dug them all up. Badgers don't usually go for onions and many of the plot holders here have wonderful crops but the badgers wanted to use that particular bed as a latrine. In all honesty, the soil there wasn't good enough to grow onions anyway and I should never have planted them. I have decided for 2016 there will be no onions, I have to wait until I have better soil. 

Once the onions had been dispersed far and wide, I covered the bed over in a bid to keep the badgers off. But of course that only meant they moved on to the next bed. The bed in question is planted up with some shrubs and perennial flowers that I use for cut flowers. It was only planted up in 2014 so is still establishing. I kept on top of the weeding (lots of bind weed and dandelions) for a while but in the end I was put off by the pooh. I need to pluck up the courage to tackle it somehow. All the digging the badgers did has meant my lovely clean edges have disappeared and the couch grass is coming back in.

Here is the bed in May with nice clean edges and no weeds

The same bed today - what a mess

I didn't grow many annuals in 2015 as the soil is still too lumpy to try and direct sow. But between this plot and my other plot, I am beginning to establish a good quantity of perennials and shrubs to use for cutting. I am very poor at taking photos of my cut flowers so I aim to improve in 2016 (also aim to improve my flowering-arranging skills). I had a good amount of flowers for most of the year - in June the house was over-run with them but in the first two weeks of July there was a real dearth. Hopefully this year I will have annuals to fill that gap.

A harvest of cut flowers in June

Now I think about it, I should do a post just about my cut flowers. I am tending towards them more than veg at the moment.

I also need to report on my new polytunnel and 'orchard'! More soon!