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!

Still struggling on

Well, I haven't posted anything for over a year (increased hours at work and things like that) but it doesn't mean I haven't been struggling on with the allotment. I have been continuing to work hard, and to struggle.

The highlights of last summer? My sweetpeas and dahlias did well on this plot - no photos though I'm afraid. The dahlias in particular seemed happy. I put them in a spot that gets sun for maybe half the day which stopped the flowers getting a bit bleached which I find they can do if in full sun all day. My Charlotte potatoes did well (in a bed which I had manured).

But the low points? My maincrop potatoes were a disaster (as I suspected they would be). The ground I planted them in was rock hard and a lack of rain all summer meant it was impossible either for the potatoes themselves to spread underground, or for me to earth them up. I've decided not to grow anything else on this bed until I can add copious amounts of organic matter to it.... but more on that later.

The only other real low point was the badgers deciding to use my onion bed as a latrine. All 90 sets (that's onion sets, not badger setts :)) were dug up, thrown in the air and replaced with.... well, you don't really want to know.

The bare patch of earth in the foreground was the onion bed

Over the last winter I made slow but steady progress redesigning the plot and adding muck. I added around 50 sacks of manure to the plot, but that was over less than half the beds. I think I'd need five hundred sacks to start to make an impact.

One of the things I am most pleased with is the new wider path I have down the side of the plot. Previously, the path was only about 18 inches wide and once the hedge was growing at full-speed, left no room for walking along, and certainly no room for a wheel barrow.

Room for a wheel barrow!

In the photo, above, you can see I have doubled the width of the path. The good thing is that this is the shadiest part of the plot so I haven't lost any prime growing space. I dare say by high summer the hedge will be making a good job of pushing me into the beds again, but for now it is a great improvement.

In case you were wondering, the soil I used to widen the path came from digging out straight edges around some of the other beds. There was a lot of heavy barrowing going on over the winter.

I now have three beds planted up with shrubs and perennials that I will use for my cutting garden.All three beds had lots of manure, compost and leaf mound added to them prior to planting out. They all look good on the surface but underneath there is still a lot of heavy clay, so still a way to go before I can say I'm happy with the soil. They also all had a lot of couch grass and bind weed in them which I have had a good go at tackling. Of course I haven't got it all out and I accept that in the next year or so I'll have to lift everything from these beds and give them another good dig. It will give me the opportunity though to bring some sort of order to the planting which at the moment is all a bit random - shade lovers and sun worshipers all mixed up together.

Originally two beds divided by a couch grass path

Among the shrubs I have for the cutting garden are Skimmias, Hydrangeas, Hypericum and Rosemary. Among the perennials there are lots of Phlox, Astilbes, Astrantia, Bistort, Scabious of various kinds, Campion and so on. I'm going to be ruthless with the cutting garden, anything that isn't earning its keep will be out.

One of the good things about this blog is that it does make me realise I have made progress (although with a long way to go). I have finally dug over and planted out potatoes on one of the beds that I started working on during the winter of 2013-2014. During that winter I didn't have time to do anything more than dig out the matting that was around and through the bed (and full of couch grass). The ground became too hard over the summer to do anything with it and so nothing was done until autumn 2014 when I covered it with a layer of cardboard and horse manure. My mistake was to not then cover this as it meant the weeds grew straight through it.

The big bed with inadequate cover, letting the weeds come through

But no matter, about 25 bags of horse manure went on in the autumn and in the spring of this year I began the long, arduous task of digging the bed over. It took a month of Sundays, and Fridays but eventually it was done, and 60 seed potatoes were planted out - 40 first earlies and 20 early maincrop. I can see already that I will have more success with the potatoes this year than I did last.

Four rows of first earlies

Again, I can already see lots of bind weed coming up so this bed is a long way from how I want it to be, but slowly slowly things are improving.

One of the reasons why I'm able to write this blog now is that it is pouring with rain outside - the first really proper rain we have had for months. Just when I thought the ground was going to be too hard to do any more digging.... no excuses for not getting back up there tomorrow...

SLOW PROGRESS

In my last post I said that I would have to be up at the allotments all day every day to get the digging done in time to plant out everything I have planned for this year. Well, no surprise, I haven't been up there everyday and so I feel like I am way way behind with everything. I have Dahlias in pots all over the place desperate to go out, gladioli corms and anemone bulbs which will shrivel and die if I don't do something with them soon, tomato plants that are getting too big for their pots...

The Charlotte potatoes I planted at the end of March are coming through fine but last week I planted out some maincrop potatoes. I had to take a pick axe to the ground to break it up so I'm not convinced these potatoes will do anything. The photo below shows a row of potatoes. I think it is going to be impossible to earth them up once they poke their heads through. And they will only be able to grow out and down if they are as tough as rocks.

Rock gardening on the allotment.... aka a row of potatoes

But the mild weather has meant my over-wintered sweet peas are doing very well and so I planted them out a week or so ago. I have put them where I grew potatoes last year so there is a bit of room to move in the soil. I am not sure if they will get enough sun where they are, but I reasoned there is only one way to find out.

Sweet peas doing well in April

We have had a few good finds whilst digging recently. Two toads, a newt and a slow worm all in one day. As we continue to knock the allotment into shape, we will need to be mindful to leave places for them to live.

A welcome visitor to the plot

Race against time

This being the first full spring when I have had two allotment plots (I took on Plot 21 at the end of March last year but was marathon training and so did nothing until the end of April) I can see better now the differences between the two plots. The first plot which gets sun and wind all day already has warm soil that can be worked. Plot 21 is still cold and wet. No matter, it means I can have a good 3 - 4 weeks at the beginning of spring to get the first plot knocked into shape before starting on Plot 21.

I have been growing loads of stuff at home in seed trays to plant out in the next month or so (mainly tomatoes and half hardy flowers but I also have some of my dahlias starting in pots and there are lots of glads and ranunculus to go out). So now I am in a bit of a panic. I spent a good bit of Sunday and a couple of hours yesterday digging over one bed which is probably about 9ft x 4ft, so not huge. Not only did it take hours but it was tough on my back. The couch grass was never-ending.

One day this will all be compost

The wheelbarrow full of couch pictured here was from an area about 3ft x 4ft and which took about 3 hours to dig over. I have planted out second early potatoes - Charlotte - in this bed so at last I have something in the ground. But digging at this speed means I'm going to have to be at the allotments all day everyday to make room for everything I want to grow. It serves to reiterate the problem I thought I would have in the beginning - the beds are in such a state that I need to be doing more digging than actually growing. Without about 100 sacks of manure I don't see a way round this at the moment. All very frustrating! How I long for the day when I have a beautiful, productive plot!

The lack of organic matter in the soil means that nothing can go to waste on this plot. The couch grass is all going into an old metal water tank, being covered with plastic and an old shed door (to make sure no light gets to it) and then left to die off and compost. It won't be quick but it makes me happy to know that the couch grass will eventually serve some purpose.