Wednesday, December 23

Lockdown II

It is the 19th of November today, and we are back in the middle of another lockdown due to our continued fight against the spread of Covid 19. I can honestly say that if it had not been for the allotment, I am not sure that Sue and I would have made it to this point with our sanity intact. Not only has it given us somewhere to go, it has kept ud in touch with other people, all be it at distance. 

I have not posted here as much as I had intended to do at the outset, mainly because we have had our heads down sorting the allotment and our back garden at home. Now, with a whole season of growing under our belt, we are planning the 2021 season. This coming year will be a lot different. We have time to prepare, acquire seeds and get the plot ready. 

We also have more space, after agreeing to take on an abandoned plot that had fruit trees that have been left or years to grow wild. Another new addition to our armoury are the two greenhouses we have managed to rebuild at home. One will be a 'production house' enabling us to be able to grow most of our plants here and just take them to the plot ready to plant. The greenhouse at the plot will be used to grow chillies and the tomatoes, if all goes to plan,will be grown in a small poly-tunnel that was gifted to us by a neighbouring plot holder.      

 

Wednesday, August 19

We have crop

Here we are, halfway through August, still negotiating the social distancing rules and although the lock-down has been relaxed, it is still very much in force and slowly becoming what the politicians billed as "The new normal", whatever that is... 

When we started this journey, back in late February, I had no expectations of  actually getting a crop of any kind. We bought some seed potatoes and chitted them in the shed. These we planed in the first strip of land we cleared. After a while of constant inspection of our two small mounded rows, we were beginning to think that nothing was going to happen and got on with the clearing. Then all of a sudden, shoots started to appear and before long we had a good healthy looking patch of potato plants.

Too late we realised the rows were too close...
All of a sudden, it all seemed worthwhile. As the plants grew, we realised the first of our 'schoolboy' errors. We had not planted the rows far enough apart, or from the edge of the plot to be able to earth them up. We had to just leave them and wait and see what happened. We ended up with a really good crop of delicious extra early potatoes, a first for us as we have not grown any potatoes before, being rather restricted for space, when we lived in London. 

While that was going on, we continued to clear the plot and sow seeds, lots of seeds. Our second schoolboy error. How many tomato plants do you really need? we had hundreds of them from several different varieties. Not wishing to waist anything, we pricked out far too many and had tomato plants filling the great majority of our three-inch pots! As we own a good number of pots in this size, something was obviously not right here. After a bit of a reality check, we gave away as many as we could and just kept eight of each, still far too many, but it seemed a shame to just compost them. At that time of the year, you can't give the plants away. Seems like we were not alone in being a bit overenthusiastic.

We grew a few tomatoes!

I planted six each of four varieties on the plot, and potted on two of each as spares just in case I lost any. In the end, those eight were potted up into ten-inch pots and stood in front of the shed, where they are now producing even more tomatoes. Nine other plants have spent the summer keeping warm in the greenhouse. For those of you who can't be bothered to add that lot up, that is forty-one plants. On top of that we have another six plants in the garden at home!   

Ralph.

Sunday, June 28

A new way of life...

We are now at the end of June, and the events of the past three months have turned the whole world upside-down. The coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic has change the way we all live and react to each other in ways we have never experienced before. As the situation evolved through March, it became clear that this was not just going to go away. When the Prime Minister addressed the nation on the evening of 23rd, I was wondering if that meant the lock-down he announced would put paid to going down to the allotment, effectively throwing away several weeks of hard work and lots of  juvenile plants that we had sown. Luckily, the situation was resolved the following morning when it was announced that going to the allotment would be acceptable as long as social-distancing could be maintained.

A lot has changed on our plot since my last post. It is now under control, and we have crop in place. Lockdown has given us the time to get to grips with the weeds, dig the plot and eventually actually grow something. It must be well over thirty years since we grow any amount of plants from seed. Yes we have been growing plants for the garden, and Sue has always had a passion for sowing collected seeds. This is a whole now ball-game. We have had to collect our thoughts, dig out knowledge that has been tucked away in the mist of time, deep in the brain. Now, a good bit older than we were, these things can take a little longer than they once did. Recall is a bit (okay a lot!) slower than it once was and things have changed. Not the science, but the way things are done. So much more is available and the influence of the internet has completely changed the way a lot of things are done. The biggest change, from our perspective, is the almost total move away from open-plot growing to a system of raised beds and paths. The use of bought-in and ready-made this that and the other seems to be the norm now. Lots of stuff grown in containers and an emphasis on convenience over good old hard graft. I am not only referring to the physical stuff on the plot, but the effort required to acquire the fundamental knowledge. There are a lot of products out there claiming to be all things to all people. Multi-purpose compost and feeds seem to be popular, negating the 'need' to acquire any in depth understanding of soil or fertiliser.

We have bypassed most of the new, and are attempting to grow as we used to, at least for this season, until we are more up-to-date with the new methods and sundries. There are several things that have caught our eye and will need some further investigation already. Right now it is a case of getting stuff in the ground and seeing what happens. Whatever we get this year in the way of crop, will be a bonus as we found it hard to get supplies of seeds and compost in the early days of lock-down. We were also late getting the seeds we had planted, with so much emphasis being devoted to getting the plot cleared.

Ralph

Sunday, March 1

Rediscovering a lost passion


The ram-shackle 'shed' will have to go at some point...
Although not completely new to this, it has been a while since we grew any amount fruit and vegetables. Thankfully YouTube is around now, and, although I am not a great fan of 'video-research' I must admit it can be useful at times. I must say that if I had been a complete novice, I think I would have been confused by the conflicting information out there. Luckily, I had plenty of experience with the trusty Felco's (look-alikes in my case and genuine No.8s of my father-in-law's), a few decades ago helping my late father-in-law prune  several acres of apple trees on the family farm. I was also living next door to a very special man in my life. His name was John Caskey and was a plants-man and gardener of the highest degree. He had trained at Kew Gardens and went on to be head gardener at the Chelsea Physic Gardens. When I first met him in 1979, he was running the greenhouses and looking after the grounds of Kings Collage Department of Plant Science, in South East London. At the time, I was in my early twenties and keen to learn. With a farther-in-law who was a agriculturist and with a next-door neighbour a botanist/horticulturist, I spent the next couple of decades discovering the wonderful world of propagation and growing. Sadly, by the time I was in my mid forties, my father-in-law had passed away and John had moved to a remote part of North West Scotland. Although we kept in touch with John and visited a couple of times before he too passed away, my apprenticeship was over.

For the following couple of decades, work. life and other things took over my life and those days of digging around in the earth and watering the greenhouse took a back seat. Now, in my mid sixties, I can return to doing the stuff I enjoyed for the early part of my adult and married life. I have now inherited those Felco No.8 secateurs, that belonged to my farther-in-law, and I still have a galvanised, long-reach Haws watering can, modified by and then passed on to me by John. Both items are in daily use.

As you can see, I am no stranger to the world of growing, just a bit rusty, as are some of my gardening tools. Like my gardening tools, it will not take me too long to wear through the rust and become bright and shiny once more. In the meantime, I will be spending a few hours shouting at the screen, protesting at the miss-information and ill-informed comments that seem to be prevalent in the world of armature growers, making videos of their exploits. I must get our library of books out of storage and have a sort out. All the classic gardening books we both love are stashed away in boxes awaiting the day when I can bring them down here to or new abode and nestle on the shelves of the new bookshelves, still an the 'design' stage. 

Off we go! 

A second visit to the shop for a bit of a stock up furnished us with, among other things, a bag of seed potatoes. These we could get in to the first strip of cleared ground in about a month or so when the weather warms up. Sue is chief-in-charge of chitting, making use of the existing facilities.

Sue making a start with the potatoes
The plot itself was fairy empty, apart from some rhubarb, a selection of rather neglected soft fruit, and a good sprinkling of weeds. There were also some of last year's neglected celery plants as well as a really good covering of chives,slowly taking over. I made my first job the pruning of the gooseberry bushes. these had not been touched for a while and required some serious reshaping. This will mean a much reduced crop this year, gooseberrys fruit on last-years wood. However it needs to be done as the tangled mess we have inherited will just look a mess and will probably only produce lots of small fruits. It may seem a bit drastic, but opening up the bush to a goblet shape, removing any dead wood and crossing branches will pay off in the long-run. 

Its not the warmest of weather, but one glove and a my sharp pair of classic Felco secateurs, soon sorted out the plants 
Ralph.

Saturday, February 29

Day One...

Standing at the bottom of the plot - lots to do!
Today we officially became tenants of our allotment, complete with rent book! Went paid, in advance, deposit for the gate key given and association membership paid, it is time to explore what we have guardianship over, for the foreseeable future.

Our plot extends from the back of my neighbour's greenhouse and water butts, to the rear fence of the garden behind our 'shed' and greenhouse. There is not much in the ground other than some chives and some abandoned celery plants. From the posts onwards there is a selection of neglected soft fruit. The rest of the plot needs digging over and weeding. 

This plum will need a bit of a chop in a month or so...
I can see the good old secateurs will be in high demand. the soft fruit has not been touched in a while and as for that plum tree, well it is going to be in for a shock come April. There is a lot of tyding up to do over the next few weeks.

Ralph. 

Wednesday, February 26

Today we got the call...

We moved to Herne Bay at the end of June last year (2019) and the first thing we did was to wonder over to the local allotment association and enquire about plot availability. As we expected, there was a waiting list, so we joined as associate members and put our name on the list. Today our name came to the top of said list, and we were offered a plot.

Without having to be asked twice, we arranged to meet one of the officials there today to view a couple of plots that had become vacant. There was no contest between them. One had a shed, greenhouse and some soft fruit along with rhubarb and some other stuff coming up, while the other was overgrown and devoid of any advantages apart from a shed. We opted for the better plot, and we are now the prospective new guardians of plot 7B. All we have to do is present ourselves to the office on Saturday, pay our rent and key deposit, and we will be off.

On Saturday we will take some photographs of the plot, as it is now, and take a closer look at what is there... Now, where did I put my secateurs? 

Ralph