Growing Our Own

Greenhouse!

noreply@blogger.com (Paul and Melanie) — Tue, 26 May 2009 12:14:00 +0000

After what seems to have been a few weeks of continual rain since the greenhouse arrived we finally got three days of glorious sun over the bank holiday giving us the perfect chance to put our building skills to the test.

In many ways it was far far easier to build than we expected, in fact erecting the actual greenhouse frame and putting the glass on could have been done in a single afternoon really. What took the time was building the foundations and, oddly enough, building the door.

As you can see from the pics in the previous post we'd already got the area of the garden it was to be built on all marked out so the next thing to do was dig a trench for the foundations. We didn't go too deep, about 10cm seemed to be enough, although the garden is on a slight slope which meant we needed to dig a bit deeper at the far end.

Then we filled the trench with concrete and levelled it all off with the aid of a long plank of wood and a spirit level. Written down like that it sounds like a simple job but it actually took an age as mixing concrete by hand is small wheelbarrow loads isn't as easy or quick as it sounds! It didn't help that I underestimated how much concrete mix we'd need. Twice. Meaning two extra trips to Homebase to pick up additional supplies. D'oh.

When funds allow we'd like to run a power cable from the house into the greenhouse so we can put in a heater/fan. With that in mind I had the bright idea of sinking a couple of bits of tubing into the foundations so we don't have to drill holes into the greenhouse base to get the cable inside when we get round to doing it. You can seem them on the side nearest the fence, hopefully they'll come in very handy at some point.

Once the concrete was dry (we left it for 24 hours, it probably should have been a little more in an ideal world but we wanted to finish it all in the three day bank holiday) it was time to get to work with the greenhouse itself. First off we build the base and put it in position making sure it was level as well as perfectly square. Then we started building the four sides of the main structure under the watchful gaze of our parrot Monty who kept an eye on us while he enjoying the warm weather.

As I mentioned earlier it was all remarkably easy to put together once we got started and it wasn't too long before we had the sides all up and attached to the base as well as each other. Suddenly it was looking very greenhouse like.

The roof was next and proved just as easy to add, although we did have a little crisis when the central beam slipped as we were bolting it in place catching Melanie on the hand leaving a nasty bruise and sliced finger. A big plaster and some TLC later and it was time to start putting the glass in place. Again this was nice and easy, simply a case of laying the pane of glass in place and clipping it down with the supplied wire clips. Despite being easy enough to fit the sheer number of clips needed did leave us with very sore hands by the time we'd finished, not a job we want to do again in a hurry.

The door was the last thing to build and proved to be the worst part of the entire process because the supplied screws were simply impossible to get into the metal door frame. After over an hour of huffing and puffing I'd only managed to get 4 of the 16 in place. So, with the light fading and a growing sense of frustration, I poured a beer gave up for the night.

Monday morning and call to my parents enlisted the help of my Dad who, as all Dad's seem to, owns a seemingly endless supply of different sized screws. A quick rummage through his box of delights and we found a selection of slightly shorter screws with stronger heads that did the job in about ten minutes. With Dads help we completed the job by getting the door onto its runners and added some silicone sealant in strategic places to keep things a bit more waterproof then we were finally finished.

Well, almost finished, a quick trip to the garden centre later and we had some bags of compost and edging to build the 'L' shaped bed inside the greenhouse we're going to grow in. Once this was built we finally planted our many (slightly leggy) tomato plants as well as the cucumbers, peppers, chills and melons we had growing in the house and stood back to admire all our hard work.

Next weekend we're going to put some paving slabs down to create a proper floor and then there's the entrance area outside the door where I want to put a step in and make it look nice and tidy so we're still not quite finished, but it's up and operational now which is the main thing and we're pretty chuffed with how it's worked out.

The Greenhouse arrived...

noreply@blogger.com (Paul and Melanie) — Tue, 12 May 2009 07:09:00 +0000

We came home yesterday to find the lovely people from ‘The Greenhouse People’ had delivered our greenhouse just as they said they would. As you can see there's a lot of glass and a couple of boxes full of all the bits and bobs needed to build it. And a cat, not that she was part of the delivery...

Over the weekend we started clearing the ground ready for building the foundations next weekend. I've lived here for almost 8 years now and the garden hasn't really changed much in terms of layout since I moved in so it was weird to embark on such a drastic change. Here's a before pic followed by one showing our progress so far.

Up at the plot we managed to get some work done Saturday morning. Nothing too drastic, got a second sowing of peas and mange tout in the ground and we also planted out the first batch of sweet corn seedlings which were in danger of getting pot bound at home. We also sneaked another load of asparagus in (Jersey Knight from the fantastically helpful Victoriana Nursery) which he hadn't really planned but you can never have too much of a good thing.

Most things seem to be growing well, the chard, kohl rabbi, turnips and Swede we planted a couple of weeks ago are all showing above ground. The courgettes are looking a little fragile though, I'm thinking they've perhaps found it a bit cold so I'll keep an eye in case I need to sow some more sharpish.

We also pulled our our first proper batch of radishes which made a nice addition to our salad sarnies at lunchtime.

What a difference a week makes

noreply@blogger.com (Paul and Melanie) — Tue, 05 May 2009 12:14:00 +0000

A combination of rain, a horrible cold ('man flu' if you prefer...) and a day out at the Tewksbury Food and Drink Festival on Sunday had kept us away from the plot for over a week by the time Bank Holiday Monday rolled round. Thankfully the dull dreary weather didn’t stop us finally managing to get up there for a couple of hours. While we'd been away it seemed that everything had got busy growing, including the weeds, and the plot looked suddenly far more alive than it had the week before.

The first row of peas had all appeared along with the mange tout. All the early spuds have appeared above the mounds of soil I earthed them up with last week and we even had a few of the main crop ones showing their faces as well. The onions and shallots had gone from being small shoots to about 4 inches tall which made the massive quantity of them we'd planted even more apparent.

All the salad crops seemed to be coming on well too; we even had our first harvest of sorts when we thinned out the row of radishes taking home the baby shoots to add to a salad. The first two rows of carrots are still a little threadbare but the ones that have germinated are now all getting their first true leaves which are making the rows look a little better.

The downside of all this growth is that suddenly the weeds have appeared. In a bid to keep on top of things we spent most of our time on this visit hoeing the entire plot, picking out the bigger weeds and leaving the rest to (hopefully) die now they've been uprooted. The onion bed was the worst, probably because they were one of the first things planted and the soil hadn't been disturbed since. With any luck I'll get chance this week to go up and do a second, more thorough, hand weed through them to stop it from getting bad again.

As you can see, it wasn't all weeding. We also managed to plant the three courgette plant we're growing this year (not making the same mistake as last year and growing six...) as well as a marrow, pumpkin and winter squash that had been in the cold frame at home. I've planted the courgettes closer together than I did last year as despite obviously spreading out they didn't seem to need all the space I'd given them, we'll see if they still grow ok a bit closer this year.

We also got a phone call while we were up there from our greenhouse supplier saying that they'd be delivering ours on the 11th, next Monday, which was about two weeks earlier than we were expecting meaning clearing the bit of garden we're going to build it in is suddenly top of the list of jobs for the weekend.

A good weekends work

noreply@blogger.com (Paul and Melanie) — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 18:56:00 +0000

Waking up on Saturday morning to see rain pelting down wasn't the best start to a weekend. Thankfully things soon began to look up and by lunchtime I was up at the allotment sweating under the warm sun. It was one of those lovely plot sessions where I didn't feel like I was playing catch up or trying to control something that had gone wrong, instead I was able to potter around, do the jobs I needed too, have a general weed and come away feeling that for probably the first time in the 15 months we've been doing this everything was on track and going according to plan.

Among the jobs that got jobbed was the first sowing of some Swede, Turnips, Kohl Rabi and Chard. Not many of each as I'm going to try to sow these a few times throughout the season to try and avoid any kind of glut.

Also in the ground was the second sowing of sugar snap peas, another row of carrots and a few beautiful looking little gem lettuce plants from one of my plot neighbours. These are well ahead of the ones I sowed a couple of weeks ago meaning we should get to eat some earlier than expected which will be nice.

The carrots, beetroot, radish and lettuce/salad leaves I'd already sown have all sprouted with varying degrees of success. The radish, as expected, have done wonderfully as has one of the rows of carrots and the little gem lettuces. The second row of carrots, the beetroot and the salad leaves haven't exactly flourished leaving some patchy gaps in their rows which is a bit of a shame. Perhaps I'll sow into the gaps and see what happens...

The broad beans seem to be doing ok after their very slow start although the edges of their leaves look like they've been nibbled by something which is a puzzle. I don't know if they should be covered or anything as I'm new to broad beans but the plants look strong enough at the moment so I won't worry too much. I've also put in some wooden edging salvaged from my parent’s garden around the asparagus bed which you can see in the top of this pic.

The early spuds are also well on the way, each time I go up the plot there's more sprouting through needing to be earthed up. To be honest I'm not quite sure when to stop earthing up and just let them grow. I know last year I didn't do much earthing up at all as I was fighting fires elsewhere on the plot which meant we didn't perhaps get the crop we could have done so I want to get it right this year and I'm hoping somehow all will become clear at the time.

Back at home there's also a lot happening and the cold frame is now full to bursting after a mammoth sowing/potting on session on Sunday afternoon. A first sowing of all our summer beans are now in pots hopefully busy germinating. This year we're going for more variety than last year starting with a couple of climbing French beans (Fasgold and the exciting deep purple Blauhilde) as well as a lovely looking golden climbing bean called Goldfield. We’ve also started off a load of Wisley Magic runner beans, which we grew with great success last year, and a few dwarf beans called Borlotto Firetongue which I bought simply because of their amazing looking red pods. Also happy in their new home in the cold frame are the freshly potted on courgettes, marrows and squashes as well as a few cabbage which I've had been growing on the window ledges in the house.

That hasn't left the windows empty by an means, with the impending arrival of our new greenhouse we've had to rush sow some plants to fill it with so there’s a slightly late sowing of tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, chilli’s and melons still filling the window along side a first sowing of sweet corn which sprouted a tad quicker then expected.

We're getting a greenhouse!

noreply@blogger.com (Paul and Melanie) — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 18:09:00 +0000

We're getting a greenhouse! We're getting a greenhouse! We're getting a greenhouse!

Ahem...

As you may have guessed from my excitement, we're getting a greenhouse. It's Melanie’s Dad's fault really, we went to visit him over Easter and he gave us a tour of his garden which includes a lovely greenhouse full of seedlings and stood there, in the warm amongst thriving tomato plants, greenhouse envy simply got the better of us.

Now don't get me wrong, we'd thought about getting one before, a few times actually, but a combination of the room it would require in the garden (we're not allowed to put one on the allotment), the cost, and a nagging worry that all this veg growing may just be a 'phase' we're going through, had put us off each time.

This time though, as we stood back in our own garden, tape measure in hand, and examined all the pros and cons once again it seemed suddenly far more possible. It wouldn't take up that much room really, and we don't actually 'do' much with the area of the garden we'd put it in anyway. My parents had given us some money for Easter which brought the price just about into our range and we've both realised now that growing veg has become a way of life rather than a temporary phase.
So we set to work scouring the internet till we found one we liked the look of and settled on this 6 foot by 10 foot one. The only snag is the 5 week waiting time for delivery (which will mean we'll not get the full benefit of it this year really) but it'll give us time to prepare the site and sort out the base we're going to stand it on.

Here's a pic of our back garden with the rough idea for the greenhouse location marked out with some spare wood (sorry the rest of the garden looks a bit of a mess, it's not had much done to it this spring as we've concentrated on the allotment).

It's not an ideal greenhouse location being so close to the fence which will mean that side won't get a huge amount of sun. But we want it to work with the garden rather than take over it and I figure if we use the fence side for any shelves and staging then we don't need to be growing much at ground level there anyway.

So now the wait for delivery begins. I'm spending the time mulling over the base options which is causing my some headaches. I know it comes with a steel base included but I don't want to sit that directly onto the soil so I'm thinking of laying a kind of concrete border about a foot wide to put it all on but I'm not sure. Does anyone out there have any ideas or opinions?

Busy Planting

noreply@blogger.com (Paul and Melanie) — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 06:58:00 +0000

It's been a busy week or so up at the allotment with planting and sowing in full swing. We've almost got all our main crop potatoes in with a row each of Cara and King Edwards in the ground and one more of King Edward still to go in this week. On the other side of the plot, next to the early spuds (in the foreground of the below pic) we've got a couple of rows of carrots and one each of beetroot, radish, salad leaves and little gem lettuce. After hardly direct sowing anything last year I've taken the plunge and am going to try and do far more that way this year, if nothing else it will stop the house getting overrun with seed trays.

The radish is the first through the soil with a decent number already showing their faces a week after sowing.

Down near the asparagus bed, in the bottom half of the plot, we've put in the 28 parsnips we started off at home. These survived the chitting/potting in loo rolls/planting out process fantastically, I wish we'd had more loo rolls so I could have done a few more really. Assuming the pests don't get them we're on course for a lovely crop later in the year all being well.

Next to those we've put our onions, roughly 250 of them (including 30 shallots) which seems a huge amount now I'm typing it but we found that we'd got through the 120 we did last year by February so thought we'd do more this year and see if we can be as close to self sufficient in these as possible.

Just when I'd given up hope of any broad beans there's signs of life in the seeds we put in a few weeks ago. Not all have come through (yet?) but it looks like we'll get 6 or 7 plants which has to be good as they were a bit of a last minute addition to the plot plan (he says as if there's actually a plan of some kind to the madness...).

With any luck, weather permitting, we'll get some of our pea varieties sown this week as well as that last row of spuds and then we'll be scarily on track for the year. Hope everyone else is doing well too...

At last, something planted.

noreply@blogger.com (Paul and Melanie) — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 12:25:00 +0000

Although it probably shouldn't have been it's turned out to be a quiet week or so allotment wise. Thankfully now the clocks have gone forward there's going to be time in the evenings to work on the plot, starting tonight all being well.

Having said that, the allotment hasn't been completely without activity, we got our early spuds in for a start. One row each of Red Scarlet and Annabel planted in individual holes rather than a trench (will do the main crop in a trench I think, was just giving this a go as an experiment). We've cut back on how many we've sown this year, only ten tubers of each, as we found we had far too many last year and we don't actually get through that many new potatoes compared to main crop so it made sense to cut back a bit and save the space for something else.

As you can see at the top of this pic we've also planted the ten asparagus crowns we got from Victoriana Nurseries as well as some broad beans (closest to the camera) I accidentally chitted at home. I say accidentally because I'd been trying out a tip I'd heard about soaking the seeds in some water overnight before planting, unfortunately circumstances then stopped me from going to the plot for a couple of days so I ended up leaving the thoroughly soaked beans on some damp kitchen paper and by the time I get to plant them a couple of days later they'd all started to sprout. With any luck they'll not mind the change in environment and carry on growing, if not I'll know not to do that again next year...

The parsnip seeds I started off in the airing cupboard have been something of a success too, pretty much 100% germination which doesn't seem bad for an old packet of seed. I've potted up twenty eight into loo roll's full of compost to give the roots a good start before they go outside. The plan is to sow a row of this years parsnip seed direct into the ground one night this week to see if there's any big difference between the two methods come harvest time.

Sorry for the horrible quality photos by the way, I used my phone in not great light. I'll use the proper camera from now on....

Parsnips

noreply@blogger.com (Paul and Melanie) — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 13:41:00 +0000

One of the regrets from our first year on the allotment was that we never got round to sowing any parsnips so this year we plan to make up for it in style.

Since parsnip seeds are notoriously picky about germinating it's generally recommended to only use seed sold for the current growing year. However, never being one to let considered logic put me off I'm going to try and get some results with the unopened packet I have left over from last year.

So, last night I emptied the packet of seeds onto some damp kitchen roll, put it in a Tupperware container and placed it in the warm of the airing cupboard. All being well this will allow the seeds to germinate easier and will provide me with the added bonus of being able to see which ones have 'hatched'.

As soon as I see shoots I'm going to take the individual seedlings and pot them up into loo rolls full of potting compost and let them grow on a little more till they're established before planting them, loo rolls and all, out onto the plot when they're big enough. I imagine I'll run out of loo rolls before I do seeds (assuming any sprout at all) in which case I'll try planting those little seedlings directly into their rows on the plot and see if they survive. I may even dig a bit of a trench for all of them and fill it with fine compost to give them some easy growing space if I get chance.

Since this is all a bit of an experiment I'm also sowing a packet of this years seed direct into the ground as per the instructions as a backup. In an ideal world we'll have a bumper crop when all growing methods work out but if not we should at get a decent return from at least one. We hope...

It's also that time of year when chitting potatoes are looking at their bizarre best so here's a quick snap to celebrate them in all their knobbly glory.

A Beautiful Sight

noreply@blogger.com (Paul and Melanie) — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 13:45:00 +0000

Considering the location of our allotment, nestled at the bottom of a hill amidst beautiful Cotswold countryside, it takes a lot for the view inside our plot boundaries to match the one outside it. However, under the beaming Sunday afternoon sunshine my Dad, a rotovator and I managed to create one of the most pleasing sights I've seen in a long while. A beautiful fully dug allotment.

It turned out that rotovating was actually far harder work than expected (ok, not as hard as digging the whole thing, but tough none the less). The rotovator, quite naturally I suppose, was always keen on taking the path of least resistance which meant it'd be perfectly happy to skip along the surface blades spinning at a million miles an hour dragging me along for the ride if I’d let it. To keep it actually in the ground doing its job required me to rein it in all the time a job that needed the upper body strength of an Olympic rower especially over the bits of harder more compacted ground.

Once done however it looked fantastic and by the time we’d gone over it all picking out any weeds that had got churned up and giving it a final rake over we were left feeling very pleased with ourselves.

This week after work I'm going to lay some paths out with some weed suppressing fabric ready to start the planting at the weekend.

Rotovating

noreply@blogger.com (Paul and Melanie) — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 13:33:00 +0000

It's looking, weather permitting of course, like Sunday could be the day we christen our new rotovator. I'm really looking forward to it if I'm honest, not just because it's a big red petrol powered boys toy but also because I know that once the plots been rotovated then the sowing and planting can at last begin in earnest (is it too late to sow broad beans direct into the ground?).

There is one thing troubling me though, having never used anything petrol powered other than a car I'm a little worried I'll somehow kill myself. I've read the instruction manual and it seems to be just a long list of things to avoid doing if you don't want to die while operating it. It's a 4 stroke engine which means I don't have to worry about getting the petrol/oil mix correct so I was thinking it would just be a case of adding the oil and patrol into wherever they're supposed to go, turning it on and bingo, rotovation.

I know the manual has to cover all the possibilities for legal and safety reasons and it's probably not as complicated as it sounds, but I was just wondering if anyone out there in blogland had some experience they could reassure me with...

Goodies!

noreply@blogger.com (Paul and Melanie) — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 13:33:00 +0000

It was a quiet weekend allotment wise, we were away for the weekend visiting friends so didn't get to take advantage of the good weather and get any work done. However, just because we weren't physically up there didn't mean we'd stopped thinking about it.

The end of the plot that contains the increasingly rickety fruit tunnel, a million strawberry plants run wild, a black current bush and a couple of rhubarb crowns was the part of the plot we effectively left to nature last year and although we harvested a massive load of strawberries and raspberries by the end of the summer it was pretty much a weed ridden mess.

This year we want to get it under control and the first step is going to be to abandon one half of the strawberry patch since it's become ridden with couch grass. The plan is to simply cover it with some weed suppressing fabric and turn it into the seating area we've wanted since day one complete with some pot grown fruit bushes (just to keep the space productive) and, of course, a seat.

So, late last week we ordered a couple of fruit bushes from the lovely people at Victoriana Nursery and last night I came home to find an exciting looking parcel awaiting me. A flurry of unpacking later and I had a healthy looking and surprisingly large Red Currant bush (Rondom) as well as a nicely potted Blueberry bush (Bluecrop) all safe and sound and guarded by one of the cats.

As well as the fruit bushes we also ordered their 'Asparagus Lovers Kit' which consists of ten crowns and a scary looking asparagus knife as now seemed a good time to start the asparagus bed we've promised ourselves since day one.

The plan for the weekend is now to get the two new fruit bushes up to the allotment and pot them into the big plastic potato tubs we used in the back garden last year then prepare and plant the new asparagus bed before making a start of the seating area.

Assuming it doesn't rain or snow of course....

We're back!

noreply@blogger.com (Paul and Melanie) — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 09:04:00 +0000

Blimy, so that’s over seven months between posts. We're very bad blog owners.

I'd love to say that despite the lack of posts the allotment has been a hive of activity since we last posted and already we're ahead of schedule for this new growing year. Unfortunately, while I could indeed say that I doubt I'd be fooling anyone and the sad truth of the mater is that a combination of getting married (which went very well thank you), going on honeymoon and the horrible weather we had in the second half of last year meant that other than harvesting what we'd planted the plot has been pretty much untouched since the middle of September.

However, all that is the past, we're in 2009 now and anything is possible. Thanks to my wonderful Granddad we're now in the possession of a brand new rotivator and with it a renewed sense of enthusiasm to be better organised and prepared this year. The clearing of the plot is underway (forgot to take a camera with me so no pics yet, oops) and we're hoping to have enough done to rotivate in about three weeks time all being well.

I saw a post on Allotments 4 All which asked what peoples aims were for the 2009 growing season which seemed a good idea so I thought I'd re-post my entry here as it fits the nature of this post pretty well, and then you can all remind us when we don't keep to them...

1) Grow more onions, thought about 100 would have been enough, but nope, almost run out already...

2) Write down the variety of the spuds we grow so we don't end up stood at the Potato Day next year wondering which the lovely ones we grew last year were.

3) Get round to sowing the root veg rather than just talking about it.

4) Grow less courgettes, never again will we grow six plants.

5) Not go on holiday slap bang in the middle of August

6) Use black fabric rather than wood chippings for the paths. It may look nice but it's a bugger to keep weed free when it's not thick enough.

7) Dismantle and re-build the rickety fruit tunnell we inherited with the plot.

8) Build the 'seating' area complete with bench and flower tubs I promised myself when we took the plot on.

It stopped raining for five minutes so....

noreply@blogger.com (Paul and Melanie) — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 12:47:00 +0000

It actually stopped raining long enough for me to pop up to the plot on the way home from work yesterday and do a bit of weeding, something that proves much easier after a bit of rain I have to admit. It’s surprising what 45 mins weeding can achieve because afterwards the paths looked almost clear which gave the plot a much nicer look to it.

My other reason for popping up there was to collect some salad leaves for dinner. I never got round to thinning out the salad which has led to some pretty congested rows but I figure if I pull up whole baby plants rather than just cutting the leaves off so they re-grow that should have the same effect and allow us to eat the ‘thinnings’ so to speak.

(Those are sprouts in between the rows of salad, I ran out of space in the brasica bed so thought they could go in the gaps here…)

The brasicas we planted a few weeks ago have all taken well to their new home and are thriving. Almost better than that, my homemade netted cages are also all still standing which I’m quite pleased with.

The tomatillo we’re experimenting with (we’d never heard of it before we saw the seeds in a shop) seems to be doing well too, or at least one of the two plants is, so best concentrate on that one for now…

It looks like it’s going to rain from today all through to Sunday according to the weather forecast so this could have been the only plot time we get this week, fingers crossed for another break in the clouds soon…

First spuds of the year and some baking...

noreply@blogger.com (Paul and Melanie) — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 14:30:00 +0000

It’s been pretty wet here this weekend but we managed to get up the plot on Saturday to pick the first load of salad leaves dinner and have a little look at what was under the two rows of early potatoes.

It was lovely to have the first spuds of the year although we’re probably going to leave the rest of the rows in for a couple more weeks as there were some nippers who looked like they could grow a bit more before we unearth them.

As you can see we also found another big batch of courgettes which prompted us to give some of the recipe ideas you all suggested after our last post. The two we decided to try first were the Courgette, Tarragan and Lemon bread suggested by VP from Veg Plotting and the Courgette Cake from Lucy over at Smallest Smallholding.

As you can see they both turned out looking rather yummy. We had to try a slice of the cake while it was still warm as it smelt so good and can report that it does indeed taste just as good as it looks. We’ve resisted the urge to try the bread as we’re planning to have some for dinner with some lovely thick soup.

Thanks for all the other suggestions, we’ve logged them down and will give lots of them a go over the next few weeks and let you know how we got on.

What to do with courgettes...

noreply@blogger.com (Paul and Melanie) — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 12:59:00 +0000

It's started, the courgette glut! We're now harvesting two or three courgettes every couple of days and the number are only going to increase once all six plants start producing...

So, I was wondering, what do people 'do' with courgettes? We've put them in pasta sauces, cooked them with tinned tomatoes as a side dish and even cut them lengthways and roasted them in the oven. But there must be more to do with them surely...

I'm sure I saw Jamie Oliver slicing them up really thin and putting them in a salad while still raw. Has anyone tried that or got any other good suggestions on what to do with them?

First jam of the year!

noreply@blogger.com (Paul and Melanie) — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 18:30:00 +0000

Last year we made a couple of batches of homemade jam using fruit we bought in supermarkets and wistfully dreamed of the time we'd be able to make it from our own allotment grown produce. Fast forward about eleven months and here we are. Jam!

We managed to harvest approx 3lbs of strawberries on Sunday morning which we turned into five jars of jam with the addition of a few raspberries we picked at the same time. As jams go it's a little on the runny side, which I think has something to do with strawberries being low in natural pectin, but it's defiantly still jammy and tastes lovely!

This little lot is what we managed to bring home with us from tonight’s quick watering trip. Some more strawberries, a nice load of raspberries and the first few blackcurrants of the season. There's also some rather large courgettes as you can see which seemed to have grown in super quick time since we were last up there on Tuesday.

We're back!

noreply@blogger.com (Paul and Melanie) — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 12:50:00 +0000

Oooops... Sorry about that, we kind of vanished there for a bit didn't we. I'm not quite sure what happened really, the weather was a bit pants for a while and we were mega busy for a couple of weeks, then the plot suddenly seemed to have got away from us a bit and I kind of buried my head in the sand and got disillusioned about it all.

We seemed to suddenly hit a brick wall where our lack of space at home to start things off coupled with the dodgy weather, busy life (it turns out it's not ideal to plan on get married the same summer you start an allotment) and ever growing weeds meant we seemed to be smack bang in the middle of the growing season proper with a plot that had far more weeds than veg and no time or dry weather to do anything about it. Because of this I lost the will to write the blog or even turn the PC on and read other peoples because to do that would be to admit things were going wrong and I'd been so proud of the start we'd made. Of course with hindsight that’s half the point of allotment blogging, to document your failure as much as your success, so I've given myself a good talking to and we're back, ready to continue getting things wrong just as much as we get the right.

But anyway, enough of that, now we're in the second half of June and a lot of hard work in the last couple of weeks has seen us regain control of things to a degree where it's become less embarrassing and more fun again. Most plants are in, except the root veg which we seem to have run out of space for at the moment, and we've even started eating things we've grown.

Probably most impressive (at least they get the most comment from other plot holders) are the onions. Melanie's expert planting coupled with the raking in of some Growmore just prior to that seems to have created some fantastic looking onions. We just can't wait to start picking them now.

We seem to be doing ok with the courgettes too, although they haven't quite spread out as much as I was expecting (I'm sure the seed packet said leave 4-5 feet between plants) there's fruit coming on all plants and we've eaten four already with plenty more on the way.

The corn is doing well too and looks like it's going to provide some lovely cobs later in the year. there's a second sowing behind this larger front lot too which will stagger the produce a little with any luck.

The spuds are doing ok too, I'm a little paranoid that I've not earthed them up enough and we'll die from eating poisonous tubers, but the plants look healthy and quite a few of them are flowering now. A couple of other plot holders have dug up some of their first earlies this week so we may try digging up a plant at the weekend as an experiment just to see what’s down there.

We've kind of abandoned the peas this year, I never got on top of the seed sowing and there were so many other things that needed doing. We've got some sugar snap and mange tout in there that have grown but there's never going to be large enough quantities to provide anything other than a small taste. The runner beans were another thing that almost got left too late but we have some in the ground as you can see and they're doing ok, we've got more at home that have just sprouted which should be ready for planting out in a week or so. It feels horribly late to still be growing seedlings but fingers crossed they'll all catch up and we'll get a crop, even if it's a bit late. There's some French beans down the end of this bed too, again started late but we'll see what happens...

Sorry for the horrible pic here, it was getting late and sun was very low. This is the salad bed, and seems to be doing ok, again it was late getting started but now there are eight or so rows of various salad leaves all growing nicely. They'll need thinning out at the weekend I think but other than that they're good.

This was my project last weekend, get some brasicas in the ground. We ran out of time and space for growing these from seed so I went along to a local nursery to pick up some plants (a few different cabbages, some cauliflower, kale and broccoli) first thing then dodged the rain to get them in the ground. I was quite pleased with the netting too as it looks pretty sturdy I think.

While all of that could make it look like a huge success some parts of the plot are less impressive. The strawberry patch we inherited has been pretty much left to go wild as you can see which loos horrible but we simply didn't have the time to keep it tidy this year as well as do everything else. The one good thing is the weeds don't seem to have stopped the fruit growing and we've harvested probably around 10lbs so far, most of which has been frozen ready for jam making.

Also a horrible mess is the fruit tunnel, it's suffered the same fate as the strawberry patch and the confined space has made the weeds even more impossible to deal with. We're still getting a crop of raspberries in there but actually getting at them isn't easy and knocking this all down and rebuilding it with more space and a paved path through the middle this is defiantly number one on my jobs for the Autumn.

The wood chip that covers about two thirds of the plots path is also not working quite as well as hoped. Weeds are still growing through it and keeping the paths clear was proving a pain till I decided to abandon it for a few weeks and concentrate on getting all the veg in and started. To be fair to the wood chip it's kept the paths clearer than if it hadn't been there at all but I think there just wasn't enough of it to be able to stop all the weeds. It's another lesson learned and perhaps we'll collect it all up and do something different next year, we'll see.

Most embarrassing of all the messy bits however is the state of the grass around the plot. Although not technically 'on' the plot it looks a state and I'd love to be able to keep it nice and tidy. But, with no power point my mower and strimmer from home won't work so I'm trying to keep an eye out for someone using a petrol strimmer or something so I can ask to borrow it. Till then I try to ignore it but it does worry me that it's such an eye sore.

So that's that. All up to date and now we're back in blogging mode we'll be back doing smaller updates as often as we used to. Thanks to everyone who left messages asking where we were and checking we were ok, they're much appreciated. Now I'm off to catch up on all your blogs, speak to you soon!

A big plot weekend planned.

noreply@blogger.com (Paul and Melanie) — Fri, 09 May 2008 14:25:00 +0000

It's been over a week since the last update but despite appearances things have been pretty busy at this end. Up at the plot we've been using the sudden attack of summer to try and regain control of an allotment that had got a bit unruly after the grotty weather which, along with some visits to family, had limited out plot time somewhat in the last couple of weeks.

With a beautiful sunny weekend ahead we're hoping to get a million jobs done to really kick off the growing season. Among the general weeding and clearing that still needs doing we're hoping to make our first raised bed and sow a load of salad stuff in it, plant out the courgettes, finish rescuing the strawberry patch from the knee high weeds that have devoured it, setup the bean and pea supports, and sow some of the root veg.

I've been looking forward to this weekend all week as it's the first time in ages good weather is going to coincide with us not having loads of other things to do which means we can finally spend a good long time on the plot catching up. Fingers crossed I'll have a big long post with loads of pictures on Monday to show you all how it went.

The Great Tomato Project 2008 Update...

noreply@blogger.com (Paul and Melanie) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 16:46:00 +0000

As you can see from the above picture things are going pretty well so far with TGTP 08. The first batch of seedlings have all been transplanted into their own pots now where they'll hopefully grow on ready to be gradually hardened off in a few weeks time. The observant amongst you will have noticed that picture also contains our first load of sweet corn which is doing well so far as well as some of Melanie's Basil in there somewhere too along with a few Tomatillo, and an Aubergine as well.

Two of the tomatoes didn't germinate unfortunately but I'd kept some seed back in the event of problems so I've now re-sown those varieties along with the second stage of the project, the cherry varieties, in the freshly empty propagator.

The rest of the seedlings seem to be doing well too, here's the peppers and chillies all growing merrily in the spare room. I've got a couple of the larger tomatoes hardening off outside simply due to lack of room but they seem happy enough so far and they're joined in the plastic greenhouse with some Borage, a load of courgettes and a single marrow (need to sow another one me thinks) as well as the huge number of flower seeds Melanie seems to have sown.

While I'm at it, we're on the look out for one of those small 4 tier mini plastic greenhouses to house our ever growing number of plants but they seem a bit on the expensive side at £30 in our local garden centre. Does anyone know of a cheaper place to buy them from?

Scary direct sowing

noreply@blogger.com (Paul and Melanie) — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 12:30:00 +0000

Being still quite new at this vegetable growing lark I'm quite cautious when it comes to sowing directly into the ground. Last year in the back garden I started almost everything inside before potting them on, hardening them off and planting out. The only thing I didn't do like that was carrots, and guess which crop was least successful..?

I know in reality I simply can't start everything off inside, not only do we not have space it'd also cost a small fortune in compost. So I'm aiming to force myself to sow some things directly into the soil this year. My only question is what?

I planted some more sugar snap and mange tout peas directly into the ground a week or so ago on the other side of the little pea wall I built and obviously things like carrots, beetroot etc need to be sown direct, but what else is safe to do like that and expect decent results?

Pallets!

noreply@blogger.com (Paul and Melanie) — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 12:21:00 +0000

The one thing (other than extra hours in the day) we've needed ever since we got our plot was some timber. Free timber to be exact since that's the allotmenting way and money, unfortunately, doesn't grow on trees. So, imagine the excitement at Growing Our Own towers this week when a friend of ours who sells Spa Pools emailed to say he had some pallets for us if we could find a use for them.

A couple of days later and this was awaiting us when we came home from work...

A few hours and a lot of effort with hammer and crowbar later we have a much more manageable pile of wood all ready for make everything from compost bins to raised beds. While digging and preparing the remaining beds not to mention sowing seeds will take priority over the far less urgent carpentry but once that’s all done in the next couple of weeks expect to see some first attempts at construction.

So thanks Ed, and if anyone wants a Spa Pool then Monarch Spas is the place to go...

Anyone seen the sun?

noreply@blogger.com (Paul and Melanie) — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 12:38:00 +0000

Aside from the progress with the spuds I mentioned on Saturday it was a pretty slow weekend thanks to some thoroughly cold and gloomy weather in the Gloucestershire area. That didn't seem to stop the seeds we sowed last weekend from making an appearance though.

At least one of most things has come through now, we're only waiting on the vegetable spaghetti and the tomatillo to pop up which I guess isn't surprising given their preference for warmer climates. The courgettes have fairly shot on though and most will be able to be potted on in the next couple of days all being well, the corn is doing well too, 10 out of 15 germinated so far.

No sign of any tomatoes from The Great Tomato Project 2008 (from now on to be called TGTP 08 I think...) but they only got sown 5 days ago so I'm perhaps getting a tad impatient with them. The second batch, the cherry varieties, should be going in later this week when we have some propagator space and with any luck the weather will have warmed up a bit by then as I'm sure it's still pretty cold even in a propagator at the moment.

I was pleasantly surprised last night to discover this blog had been given it's first award. dND from the lovely From Here To Eternity has awarded Growing Our Own an 'E for Excellent' which was very nice of her. I think the rules are I now have to award it to any blogs I feel deserve the accolade, an almost impossible task when you consider the quality out there. I'd love to award it to everyone linked on my blogroll as they're all ones I read avidly but if I had to pick just one I'd award it to Fork it... A Gloucester Allotment. Not only is it a great read it's also the first allotment blog I ever read and the one that inspired me to try my hand at blogging.

A good job jobbed

noreply@blogger.com (Paul and Melanie) — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 15:27:00 +0000

This empty array of cardboard mountains means all the potatoes are now in! They seem to have been sat around the house chitting since the dawn of time taking up space that I really wanted to be using for seeds so it was something of a relief this morning to finally get the last three rows planted in-between the rain showers.

Still no sign of the earlies we put in the ground a couple of weeks ago but fingers crossed they’re burrowing their way towards daylight in their own time.

Tagged!

noreply@blogger.com (Paul and Melanie) — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 12:39:00 +0000

I know it's a little off topic but I was tagged by Lucy at the fantastic Smallest Smallholding and it's kinda fun to do these things so here goes...

What Was I Doing 10 Years Ago?
Hmmm 10 whole years ago I'd have been 20 and nearing the end of the final year of my HND Computing course. If I remember rightly that was a pretty frustrating year as I'd just spent a year on work placement getting paid to do the kind of work I was now not getting paid to do at Uni. This coupled with the fact that I'd kind of lost interest in the whole 'learning' side of the Uni thing led to a scarily large amount of skipped lectures and rushed work which resulted in me scraping through my final exams relying on luck as much as intellect.

My To Do List for Today/Diary of What I Actually Did
Since it's only lunchtime it's perhaps a bit early to judge how successful I'll be with my to do list today but I'd like to get to the allotment after work (weather permitting) and plant the final row of second early spuds as well as dig as much of the main crop bed as possible ready for planting tomorrow. After that my sole objective is to have dinner and relax. Surely that can be achieved.
As for what I've done so far, I've got up, fed the kittens, eaten breakfast, removed the kittens from various places they're not supposed to be, watched the end of a C4 documentary about the Arc of the Covenant, driven the 20 minute journey to work and then worked till lunch, which is now.

Snacks I Enjoy
I like most snacky things, sweet and savoury I'm not fussy. I guess if we're getting specific I'd have to say dark chocolate digestives, salted peanuts, salt and vinegar crisps and lovely fresh crusty bread and jam.

Things I Would Do If I Were A Billionaire
The obvious for a start, buy a lovely house with plenty of land out in the country somewhere.
Secure the financial future of family and friends.
Quit my job and spend my time working towards a more self sufficient lifestyle.
Buy Melanie and I a fantastic car each (running on homemade BioFuel of course).
Buy Cheltenham Town FC and fund their rise to the Premiership.
Travel extensively (not very self sufficient I admit but I'd love to see more of the world)

That'll do for the first few months... ;)

Three of My Bad Habits
I'm sure Melanie should be writing this bit... If she were I know she'd put the fact that I can sometimes take a lot of nagging to get things done as my number one bad habit. Personally I think I'm a lot better than I was, but that may just prove how bad I used to be...
Other than that its hard to say, I guess I'm a bit of a procrastinator at times and I'm terrible at keeping up exercise routines for longer than a few days. I'm sure I have a million other bad habits too but I'd hate to bring them up if people haven't noticed them for themselves. Never remove the mystery and all that... lol.

Five Places I Have Lived
I lived the first 23 years of my life in Cheltenham after which I moved a few miles up the road to Gloucester where I've been for the last 7. As you can see, I'm very much a local lad and to be honest I wouldn't have it any other way. There's very few places I've been that have made me want to move away from the beauty of the Cotswolds.
It'd be nice to live outside of suburbia somewhere more rural but I've no desire at the moment to move miles away, unless anyone out there is selling a nicely sized cottage with plenty of land in a nice location for less than 100k.... ;)

Five Jobs I Have Had
Office Clerk at Sainsburys - My first ever job (outside of a paper round) and I loved it, only did Saturdays and one evening a week but it was great fun.
Usher at Cheltenham's Odeon Cinema - The best job I've ever had and probably ever will. Getting paid to watch films with a little bit of showing people to their seats beforehand and cleaning up the spilt popcorn afterwards to fill in the gaps between films. What could be better? Fantastic place to work with some great people, loved it.
Supporting Artist/Extra - More of a paid hobby than a job but defiantly one of the more interesting things I've ever done. While most of the work I did was appearances in the background of BBC's Casualty (including a line in one episode.. fame eh!) I also got my face on screen in a Jenifer Love Hewitt film amongst others.
Director of my own company - Not a huge financial success by any means but the business I set up with a friend after leaving Uni certainly taught me lots and it was well worth having a go at.
Computer Programmer at various places - My 'real' job, the one that keeps me off the allotment every day. I've found I'm not really a computer person, a conclusion that comes perhaps 15 years too late, but as jobs go its ok and I enjoy the problem solving nature of it.

There we go, probably far more than you ever wanted to know about me and if you've read this far then congrats!

As for who to tag, I'm going to go for...

VP over at Veg Plotting
Veg Monkey from Vegmonkey and the Mrs
Gloucester Womble from Fork It... A Gloucester Allotment
Rebsie at Daughter Of The Soil
and Nome at NomeGrown

Playing catch up...

noreply@blogger.com (Paul and Melanie) — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 12:39:00 +0000

While the weather held out to be far better than expected over the weekend We didn't get to spend as much time at the allotment as we'd have liked. In fact it was only the ten minutes it took to plant out the sugar snap and mange tout peas we had growing at home that we spent up there over the two days.

This didn't mean a lack of any progress at all however; Sunday afternoon saw a much needed sowing and re-potting session in the back garden. While Melanie filled up almost the whole greenhouse with trays full of flower seeds I spent a good couple of hours potting on the various tomato, pepper and chilli seedlings I had into pots big enough for them to live in till they're planted out into their final homes and then catching up with the all seed sowing that needed to be done.

In the propagator we have some Aubergine (Black Beauty), Sweet corn (Early extra Sweet F1), Marrow (Long Green Bush 2) and three kinds of Courgette (Parador, Defender and Covili). There's also a couple of more weird and wonderful veg in the form of some Vegetable Spaghetti and Tomatillo.

The other job we got done was to get the potatoes we're growing at home started off. With four tubs and a different variety in each (King Edward, Accent, Pink Fir Apple and Kerrs Pink) we're doing a bit of a taste test really to see if we fancy growing any of these in bigger quantities on the allotment next year.

Weather permitting we've got lots of work to do at the allotment this week, biggest job that needs jobbing is to dig the second potato bed and get the main crop spuds in the ground, they seem to have been chitting for months so we'll be glad to finally be rid of them cluttering up the house.