December 2023

 2nd December 2022 - The festive month has arrived and it is now officially wet all the time

The long wait for the holiday season is over, and nice though that might be, it begins to call time on the allotment effort and of 2022. 

What we have begun to appreciate is that really from the beginning of December the instances of wet weather increase, the amount of daylight available each day, and the continuous presence of dew, means that from now until at least February the ground is permanently wet. This means that working conditions become quite poor and with the exceptions of clearance work and maybe moving things about, what can actually be done is minimal. Construction, drilling and sawing wood all becomes pretty much a "no! no!" as everything is wet and of course, wood expands during these times. Best wait until spring is well underway for these things.

The wormery however only has the lid left to do, and this is breaking pallets apart as opposed to putting things together. So this little exercise is something that can wind up the current year.

On well drained parts of the allotment it is also possible to loosen the soil, pull out the weeds which are now normal kind of weeds, not the irrepressible bind weed and couch grass of old. Desi managed to sort 90% of this plot in a couple of hours. There are still some plants to remove, hence why not 100%.

Some clearance work to be done too… carrots and parsnips. We aren’t digging them all up, just 50% but as you can see the carrots are not the shape you would want. Both the carrots and parsnips suffer the same problem. The soil is so dense for these root vegetables, 2 years we have had this problem, next year will be on more sandy soil so that the roots can go straight down and not have to twist and turn. The taste of these vegetables is the same, just it is a lot more difficult to prepare them to cook.

All the beans and the sweetcorn removed and the support canes stored away for another year. We are going to use this same patch next year for beans and sweetcorn, but will be a completely different setup… watch out for that next May as we begin to construct and plant.

In this last picture Desi is clearing away some plants and disposing of them in the compost bins. The two avocado’s we may place in the cold frame there and let them take their chances with the weather, we’ve nowhere to put them anyway.

Notice the cladding now on the terrace on this side. We are all ready to build the path, we just need some more wood… just putting the request out there!

That’s a Good Idea, a Wormery

 30th November 2022 - That’s a Good Idea, a Wormery

Do you remember we had dumped a pile of weeds at the end of the row of 4 square raised beds and I asked what on earth is going on there… well we are building a wormery. The worms made short work of the bind weed, couch grass and other weeds, so, we thought we could build a little place to tidy these “difficult” weeds away and coax the worms to grow and multiply in their own little house. The allotment has plenty of worms already, but you can never have enough worms. They aerate the soil, worm casts are amazing food for plants, and they take the goodness (manure etc.) down into the soil where the roots need it. A worm= an all-round desirable creature to encourage multiplying on your land.

The second picture shows exactly where the wormery is located from a different perspective. This old black sheet we found on the plot. Didn’t seem to be too useful at the time, but it was the perfect size for 3 walls of this wormery. Another piece of good fortune. No measurement, just went to see if we could use it and it was the perfect size, couldn’t have measured it any better… perfect coincidence once more!

The Big Clear-Up!

 26th November 2022 - The Big Clear-Up!

The peas are still doing well to the right hand side of the first picture. We have had a nice little crop from them. If we’d have thought to put them in a tad earlier, it would have been much better.

When the manure arrived, we hastily added this orange pallet and the thick metal white-coloured panels in order to prevent overspill onto the terrace and the cold frames (in progress). So we ended up with quite a large pile and it was as long as the 5 metre plot we had built. Pure guesswork but it isn’t the first time things have seemingly turned out well without a lot of thinking beforehand.

As you saw in the previous blog there was some distribution (the excess) of the manure and that will have to do for now. We haven’t cleared the growing areas from last year yet, which we must do first, then we will get on with the manure-shovelling to where it is needed.

Desi is now clearing some of the easier-to-clear things from last year. The Butternuts have all gone, the corn will be next, then we can dig that area. It didn’t take too long to dig that patch once we acquired it back in April, but it will be interesting to see how long it takes us to dig the 3 main plots ready to distribute the manure.

In the next picture the marigold has been uprooted along with any remaining peppers. Time to dispose of anything that is already dead, or won’t survive the winter.

Surprisingly there is still quite a lot of produce going on. Cabbages, parsnips, carrots, swedes, peas, potatoes (just harvesting), parsley, brussels and some radish. Amazing that we are now almost in December and there is plenty of food remaining!

The gooseberries, blackberries and raspberries have received a good dose of manure… they do need some management though next year to inspire them to grow in an orderly fashion. Next spring we’ll be staking this little lot!

The Manure Has Arrived!

 22nd November 2022 - The Manure Has Arrived!

Wahey, under that white sheet is a pile of muck!

In order to get the whole load of muck onto our newly created staging area we needed to take some that had spilled on the road to other parts - notice the dark colour of the soil in the raised beds in the centre of the picture and the bit of land in front of them. Also, some was liberally distributed onto our gooseberries. We had to improvise a bit to stop this manure from invading the new terrace and getting on top of the white door… but all in all it’s now good to go.

You can see that there is a big pile of weeds in front of the square raised beds, what is going on there then? Shouldn’t that pile be in the compost bins?

Yet another perspective from down by the cabbages. This manure will just lay on top of the soil, giving extra protection for the soil, suppressing weeds, and providing some good stuff for the worms to take down into the soil. We could’ve dug it in, but we would definitely disturb all the creatures in the soil, this is a good no-dig option. We sorted the soil already with weeds, this is now improving the soil… you know what they say, “if you take care of the soil…” 

Sorting the Other Side of the Terrace

 19th/20th November 2022 - Sorting the Other Side of the Terrace

Having got the top part of the new plot sorted and ready for the manure next week (just about) now to sort out the other side of the terrace.

You can clearly see now the black sheeting under the terrace and if you look closely the stakes (piles) that the pallets are resting on. Basically I need to add cladding on this side of the terrace to prevent anything getting underneath. I have also moved the slabs that were creating a makeshift path to where they will be located and provide a proper pathway to the terrace and to attend to the contents of the large cold frame (white door) and the smaller one between the door and the terrace.

Rearranging the path meant that I also had to place the cold frame (white door) where it will ultimately be located and raise it up onto those wooden beams. Then the soil was dug over and placed out of the way. The path will have a wood beam in front of it, and when you continue the path on, it will finish beyond the terrace and continue to the other side of this new plot (almost). This is where these decorative (normal) stones will find their new home.

The next picture once more gives us a view from another perspective. We took off what was a white concertina-type cloche which was supposed to have potatoes under, but it doesn't look like potatoes, it looks like weeds to us. Just in case though, we put the cloche back on in case of potential potatoes and left it on thereafter.

The soil around this part has been dug over and the part from the plank of wood and then to the right will need to be tidied up too.

Onto the perspective from the compost bins. You can now clearly see the white door cold frame angled to allow the water to run off. We’re quite pleased how this is all coming together, there will be another nice terrace to sit at, and good fun using all this new collateral when it’s finished.

In the final picture, having moved all the wood and pallets from this part of the plot, we are now able to finish off digging and then this middle (long and relatively thin) section is now ready for next year. It has been a year of “a bit at a time”, as and when we had things to plant, but now we need this to be ready to receive manure in preparation for next year.

Shorter and Colder Days = Less Time at the Allotment

 18th November 2022 - Shorter and Colder Days = Less Time at the Allotment

This top part of the new plot is now almost ready for the manure which will arrive next Tuesday 22nd of November. We are now on Friday 18th so just a few days to go. This has been quite a rush job to get everything ready in time, especially now the days are shorter and not guaranteed to be nice weather. We have been fortunate so far though. The pressure of something happening on an exact day is good motivation and certainly helps to get things done!

The next picture is from a different perspective. We like taking pictures like this as it sometimes inspires new features, and maybe gives us ideas, especially on what to do next. When reviewing the pictures in the evening, at leisure, the ideas form on how to do things and this makes best use of the time at the “Haven”.

Another perspective in the 3rd picture. The soil all nicely levelled and for the first time really you can have some good idea of how things will look next spring. This plot has come quite a long way in the 8 months since we’ve had it. We are quite pleased to have got this far, with everything else going on at the same time.

The final perspective of this top section. From this perspective you can see something that happened whilst we were away in Hungary. The weather was pretty grim while we were away, lots of wind, thunderstorms and very heavy rain. Check out the polytunnel. Basically the weather tore to shreds the whole plastic covering sheet and the whole inside is now exposed to the weather. We are not going to attempt to fix this until the spring, when once again we will be able to use it, and repair it when the weather is much better too.

The fallout from the polytunnel means that we also have a lot of plastic bits to clear up. But the frame is in good shape. We have already acquired new sheeting, but on this occasion we will really think about how we are going to secure everything, and make it easy to replace, should the same happen again, which to be honest is inevitable. You have to take the setbacks just as you take all the good stuff, just learn from it and go again!

Getting Ready for the Manure

 14th November 2022 - Getting Ready for the Manure

Levelling off the soil now ready for the manure delivery in about a week’s time.

Notice the wooden panelling on the side wall of the terrace has a slight pink hue to it. This wood has been selected because it is much harder wood than the regular brown / pale softer wood. As these panels are likely to be under the soil Chris has selected the best of what we had for this purpose.

Once this soil is levelled, we can begin to focus on the other side and ready this for the work in spring when the cold frame will need digging as will the path the far side of the terrace. Still plenty of construction and groundworks to be done, but we’ve done most of the hard work now.