Hurried Polytunnel Usage

 14th July 2021,

Another mountain of earth, what’s going on here then?

Well the idea behind this little excavation was to provide an elevated “off the ground” space to work on. Basic, I know, but at least not plodding about in the mud! And the end result? A pile of earth (not topsoil most of this) and a couple of buckets of stones…

Now, about stones… Many people would just throw these away, "a pain in the arse for a gardener!" However, they are very useful, stones. They can be used to fill up spots where you don’t want soil but need some flexibility (because of their different sizes) and want to stop weeds from growing; good for drainage too! I’m a big believer in (yes!) sifting out bigger stones but keeping them. You never know when they might come in handy.

How this corner by the compost heaps is going to turn out? And what we are going to do with it, to tell the truth, we don’t really know yet, but…

The next picture you can see the trellis is almost finished. Just the last bottom section to finish off and then the flower surround is done. Raised bed / terrace next. Chris put in some rustic old brick steps just to add a bit of character to the path area there. Now that the stinging nettles have been removed, I think we have "borrowed" a bit of next door's plot (poetic licence on the borders) but only a small amount.

In the next picture, a little bit further down the plot, everything is beginning to grow nicely. In our keenness to coax our tomatoes along, we’ve planted a lot of “spares” along with the butternuts. Now it is a race between tomatoes and butternuts who takes the ground first, the butternuts have got their skates on!

The courgettes are certainly growing well where we have put them/ They have already taken up the same amount of space they did in a grow bag when grown in a previous year so looking forward to plenty of courgette this year!

The beans have not reached the top of their stakes. We should really have got 2m canes but then again how would we harvest them? And in the polytunnel, tomatoes are growing nicely. It has been a bit of a hurry getting the polytunnel ready this year with all the winds in May and almost losing the entire thing, but it is operational now.

The last picture showing our aubergines which got all mixed up with peppers and we don’t know what the hell we planted in the end… there are a few peppers… but mostly looks like we’ve got aubergines. Check out the makeshift “suspension” shelves and see what I mean by "hurried polytunnel usage" - all around the edge of the polytunnel we have weeds growing, a pet hate btw!

Taking stock

 10th July 2021

Chasing the season, but progress is being made.

With the digging to get the ground ready for the season only just finished in May, late planting of any kind of seeds, construction work then beginning, plus maintenance work to keep nature in check (as best we can) and keep things tidy, well... we have not been idle down at “the Haven”.

This blog post is just giving us time to take stock and take a look at what is going on...

The ground is now beginning to fill out It’s amazing when you first put things in the ground how it all looks very small and insignificant and yet now you begin to wonder if you have given everything enough space!

In the foreground of the first picture is our Brassica area: pointy cabbage, round cabbage, cauliflower, Brussel sprouts, kale, broccoli, and some leeks to finish off the square.

One of the challenges that we’ve got with the growing areas is that they are on a slope. This means that water “runs-off” and we get uneven irrigation. This is something that we would like to do something about next year but for this year let us just get some crops!

In the second picture you can see the leeks. 

In the 3rd picture you can begin to see the allotment plot beginning to take shape and the garden is now filling up. We have the following veggies:

Potatoes, carrots, parsnips, beetroot, celeriac, chard, tomatoes, butternut, courgette, cabbage, cauliflower, sprouts, kale, broccoli, leeks, onions, French beans, runner beans and also aubergine and peppers in the polytunnel!

This is not a bad start when you consider we have been chasing ourselves all year!

2nd July 2021 - More Building

 Construction continues, growing continues, maintenance grows!

July arrives and we are now into the middle month of summer. Everything is nice and green, receiving plenty of sunshine during the early part of summer. Since we thoroughly weeded the soil during the second dig, nowadays the weeding consists of disturbing the soil and picking up regular weeds, with the consistent removal of “the enemies” (bindweed and couche grass) as they raise their heads!

In the picture above, take a look at these courgettes as they find their footing in their new location. Freshly fertilised soil and well spaced out, they are starting to take off with first flowers already making an appearance.

6 Butternut have made it into the “field” as well, along with the tomatoes, making up the rest of what we will grow in this area. Butternuts are incredibly prolific growers and we are thinking they will easily fill this area, although difficult to imagine what that might look like right now.

Looking down the other side of the plot, we have the beans doing well beginning their journey up the “bean poles”. These are filling a space we left when we erected the polytunnel - we wanted to create some usable area behind as well as the front of the polytunnel.

This next picture shows the Brassicas. It is difficult to say what is what, but we have cabbage, sprouts, kale, cauliflower and space for leeks too! They have been growing well, and now we are thinking if we put them too close? One of the biggest problems for gardeners is wanting to grow as much as possible and the tendency to cram plants in. These plants each need the space they need, so being mindful of this is an important lesson.

First stage of the terrace complete! This is the easy bit, although not without its challenges. If you cast your mind back to the very early scenes in October 2020, you will remember we dug a trench around the plot. This was a random trench really to identify what we were working with, to define the patch, so to speak.

Now when coming to put the Terrace boundary in, the trench turns out to be in the exact spot needed to put in these pillars! Put it down to coincidence maybe, but if you seek out these confirmations to support "being on the right track", then here was the first one! How did we know, when we didn’t even know where and if there would be a terrace? 

This is another snap of the trellis looking up the plot from the polytunnel and check out the temporary seating area - much fun riding those chairs in the soft earth…

The last picture is another Trellis picture. This time you can see the dry wall addition of the bricks to assist in creating the side of the raised border which will eventually house a lovely flower display for us to enjoy sitting around.