August Rainbows

 6th August 2021, Food, Construction and Weather

The Runner beans are doing amazing things. We already have had many kg’s of them but the plants have so many more flowers! Looks like a freezer-full of these this year, although they can be cooked into stir fries, fritters, relish and many other delicious recipes.

What is going on with the tomatoes in the polytunnel? They have struggled to get going this year. The pollination seems to have not been very efficient, maybe to do with the door being closed while we are not there. This will have kept pollinators out for chunks of the day, also when the sun is out it gets very hot in there - we do need a window or something to enable the heat to “get out” and pollinators in…

So apart from a lack of fruiting, these plants have had extra thick stems and these strange growth type things appearing. On closer inspection these are tiny roots, as if the plant wants to throw out some additional roots into the soil… (Never really seen these before!) We have had enough tomatoes so far to just eat them with our picnic at the “Haven”, the rest are very slow to ripen thus far, and now this blight may have arrived for them too.

This is what we have been dealing with this summer: lots of heavy rain showers and then some sun, great for rainbows!  The sun, however, has not been enough to really ripen the tomatoes and the moist humid air has been quite enough to bring whatever mold spores thrive in such conditions. Very frustrating on the growth front but also stopping play on the construction front too!

Construction does continue though. Another two pallets down; just the one to go. Chris, the main designer/contractor/builder/project manager, thinks there will need to be some levelling up of the pallets, although they look pretty flat to me, Desi, the impatient one. The purpose of the sand is to get things just how Chris (and I) want them, but lifting pallets up and down is heavy work - beats the gym manifold!

Nice rainbow scene on the construction site. We are so pleased for the polytunnel providing a dry space to retreat to when the heavens open, so at least we can work between these all too frequent shower bouts.

A New Seating Style Emerges

 4th August 2021, A new seating style emerges

We have arrived!!  The first chance to use the terrace albeit in an incomplete state… but now at least the chairs do not sink into the ground and we are sitting in the same place that we will be when the finished article is unveiled.

More produce is also beginning to come in. 5 courgettes, broccoli, kale, cabbages, chard and runner beans in this picture. The hard work of all the digging, weeding and preparing the ground over the past 10 months or so, finally showing results and jolly tasty it all is too!

The “Haven” is taking shape now… This year has been a full-on year:

Finishing off all the digging and preparing the soil for where we were going to plant;

Erection of the polytunnel (and rebuilding after May when it almost blew away);

Creation of the compost bins and area to work in next door to compost bins;

And now the terrace is beginning to take shape…

Plus planting, managing and taking care of all the different veggies we are growing this year -it is starting to be a full time job!

From this different view of the terrace you can now see that we are adding sand on top of the ballast to enable us to get a level surface to screw the decking onto. So far so good, but another three pallets to align and level- it might be a long day!

The cabbages are doing really well, so are the runner beans. It is a shame that the slugs like the cabbages as much as we do. Fortunately, the runner beans appear not to be bothered too much (a bit of black fly attack in the early stages by now nothing much is bothering them) so they are very prolific! Looking for things to do with courgettes and runner beans, innovation rife in the kitchen… 

However, all is not rosy everywhere… Check out the tomatoes! We believe this is blight beginning to make its presence known :( The weather has been particularly damp and humid, ideal conditions for blight and it seems that it is sweeping across the allotments. Once it appears, it spreads like wildfire, and as the story goes, it has only taken a week to get everywhere. And as potatoes are in the same family as tomatoes, looks like it has probably spread to them as well, or vice versa. (Desi's dad in Bulgaria refers to this fungal, air-born bacteria as "potato blight".) 

The final picture here is a different angle of the terrace construction on this day. Some plants are already in the raised bed. We can’t go overboard planting out there as yet because there will still be disruption as the raised bed needs to be screwed onto the pallets. So, still a lot of work to do!

Not too small, not too big...

 1st August 2021, Defining the end of the Terrace

Having now defined the base of the terrace and the raised bed around the side, the time has come to make the statement as to where the terrace ends.

There was some deliberation about how long the terrace would be. We tussled with the dimensions, as it needed to be big enough to be able to sit with comfort, and yet not too big that it was disproportionate to the size of the allotment. We ended up with a terrace size that was 3.4m which was coincidentally just over the length of the decking we wanted. So that worked together nicely. Plus 9 x 14cm (width of the decking planks) came out to 126cm (when placed side to side), and the actual width of the terrace was 120cm plus a brick, allowing for some discrepancy down the 3.4m of terrace we had an allowance of some 2-3cm of overhang, which worked out again just right!

On the allotment we are not allowed to use cement as no structures are supposed to be permanent. We used a little cement to hold the pallet in position, but mostly it was supported by stones and debris that we had dug up from the plot.

The next step with the terrace was to place a layer of small stone ballast on top of the rubbish which then filled up all the holes and allowed us to create a flatter surface. Desi was clearing the stones here from the remaining part of the plot (with the exception of paths) that was yet to be dug. This was so the other dry brick wall could be built to finish off this side of the raised bed. 

Puddles and Pools

 31st July 2021, Rain tries to stop play, but we work around it

Fortunately we have long days at the moment because the weather is making the whole allotment experience a bit of a stop / start affair. As you can see the rain has been pouring down and the nature of the road close by and the drainage has meant that we are working in a puddle (small pond).

The job is to get the side wall all installed so that we can begin to fill in the space vacated by the soil and begin to build the terrace, now all the “digging out” is completed.

One of the big issues we’ve got here with the allotment is these puddles on the road. What we are doing is actually providing an easier escape route for the water by digging out this soil, so we must make sure that the drainage under the terrace and elsewhere on the plot is able to distribute the water easily.

As you can see here the area of the terrace is flooded, the rain has stopped. Here we are looking across the compost bins, over the piles of pallets (for future use) and this big mountain of earth which we have dug out of the terrace area. We are sure we will find a use for all this displaced soil in time, but we are moving soil around the plot from pillar to post.

The wood surround is installed. This is not the raised bed wood, only the wood being used to support the base of the terrace. So the first layer is wood just so that the plastic is somewhat protected from what comes next - basically rubbish we have recovered from the plot and adjacent plots. So that is the first step… 

 

Finally we add in the rubbish to fill up the space and also plenty of stones harvested from the digging out process of this terrace and other digging around the allotment… all in all a reasonable amount of rubbish taken out of circulation and put to a good use.

Quite pleased with the day’s work amongst all the rain, this sees in the end of July… tomorrow another month begins and the work continues on! 

Wet Summer 2021

 30th July 2021, The digging is mostly done (for now), weather continues

The weather hasn’t been playing ball too much of late, so we are having to dodge the rains. The first picture is the last spade of soil to be excavated from the terrace ditch. This was all dug by eye as opposed to trying to level the base all out. The thing is, nothing is level, so everything is just at a different height. Best thing to do, Chris decided, is work on the basis that it is approximately correct and then when we are filling in the hole we level things up before we put the decking on. 

We believe this is our very first Passiflora flower. Chris says his mother used to have this in her garden and he loved the flower, how very exquisite it is. Who but nature could engineer such a thing of beauty as this! Not only that, but totally functional and works in every way. 

A view across the allotments. This is what we have been contending with pretty much for the whole of the summer. And we wonder why the tomatoes and potatoes are complaining… stop / start rain! Great for slugs and ducks, not so good for ripe tomatoes!

Pretty impressive cloud formations though… you have to hand it to nature, its got everything covered, from flowers, vegetables, rain, sun and of course wind.

10 months and still pushing on

 29th July 2021, 10 months into the project almost and still pushing on

We have had the allotment over 10 months now and so much has happened, but as soon as things get done, new ideas spring to mind to take things onto a different level.

These top bits of ground by the path appear to house plenty of rubble as you can see by the big pile of bricks, stones, and the like. Makes digging tricky and laborious but that’s the interesting thing about allotments, you never know what you might find under there.

Once the pile of earth is out the next step is to finish the side wall and to build a dry brick wall for the other side. (Still some way before doing that though!)

The next picture you can see a small mound of soil along with the egg shells (good for calcium in the soil). Here we are beginning to tip the surplus soil from the construction as well as the growing mound by the side of the polytunnel. Not much soil to go now thankfully or we would genuinely have nowhere to put it.

Tomatoes are filling up the polytunnel as well, although to be honest, there isn’t a lot of fruit on them. Seems like they have been producing mainly foliage and flowers that don’t get pollinated. Hopefully they will pick up as we can only see one or two tomatoes in there.

The outside tomatoes are faring better, although they have a different type of issue. The leaves are disfigured and curving. It's definitely not lack of water, as this certainly hasn’t been the case, could be some disease or other, we are getting a feeling it must be something.

Round the back of the tomatoes the butternut squashes are beginning to take over the lower patch of ground. I have a suspicion that August and September might see a flurry of fruits being created, well we can always hope…

As the terrace area is constructed we are locating our seats wherever we can. This piece of ground in the excavation is quite stable, although the metal feet of the chairs have a tendency to sink into the mud! Can’t wait until we have the seating area all set up and we can rest in comfort overlooking the rest of the “Haven”.

Wet, Wet, Wet (weatherwise)

 26th July 2021, Construction, wet, and something seems wrong

Construction continues unabated. The entire length and width of the terrace area can now be clearly seen. Just a massive pile of soil remains in the middle. Can you see the space where that soil can go? No, we can’t either. This has been a constant struggle of ours- trying to develop the “Haven” whilst at the same time growing things. Basically, we keep running out of space to put things (mainly pallets and earth).

Notice a small version of Desi resting on top of the compost heap :) 

Also, there is a pile of bricks between the compost heap and the polytunnel. We expect to be using these later on this construction too…

The whole plot is looking very green here: the potatoes are doing very well, butternuts are galloping along although we have lost one to some disease or other. No butternuts as yet to be seen, but we are hopeful. 

So far this year March / April were amazing and very dry, May was a month of heavy winds, and never a dry day pretty much. "April showers" in the wrong month, so to speak, and now here in June / July we see a continuation of rather rubbish summer weather. We haven’t had a prolonged patch of dry weather and everything has been disappointing so far except for the runner beans which have been amazing. We just hope there is enough time for everything to catch up. The only plants that seem to like it are the brassicas, despite their (and ours) constant war with slugs.

The patch near the fire is beginning to be overrun by the butternut. We have planted out a load of leftover tomato plants in the hope they would win the speed competition against the butternuts. We will have to wait and see what happens. 

We are watching the main crop of tomatoes carefully as there appears to be a fair amount of disfigurement with the leaves. They are not brown or anything, might just be a symptom of the unseasonal weather that they are struggling with (fingers crossed!)

The courgettes continue to produce a bountiful crop and we are having to get very innovative to use them up these days!