Produce, produce, pleasure…

 3rd September 2021, Produce, produce, pleasure…

This is what it is all about!

Nearly a year after being allocated the allotment, look what we just harvested on the 1st September!

Ok this is not the first bit of produce that we have harvester, but look at the weight of this pointy cabbage 1.767 kg. It probably won’t win any prizes at food shows but it is certainly heavier and more solid than anything bought at supermarkets. And we have plenty of these to come!

Absolutely delicious served sliced into small bits and as a base instead of rice, or stir-fried with other crispy vegetables or turned into sauerkraut or used as a regular vegetable with a roast dinner, or added to stews, or my favourite: sliced into 1” steaks and grilled with garlic, pepper, and lemon juice! All excellent ways to use this amazing cabbage (and the others too).

Moving on look what else we’ve been harvesting: more pallets. Another 4 being transported to the “Haven” for dismantling and re-using on all the projects we have lined up. It’s great to be able to get all this free wood and to recycle in ways that help us to create more food. (Desi thought that this would be the last ever load in her car, but noooo…)

And after all this hard work, finally we have a proper place to rest and recuperate.

Feet up, cups of tea and a bit of sun… what is not to like! This is what having an allotment was meant to be like: a place to grow food, meet people, and enjoy nature.

Finishing off the table…

 2nd September 2021, Finishing off the table…

So as we move into September, there isn’t likely to be much of the summer left to enjoy the table, however, on a roll now, and want to get a lot more done before the year end, and pretty much December is a write off.

So as you can see the table is nearing completion. Just the top to build now…

The table top has been built separate from the main table and the plan was to affix it later after everything else was finished. So here you can see that the left-over decking wood (the cut-offs) is being added to a top sub-frame which already fits nicely onto the bottom section, and now the actual top is being built onto that. In this way if the bottom section warps then we can modify the frame of the actual table top to fit without having to try and meddle with the decorative decking top.

The decking was bought at the same time as the terrace decking and we worked out exactly how much was needed based on the terrace, table top, and the seat to be built a little later, watch out for that post in due course.

The most difficult part of this is cutting the mitre joints and assembling. The whole thing has been done using a mortice hand saw 😲 as there is no electricity here and we are trying to keep all the costs to a minimum! Luckily, Chris did woodwork at school (and was good at it) since we know that being a computer consultant isn’t exactly training for this kind of work. 😂

The second picture provides a glimpse of the table top as it approaches completion.

Now in the last picture the finished article “in situ” on the terrace. The table is quite narrow but it was custom measured to provide a decent size whilst keeping enough space on the terrace to actually sit around the table.

We now have a seating area, and table where we can rest “properly” during the hard work of maintaining an allotment. This cannot be overlooked. Having a seating area where you can eat and rest means that the allotment can become a destination, a place to enjoy hanging out at, not just work, work, work.

Autumn is upon us…

 1st September 2021, Autumn is upon us

The first day of the month, the beginning of the 3 months of Autumn and… 

Lo and behold the new structure begins to come together. Being assembled in the work area / storage facility, the table begins to take shape. This is a specially designed table of the dimensions we need so it fits nicely on the terrace and provides good seating for 4 people or so.

The structure is made using two part-pallets joined together with wood from other pallets. The legs have been filled in with other pallet parts and then the whole lot repainted with wood preserver once more.

In the second picture you can see spare pallet wood from broken down pallets under the table threaded in there for future use. We don’t let anything go to waste here.

September 1st, busy, busy, lots going on today…

Check out this last picture: where we first planted 7 courgettes it has turned into a forest and where we planted 5 or so butternut squashes we now have a mass of floor cover. The overspill tomatoes never had a chance and blight got them anyway. The fire is a decent height these days and very useful for burning the garden waste, and bits of pallets we inevitably get left over…

New project, Seeds and Floods

 26th-31st August 2021, New project, Seeds and Floods

Well, what do we have here?

No sooner one project completed another begins. We are running out of time in 2021, the shorter cold days will be with us soon enough and the available days through weather tend to reduce as well this time of year.

So in another part of “The Haven” some pallets have been stacked so that Desi can paint (with wood preserver) the first part of our brand new table, created from recycled pallet wood. The second picture is the second part of the table, awaiting the same treatment. When weather protected, the assembly process will continue.

Meanwhile, the first Marigold we planted is bushing out in the raised bed around the terrace. This plant was becoming pot bound in a yoghurt pot but as soon as it was planted in the raised bed it began to take off as you can see.

We will be leaving some flowers on the marigold to harvest as seeds for next year, just as we are doing with the runner beans. So important to plan the seed production into the harvesting timetable as next year's crop will come from this exercise.

What do you make of the next picture?

Looks like a huge deluge has hit us, but has it?

During this construction phase we have removed a lot of earth from just inside our plot. This you have seen from the Terrace construction project and also where the actual woodworking is done, a lot of earth has been excavated there and also for the compost bins. What this has meant is that although the terrace is almost as high as the ground was, the area isn’t solid soil any more, nor the work area where the table is being created, which is at least 60cm lower than the road.

Just out of picture on the right hand side is a water tap…

And this tap had been turned on by someone and left on. The plot owner opposite ours had to use Wellington boots to get through the water to turn off the tap, but not until hours after it had been turned on and left running.

Consequently this water (and there is a propensity for a puddle in the road to form here too) gathered around our plot and then of course filtered through the soil and under the terrace and additionally right where the compost bins / work area reside.

The pictures shows you how waterlogged the whole area is, and this is sometime after the event - the water had been turned off some time ago before we discovered all this carnage.

Fortunately drainage had been on my mind whilst building and no serious damage had been done, a little bit of rejigging next phases of work has now been thought about to ensure no damage is caused by a similar event in the future. We have also requested moving the water pipe (that has gone down like a concrete zeppelin with other folk) if only to prevent similar occurrences in the future.

Desi took a picture of the waterlogging at the other end of our allotment some 11 metres away… and this carried onto the plot below us too! I dread to think how many gallons of water were wasted in this event alone.

The last picture above provides a visual explanation as to what happened:

All the way along the internal allotment road, no water! We have had a few days of no rain actually. And the road is bone dry except for around out plot and you can see the standpipe with the blue downpipe just right of centre in the picture. The puddles remain on our side but the whole area around the plot was under water! We are definitely looking to get this issue resolved soon… 

We thought that growing food and allotments would be a simple process. But… , you also have to deal with the vagaries of people too. That’s often the hardest part!

" The Haven" is Working

 25th August 2021, “The Haven” is working

With the groundworks finished (the terrace) we are now able to put in other plants that have been waiting in the wings. These have been mainly Marigolds… But in an interesting deviation from the norm, here we see the attractive green of lettuce amongst other things. Lettuce is back on the menu in a few weeks time, so it seems!

In the next picture is a longer range view of the terrace but in the foreground you can also see the blight (black stems) on the tomatoes while the beetroot and Swiss chard are growing profusely. The chard has been an exceptional crop (that we didn’t even plant) - it just popped up and started producing! It seems wherever there is a vacant bit of soil, then we have planted lettuce… The jury is out on whether we are just feeding the wildlife or not!

The beans have been prolific this year. On the 3rd time of asking we still sowed in plenty of time, and the weather being fairly wet, with sun, and not too hot, the beans have done what runner beans do best. With relatively few pests or diseases that bother them, they are a great staple for the winter, plus providing a very useful vegetable in relishes, pickles and the like.

We found out a bit late for this, but if you leave radishes in and they produce seed pods, these can be eaten before they turn brown. We haven’t managed to eat them thus far, but we have saved the seeds for sowing next year. Got to love a good radish.

The marigolds are beginning to provide a wonderful show this year. We’re hoping to get some seeds from these too, although we’re a bit unclear how and when to harvest. But I’m sure we’ll work it out soon enough. 

Busy time of the year August, as everything is growing, so needs managing, dead-heading and harvesting / cooking too. We have so many green tomatoes and these need to be processed or the blight will just destroy what fruit there in. Next month, September, will be even busier I’m sure, and October, clearing things as the weather turns and Autumn digs in. 

Next Project

 23rd August 2021, Now for the next project

With the paint hardly dry (so to speak), the next project looms. The raw materials present themselves here and armed with a tape measure, a hand saw and a mallet (plus pallets), away we go. What is it that is being created here?

This little area where the compost bins exist is transformed (at least temporarily) into a working space. It has become a plant nursery, a repository for spare dug-out earth and a store for spare tomatoes (now suffering with blight too).

The second picture shows where the work area is, now late afternoon and shadows already appearing in the late summer sun. We are now using the terrace for our rest area and tea, along with it being a dry area to put things down while we work on the plot.

It seems that the plants do like the raised bed as much as we do! The Passiflora is making great strides, the Marigolds are beginning their advance and the Mallows (pink flowers) are starting to flower too. It will be pretty as a picture soon, I am sure of it. Other photos will follow as things bloom here.

Produce, Produce and Some More Produce

 20th August 2021, Produce, Produce, Brassica’s …

For the first year of the “Haven” we wanted to just grow food, learn, build infrastructure, and record as much as we could of the experience. This blog is an integral part of that journey so to speak, even though we’re a bit behind the current date.

Having managed to prepare the ground for growing, we set about putting plants in. We were in a bit of a hurry to plant out cabbages and other brassicas but we shouldn't have worried unduly. These plants manage to survive the cold anyway. 

Here we have the pointy cabbages, cauliflower, brussel sprouts, and squeezing in the top some Kale too!

The next picture showing a cauliflower, a bit on the small side but well formed, followed by round cabbage.

Plenty to go around and even enough for the wildlife as we are not using any chemicals or sprays, unless they are home made (from essential oils, baking soda and the likes…)

Most, if not all of these plants were procured late in the season from the garden centre. We were busy digging and we had nowhere to really put young seedlings, so in this our first year we just focused on creating space to grow, then planting out bought plants. Next year with everything in place we can start things off from seeds. 

Hopefully we will be eating lots of cabbage cauliflower soon, then later in the year - Kale, Brussels and potentially carrots / parsnips!

The final picture was a bit of a surprise. To our knowledge we never bought any Swede plants nor did we plant any, and yet here is one erroneous swede - very nice it was too!