27-29th May

I went to the allotment for a little time after work. My back is too bad for any serious work. I seem to have a weakness that feels like a lump, or someone constantly poking me. It feels as if something has lapsed or torn, it is not my usual stiffness or spasm. The good thing is despite all that, it does not give me constant discomfort, although I always know it is there, and I can move about adequately most of the time. However, digging is out for now. So the allotment visit was for a few minor things. The lovely orange plastic scaffold netting is too high and I trimmed it down to a size I could step over while I was erecting it, but I hadn’t done it for the last section, well now it is done completely. Even the slight bending to cut that was sore on the back though. I put down slug pellets (organic of course!) around the progressing salad leaves and the sweet peas and the brassicas. I had a peek under the fleece sheet and counted a total of 7 carrots – argh! On the plus side, the leeks are showing through. They have shot up and are like little stems of grass about 2 inches tall. This is a relief. I made my first harvest from my plot, from my one rhubarb plant, picking 7 stalks. Later they were washed, and chopped up for freezing. I hate rhubarb and this plant and all its produce is for my wife.



The Eden Project (and following)

 

Driving home I stopped in a country lane lay-by and picked a large bag full of stinging nettles. Each arm got brushed by the prickling stingers but the sensation was very mild and lasted no longer than a few seconds. I did get stung quite badly though through the hole in my right glove on the inside of the knuckle of the thumb. The point of this exercise is for making nettle tea – not for me – for the plants. I have an empty green dustbin, I fill that loosely with nettles and fill with water, leave it to steep for 2-3 weeks, dredge out the nettles for the compost bin (it makes a lovely rich, loamy compost apparently), and dilute the remaining water as a good high potash tonic for plants.

 

 

28^th May
Today was another constant rainy day, the type that will soak well into the ground. The sum total of my gardening today was to replenish slug pellets around the sweet peas. I noticed that the salad leaf veg in my box have germinated very well and small little seed leaves are making 4 rows of dotted green.

 

 

29^th May

To the allotment again to find that the strip of grass in front of my plot where I park had a huge load of manure on it. I don’t think it’s horse, it hasn’t got the right smell, it may be cow or pig. Either way, what a cheek! Some of it is making my fencing bulge inward and judging by the fact the horse manure from a few weeks ago is still untaken, who knows how long this will be here? I sowed two more rows each of the spicy oriental and the Italian salad leaves, and collected another bag of nettles from outside the gate of the allotment gate. It was just starting to rain as I finished and we had a heavy downpour that was still going strong a while after I got home. At lunch time I had put out the petunias to plant out this evening, instead they got a very good wash and came back in after tea.

 

Later I looked at the photos I took after all my digging and trimming at the allotment, while there were still no weeds showing and the surrounding grass had not got going. Then I thought of the present state of affairs and how much work I will have to do. Then I thought of my back and decided to stop thinking and go and make a cup of tea. I have an appointment with my doctor about my back on Monday.

23rd - 26th May

I potted up the last sweet pepper and filled the new, salvaged salad box with the sieved soil, topsoil and compost and gave it a watering. I also had a large black plastic round pot that I put more of that sieved soil in and I will sow Chantenay carrots, as they don’t seem to be doing well on the hard clay soil at the allotment.



More from the Eden project (and following)

Speaking of the allotment, it is becoming a concern. A while ago I mentioned that with all the dreaming, planning, work and expense, things can still go very wrong. I have been unable to do much at all for 2 weeks and will probably not get there to do anymore work until next Tuesday. There is so much weeding, there is concern over the carrots and the leeks (although this may be impatience) and I really don’t want bare earth yielding nothing of any use to our larder. I really need to get a decent netting over all the brassicas too as white butterflies have been spotted! (if you get what I mean).

24th May

Today was a good opportunity to tidy the garden. My wife’s parents are back from holiday and we had a family meal here for them and my wife’s brother and his family to celebrate her Dad’s birthday. This meant that we were not going out anywhere and we needed the garden tidy so our 4 year old and I set to work. I sowed the salad seeds and the carrots and a pot of rocket after watering with hot water to aid fast germination. I took bags of soil and compost to the end of the garden, gave the concrete a really good sweep, cleared away bags of garden cuttings to the front of the house as well as some sections of drainpipe and guttering that has been littering the place for a few months. I made 2 tripods with bamboo in the wider section of the border in front of the privet hedge and planted my now untangled sweet peas at the bases. I spread some topsoil over the border to make it look nicer, found 4 primrose plants at the back of the border that I had moved out of the way of spring bulbs as I didn’t want to plant them right on top, but now I could plant them aside from the stumps.

After our fantastic outside meal and everyone had gone home, I tied in the sweet peas, watered well and put down a spread of coffee granules and organic slug pellets.

25^th May

It rained like nobody’s business last night and this morning. Thankfully I had covers over my salad and carrot sowings. It was quite bright and sunny later in the afternoon and so we sat out and simply enjoyed the garden – no work!

26^th May

Bank holiday and lots of rain. I had planned to plant out the petunias, but all I did was to sow some more herbs as the ones I planted out are doing poorly. I sowed fennel, oregano, sage, sweet marjoram and Russian tarragon. They are sitting on the kitchen windowsill now. I inspected the sweet peas and they look as though they are settling in.

22nd May

My wife was still ill today and the little fellow was still in need of attention although now more happy to wander around. This meant a day for gardening at home – when time permitted in between nursing and parenting duties. If I was not going to be paid to take this time off, I was going to make the time pay for me.

I cut back the dead stems and the leaves of the bulbs, which is a bit risky if done too early (less than 6 weeks after flowering) as the bulbs do need to draw nutrients into the bulbs from the leaves for next years’ flowers. Hopefully I left it long enough and I had also sprinkled granular fertiliser around the area a few weeks ago. I really need to move the petunias out of the conservatory though and get them into the ground outside. The longer they stay inside, the greater the risk of being damaged by passing feet especially as the garden is being used more now. I put some plant friendly wood preservative on that wooden box I salvaged and I pruned back the privet and the other branches that were invading the border from the rear. This gave me another chance to use the secateurs I received from the boys at Christmas – the ‘pliers’.

Later in the evening after the boys were in bed I potted up the sweet peppers into their final pots and I took the sweet peas that I bought from the garden centre out of their pot to plant out in the border. I discovered that some idiot had already potted them on in to a larger pot and so an internal tangle of roots had grown out to give a double layer of tangled roots. It wouldn’t be until Monday that I would remember that that idiot was me. I left them soaking in a small bucket of water to try to loosen up the soil. It was another night of being out until dark, 9.25pm.

More pics from the Eden Project:

 

21st May

My wife was ill today and our youngest was running a high temperature and seems to be teething on four corners. He is clingy and sad. I stayed off work to be nurse to allow my wife to sleep. I thought the best thing would be to get the boys out of the house to leave it quiet so among other things we went to the allotment. The little lad was content in the car making cute cooing noises as opposed to crying. By the time we reached the allotment he was asleep so the eldest and I set to work. First of all, my assistant wanted to see how his sweet peas were developing. Out of 8 that were planted, 1 is growing! Then onto hoeing which at first seemed an exciting prospect. The young-un set to work hoeing between some sprouts (thankfully protected by those milk bottle cloches!) whilst I made multiple trips to and from the watering cistern.

As I had feared on Saturday, a lot of the wrong sort of growth has been occurring at the plot. The bindweed in the section where the leeks are going is rampant, and it is also doing well for itself in the onion section. Apart from that, small annual weeds were carpeting the soil with a light green tinge. As far as the crops were concerned, the onions look well but something has nibbled off the tops of the shoots, and the ground they are in is cracked with dryness. I have lost 1 or 2 sprouts, and 2 of my 4 cauliflowers. The leeks are not showing yet, neither is the rocket, and only 1 carrot. The salad crops look OK and are now easy to differentiate from the weeds, and a few small chard seedlings are up. With the courgettes and pumpkins being sown I will soon have to dig in the manure on section 3 and weed that and section 4, although that does not look like a tough job. The garlic is going great.

By the time I had finished my watering and inspection, my assistant had become rather bored with hoeing all of 8 inches square and was now entertaining 2 visitors, parents of the plot holder whose plot is between mine and my Dad’s. My parents paid a visit themselves while we were there and Dad gave me 4 stems of rhubarb – the first crop of the year. They also invited us back for lunch and I bit their hands of in acceptance. At their home, the 1 year old fell asleep in my arms on the sofa and so I laid him to sleep on the nice thick rug in the lounge enabling me to eat lunch without worrying about him. After that, he woke up and needed me to hold him and so I sat with him watching the Chelsea Flower Show, which was nice and relaxing, especially as we do not even have TV at home. Concerning Chelsea, I was informed that my Dad’s mother used to go to Chelsea every year as well as one of the RHS gardens and on the sly, take little cuttings from the show plants and took them home to grow!

In the garden, we have a great display of dark red carnations in the rockery, and one well endowed red rose.

18 - 20th May

My assistant gardener helped me do lots of watering. The 6 ‘turbo’ tomatoes I ordered came while we were away as well as my new strawberries (delivered to my wife’s parents). The strawberries looked healthy but the tomatoes were a disgrace. They are grafted ones and 2 were very poorly-looking up to the graft point after which, the plant ended. One looked salvageable, but the others look only good enough for the compost bin. My wife’s dad said they arrived in this condition. 3 of them are for a lady at work so I have to break the bad news to her tomorrow, before phoning up the plant company at lunch time.


The Eden Project



Inside the Mediterranean Biome (and the 2 following)

19^th May

After informing a very understanding lady regarding her tomatoes, I called the company concerned and although they had received no other reports of any problems, without hesitation or grumbling said they would send out replacement plants right away – if stocks allow. That was a relief. £9.95 for 3 plants is a lot to lose.

Today was the day for planting up the new strawberries, or at least preparing the bed. The only feasible place for them was the existing strawberry bed. The problem would be the potential build up of disease. So it was a case of excavating the soil down to the subsoil of sandy gravel, sifting out the stones and storing that to one side (for use in growing carrots in a tub). I had visited B&Q and found a special offer of 5 bags of sterilised topsoil for £10. In the hole I first placed some soil from the front and side of the shed – again, sifted to remove stones and roots. Added to this was sifted home made compost and manure, and a little of the topsoil. I was working until after 9.30 to the point I couldn’t really see what I was doing when I was at the far end of the garden. The price I paid was a very stiff back.

20^th May

I went to the allotment and filled up a bag and a bucket with manure for the strawberry bed. At work I found a small wooden box fixed onto two thick batons of wood. It was for an engine part of some sort and the wooden beams underneath were set so that the box could be lifted with a forklift. I enquired and found that it would be thrown away so I could have it. My idea is to drill holes in the base, line with plastic and fill with the sieved earth I have dug out of the strawberry bed and top it up with the new topsoil and some potting compost and place it near the back door and sow salad leaves for easy picking through the summer.

Back home, I chucked the manure into the strawberry bed, with some more compost and topsoil, watering each layer as I went. After a light raking the finished product looks the best tended area in the garden. The 1 year old likes it too; his feet are instantly drawn to it. I will let the ground settle awhile before planting.

I was going to wait until I had trimmed the rest of the garden after its burst of growth during our holiday before mowing the lawn so that it would be a last and instant big improvement. However, I couldn’t stand the long grass anymore, and with it being walked over and played on I did not want the long grass to simply be squashed flat. So it was a long mowing session with plenty of stops to empty the collecting box but the result is fantastic, and the compost bin is almost full.

17th May

We returned safe and sound after a good week. The boys enjoyed the sandy beaches, and we were all impressed with our visit to the Eden Project. What struck me was not just a good display of plants from around the world and the famous tropical rainforest and Mediterranean biomes, but the philosophy behind the place. It is what makes it a project as opposed to a garden. Tim Smit, the creator of it saw a disused china clay quarry, what he described as a scar left over from man’s industrial quest to make wealth, and he wanted to generate beauty, supply life and show what can happen when enough people are working towards a cause they believe in. The result is heart-warming and inspirational. The environmental care they take is positive too. One example is that they collect the rain water and use it to water the plants and to flush their toilets.

The panorama of the Eden Project, Cornwall

On our return, we witnessed the results of our own generation of vegetation. The lawn was a meadow with the grass and especially the clover reaching great heights that I thought would have been impossible given only a week. The weeds are doing well, all the bluebells have finished flowering which is one disappointment, and now all the tulips and daffodils are just leaves and stems. The lower branches of the privet and the other unidentified similar plant have leapt out and up, almost smothering the rose bush there that has itself shot up and produced a few promising buds. I have no idea what their names are but from our left hand side neighbours we have a few branches coming over the fence with pretty, small blue flowers, and from our other neighbours we have a similar array of branches with larger red flowers along their twigs. They both look very nice.

 

Inside the Mediterranean biome at the Eden project

What about my seeds though? There was a note from our neighbours saying that try as they might, they were unable to get into the conservatory. My heart skipped a beat and it was with a due sense of trepidation that I ventured into the conservatory to find my own Eden Project bursting with lush vegetation. The courgettes had come through and were looking great, the sweet peppers were a very healthy green, some with flower buds and most looking far more upright than when I left. The chillies had grown, some of the tomatoes had germinated, the petunias were astonishing – so much larger than before, and the Nicotiana – well, they actually look like they are enjoying life. Some are the same as before but there are a significant number which have really had a growth spurt and have decided to give it a really good go. The heat and lack of fresh water seems to have paid off, although it cannot be said they have been thirsty as all the compost was still moist. I had left some seeds outside on top of the water butt where the slugs can’t reach. Of 10 sunflowers only one has germinated, the chard has sprung up, but the squashes and pumpkins have not, but it is still early days. With all this growth, I dread to think what the state of the weeds is like at the allotment.

 

Later in the evening I went out to tie in the sweet peas that I planted along 3 fence panels. All are growing to some degree, with some far better than others. Sweet peas send out little springy tendrils that grip around other items for support but they need some help in their early days, unlike a strand of bindweed which I found in the vicinity which was twinning itself round a fuchsia without any outside help.

Next post: 18th May
Watch for more pictures from the Eden Project

7-9th May

To the allotment after work for a watering session. I watered the sweet peas, or at least the site where they are planted as none have emerged yet; the salad leaves, which are indistinguishable from the weed seedlings as they are so small at present; the chard, rocket and carrots – again no positive identification of any of them. One is supposed to be patient with carrots so I am just waiting! I opened up my packet of horticultural fleece and spread it out over all of section 2 that had been sown and weighed it down.

8^th May

It has been very hot this week so I decided that the tops of the cloches covering the sprouts, calabrese and cauliflowers had to have their tops cut off. This was a rather mundane and slow job as I had to be careful not to dislodge them as they are quite tricky to get firmed into place in the soil so that they stay in when windy. I gave all the brassicas a thorough soaking which is important for these plants, and I covered some with plastic netting borrowed from my Dad.

 

We go on holiday on Saturday and it will be a rush job to get all that I want to do out of the way. There is much weeding to be done at the allotment. Yesterday another plot holder said that today would be given over to hoeing, and judging by his plot, he has done just that, it looks very neat. I won’t have time to do that. It is amazing just lately how well the weeds have grown.

 9^th May

My birthday – my 37^th. I am on the cusp between mid thirties and late thirties! I had a good day off work and we went out as a family and when we came home, my wife made tea for the boys and left me to sow some veg seeds. If I can do this now, they can be germinating in a nice warm conservatory while we are away.

I sowed green and yellow courgettes, pumpkin, butternut squashes and crown prince squashes, sunflowers, claret sprouting broccoli, chard, 2 more gartenperle tomatoes and 3 Ailsa Craig tomatoes. Our eldest sowed 3 cucumber seeds. I potted up the 3 Anaheim chilli peppers, and all the sweet peppers into larger pots but not their final pots. As they are quite large pots it would take a while to do, these are just an interim measure. The peppers look healthy but really need staking up but there is no time. With all of the pots I gave a really good watering before sowing and a sprinkling after. I will water once more tomorrow before we go away and leave a key to the conservatory with my neighbour who will make sure the compost is kept moist while we are away in north Cornwall. I did want to plant out the shop bought sweet peas – the Spencer varieties, but time was too short so to give them a chance at life while we are away, I simply potted them on.

5th May

May Day Bank Holiday. Raining. We spent a lazy morning inside without being miserable. I am all for going out and enjoying a day off, or the garden, or meeting up with people or going and doing something, but I am equally happy with little to do on a ‘rain stopped play’ basis. We all lead such busy lives and I think we can all be going so fast that we don’t enjoy the ride. We have so many fast and brief encounters with people and yet we don’t really know the people we meet or spend much of our time communicating or dealing with. Personal relationships go out of the window; we do not foster deep and meaningful friendships. This is worsened, I am sure, by the use of emails and text messages. People have quick, poorly spelt communiqués written with appalling grammar, and they are so shallow (the messages and sadly too, at times, the people sending them).

For example, on Christmas Eve last year I received a text message from a young man that issued a ‘Happy Christmas’ message as well as the command ‘I am your friend so message me back’. I had seen the man twice the day before and was due to see him the next day, I had sent him a card already and he was now insisting I send him a text message. When I spoke to him on Christmas day he said he had sent 150 of those texts and had only received 20-30 replies. I pointed out that maybe people thought that he was only sending out such messages to get many in reply as if receiving so many almost forced wishes made him feel popular and if people were really his friends as he suggested they would send greetings regardless of his instructions.

Such is our mad world, and so it is with no great sadness that we as a family simply had time to chill out, indoors, with little on the agenda. We had a leisurely breakfast, got dressed late and enjoyed the children running around our feet – they do not need sunshine and expensive days out to enjoy themselves, our 1 year old  is entertained with one Lego brick!

It has become a tradition to go over and see my parents on some Bank Holiday Mondays at some point in the day so we had this in mind. This idea went out of our minds as soon as warm sunshine shone into our garden. As the wetness evaporated, so did any thoughts of doing anything but finishing off the hanging baskets. Their designated fuchsias and trailing plants were planted and compost filled around. I also put up the bracket at the front of the house for a blue basket and potted up that one with one central upright fuchsia and 4 surrounding red trailing petunias, for what I hope will be a red, white and blue display. Our 4 year old helped me dig holes in the front garden for the fuchsias from the back, so we now have the original one by the front door, and 3 of its cuttings (one was a cutting from a cutting – it separated as we manoeuvred it). A lot of manure, compost (both commercial and home made) and water went into them as the ground is very poor. Into the gaps in the back garden where these fuchsias came from, we planted 2 upright fuchsias – Snowcap and Brutus.

So absorbed were we in these tasks that the thought of going out to visit anyone just faded away.

2nd May

My work threw an extra job at me at the last minute so I had to reduce my time at the allotment. I finally sowed the leek seeds which could have gone in during March or April. I sowed half the packet – 150, which means allowing for failures I should be able to fill the whole of section 5 without having to throw away many. There is always the first section to slot in any extras, or even to find a space at home. I sowed 3 rows of rocket in section 2 after the carrots. Rocket really doesn’t like overcrowding, it should be thinned out to one plant every 8 inches. The seeds though are small, hard and round and very easily roll out from between your fingertips. I think I will have a lot of thinning to do, but at least you can eat the thinnings – or I guess transplant them if you are careful. The good thing is that once established, they are a ‘cut and come again’ crop – you just go with your scissors and snip what you want, and the pruning gives a boost to the plant to produce more. It is also good for successional sowing; I’ll sow another couple of rows about a week after our holiday and every 3 weeks after that to have a continuous supply right through to the end of the season in autumn. I love rocket; to my taste it is far better than our standard lettuce yet can be used in the same way. With some freshly crushed black pepper and some olive oil and white wine vinegar, I can eat loads of it on its own as a side salad. The only thing to be wary of (aside from rabbits and slugs of course) is not to let them get too dry or else the plants will bolt very easily. If they bolt the leaves become rather bitter. Mind you, another summer like last year and that will not be a concern.

 

I came home and the work did not stop there. I began the hanging basket project. At lunch time I had put up the 3 brackets on the fence posts in the back garden, now I started filling the baskets. First I made some drainage holes at the bottom then placed in some lumps of polystyrene so that the compost will not block those holes (they are a lot lighter than the other material often used – broken pots or stones – a good thing to consider as the basket will be swinging from a bracket held on by 2 screws). Then I placed in some compost mixed with slow release fertiliser granules to almost half way up, then placed the plants in, still in their pots, just to see what plants will go in what basket. Each will have a trailing fuchsia and each will have at least one other trailing plant with blue or purple flowers. That is as far as I got before tea. After our meal, I decided that the big planting could happen tomorrow or some other time over the weekend (a bank holiday!) as I wanted to sort out the Nicotianas. They really have been looking weak so I potted on just over 20 of the best ones into individual pots. Maybe the new fertiliser will help. Their droopiness wasn’t due to becoming pot bound as their roots were still very thin and straight and nowhere near the bottom of the modules. With putting the plants in the hanging baskets, I could then put the Nicotiana pots in the large tray which now had more space, and I could take up less space on the conservatory floor. With the extra blue mushroom pots I now have, I planted up the rest of the petunias my Dad gave me. A good day’s work.

3^rd May

I was out with the family most of the day; I just had time to do a better job of deadheading the daffodils and tulips. I had seen on Gardener’s World that a presenter took most of the stem out, not just the flowerheads, so that’s what I did, and made more material for the compost bin!

1st May

After 2 days of heavy rain, a warm dry day at last. The allotment was probably too wet to work but I went anyway as I’ve been itching to get some plants in for the last 2 days. I planted the calabrese – 6 of them at the right hand side end of section 8, and the cauliflowers – only 4 of them, at the other end. 2 of the more decent cauliflowers were damaged as I prized them out of the modular tray! The sprouts were another matter, I had too many good plants for the space available. I planted 20 fillbaskets and 12 brigittes. I watered them in well then put my home made cloches into service – the 4 pint milk containers with their bases cut off. This provides insulation against winds and keeps in some warmth overnight, but with some ventilation at the top. After a week or 2 I will cut off the top parts to expose the plants to more air before removing the whole thing in late May. We go on holiday on the 10^th May so I will have to decide whether to do that before we go or after we get back.

 

Of course, before doing all that, I had to make sure the fence was erected all the way around the plot. That took a little time, but at least it is up. I still need to peg down the base as rabbits could get underneath if they were determined but for now it is a barrier and hopefully any rabbit feeling a little peckish will just come up to the fence and decide to hop off somewhere else for an easy nibble.

As the ground was wet I returned home in a rather muddy state.

Next post: 2nd May