Allotment gardening

A quick check of this blog shows that it is time to feed the tomato plants again. I dash down for half-an-hour and feed the tomatoes and finish the majority of the weeding among the potato plants. Bind weed had really taken over here so it is nice to get it looking a bit more ordered. Most of the haulms of the potato plants are now dead and I cut all the worst ones off. The plot looks a lot better for it. Next weekend is the inter-allotment competition and the chairman is asking for us all to offer some produce. I might give them a squash and a couple of courgettes. We eat our first squash and French beans for dinner tonight. The beans are lovely - the squash is a little tasteless. Maybe the ones left to grow a bit longer will be better.

Today I want to sow the spring onion seeds on the bed I manured yesterday. The whole family comes down and the boys amuse themselves while I dig in the manure and prepare the seed bed. I sow six short rows of the red salad onion which should be ready by March. I try to sow them as thinly as possible so I won't have to thin them. Once the main crop of potatoes are up the rest of this bed will be given over to overwintering onions - some Japanese ones again and some Keepwell.
While I was digging, Cath has been picking some tomatoes, spinach beet and French beans. Amazingly, we only sowed the French bean seeds seven weeks ago but now the beans are ready to pick. They look perfect - another success. We then decide to cut one of the squashes for the Sunday dinner and head for home with an impressive harvest.

It hoses it down with rain for most of the day. I have to run down to the plot, under an umbrella, to pick some tomatoes and spinach beet for tonight's dinner. I spy a couple of slugs and kill them and even find a snail on one of my tomatoes. Disgraceful behaviour.
On this day last year, I first tried to get a spade into the ground - and failed miserably.

Today I do as much weeding as I can among the carrots and the parsnips. After discovering damage to a number of carrots yesterday and a plethora of slugs among the plants, I think that by removing as much cover for the pests as I can, they will be easier to spot. I pull up a huge number of weeds and find a couple more slugs. However there are still quite a few healthy carrots so all is not lost.



My wife joins me and she tackles the weeds among the strawberry plants - soon an enormous pile of thistles mounts up on the pathway. I then throw down some well-rotted manure on the ground where the early potatoes were. I am planning to sow some overwintering salad onions there and want to improve the soil. When I dig over a bit of ground, it reminds me of what the earth was like this time last year - covered in grass and brambles and so hard I couldn't get a spade in.
I weed a bit among the potatoes and am alarmed to come across a few small, green potatoes near the surface. Did I earth-up too late? Have I lost the whole crop? At least I have something new to worry about.

I try to tackle some of the tidying up of pathways and beds that needs doing. While my two sons play at various games, I hack back brambles, stinging nettles and grass that are growing all over the path and in the beds themselves. I also continue to clear the bed where the onions were, trying to pull up as much bramble root as I can. I pick about eight ripe tomatoes, a large courgette and then, as the rain seems to be holding off, dig over the part of the potato bed where the earlies were. In the process I unearth about five new potatoes which I add to my pickings. While clearing some weeds around the carrots, I notice some of them have been eaten from the top down. I pull them up and find some horrible-looking fly-type bug inside. I suspect carrot fly and run home to try and find out what I have to do. One book tells me to pull up all the infected plants so, later on, I go back to the plot to inspect the whole crop. The good news is that it seems as if slugs are the culprits. There are loads of big orange buggers all around the carrots and, a couple with holes in the tops, actually have slugs inside them. I dig a couple of the rotten ones up and resolve to come down on my next day off and really weed among the carrots and parsnips as I think it may be all the weeds that are giving the slugs enough cover to carry out their dirty work.

A brief trip down to the allotment shows that it is still in pretty good shape. My main task today is to feed the tomatoes and water the lettuce and rocket I planted last week. I cut out more sideshoots on the tomato plants and remove some of the leaves that are hiding the fruit from the sun. There will be a few more ready to pick in the next couple of days. There are two more enormous courgettes to pick - both from the one plant that has produced the vast majority of the veg. I cut back some brambles that are beginning to encroach on the back two beds - I'll need to come down and put a bit more effort in to keep them out completely. The squashes are coming on a treat and my wife even points out the first of the French beans beginning to develop.

Today is a very significant day in the life of my allotment. It was exactly a year ago that I saw it for the first time - in all its overgrown, neglected glory. It's hard to believe a year has gone. We have had quite a lot of produce out of the 25m long by 5m wide plot. Among the highlights have been the onions, broad beans, courgettes, strawberries, lettuces, early potatoes and the carrots. Still to come are the delights of the maincrop of potatoes, the tomatoes and the squashes. The disappointments have been the garlic - hardly worth bothering with and the peas. I think the whole family has enjoyed having an allotment and making the regular trips down there to see what has grown. I certainly think it was among my better ideas to take it on. It has taken up a lot of time - and at times the work has been hard. I am staggered by the amount of weeds that still come through and the speed with which they attempt to reclaim the plot. But seeing the crops grow and then eating a salad made up of produce you have grown yourself takes some beating. I've learnt some good lessons for the coming year and am hoping things will get easier. I just hope it is not just a passing phase and that I will be posting another entry this time next year.

I manage to make two brief trips to the allotment today. During the first visit I limit myself to picking 12 ripe plum tomatoes and pinching out a few sideshoots. My youngest son Nathan manages to pick three unripe tomatoes before I catch him. I also pick some lettuce and a couple of courgettes. Some animal has been feasting on my courgettes as I find one eaten to the core. I have picked so many courgettes now and, I would guess, 85% of them have all come from one plant.
I take my two sons for the second trip in the afternoon where I want to sow some lettuce and rocket. As soon as we get there the heavens open and we have to take refugee in the shed. It gives me a chance to reflect on what a good job I did when I re-felted the roof - not a drop of rain comes in.




However, once it clears, it is easy to turn the earth and prepare the seed drills for the seeds. I also cut out the tops of all the tomato plants, following some advice on the gardener's almanac website, which should encourage my fruit to ripen. My only other act is to prune the potato plants - cutting off the haulms that are clearly dead. The plot looks a lot nicer for it. Let's hope the spuds are still OK.

A quick trip to the allotment reveals that some of the tomatoes have ripened. The plants have also grown loads more sideshoots and some are beginning to topple over. I spend half-an-hour or so pruning, weeding, picking and raking. At the end of it I take home some lettuce and four tomatoes which we have for our tea. And very tasty they are too.

After all that hard work clearing weeds last week, I have been at work for four days and it has rained quite a lot. I'm off to Wales for the weekend so I am anxious to see how many weeds have grown back. I nip down quickly and see that the allotment still looks OK. The tomatoes have put on another huge growth spurt - I will need to prune off a few more sideshoots and pinch out the tops soon or they will topple over. The squashes are coming along nicely - I'm sure there are quite a few more hidden away under the plants' massive leaves. I will have to go round each plant and cut off more leaves to expose the squashes to the sun - that's what the book says to do and who am I to argue.

I crack on with some serious weeding, wielding my mattock for the first time in many a month. The brambles have really started to reclaim some of the beds at the back of the plot. I manage to dig up a few monstrous roots as well as pulling up quite a few thistles. I bag up several piles of weeds I have left rotting in various parts of the plot with the intention of taking them to the dump later in the week. By the time I've finished, the plot is looking a lot neater. There are still plenty of weeds, especially between the rows of potatoes, but at least it begins to look like I am in control and not them.

Today is one of the hottest days of the year so far. I pop down to the plot in the late afternoon with my eldest son armed with a sprinkler, a pair of shears and the secateurs. I let Matthew spray water around while I try to crack on with some weeding. I pull up nettles, thistles and brambles from various beds where they have sprung up during my recent absence. One pathway is more-or-less completely covered by grass and weeds and I work hard to clear it. Unfortunately I also disturb an army of red ants which have caused me various agonies in the past. They swarm all over Matthew, causing him quite a bit anguish although luckily he doesn't get any bites. However, it curbs his enthusiasm for the allotment and we have to head home early. There's still quite a bit of weeding still to do.

A day off work gives me the chance to go and buy some tomato feed and head down to plot to water my recently pruned plants. They look so much better than they did when I came back from France. I give them all a good soaking and do a brief spot of weeding. It won't be long before I'll be picking some nice red toms. I also lay my budding squashes on beds of straw to protect them. I am looking forward to eating those.

It's the second day of trying to bring some order to the tomato plants which grew into huge bushes during my two-week holiday. I can't believe how much they have grown in two weeks - so many massive side shoots all over the place. On some plants it takes real detective work to work out which are the side shoots and which is the main stem. A few hours with a pair of secateurs and green twine finishes with all the plants looking neat and being properly tied up. I've lost a few budding tomatoes in the process but not as many as my youngest son Nathan picked off one plant when I started trimming them yesterday. The finished job looks so much better and I can actually walk among the plants now which I couldn't do on Sunday.




There's still a lot of weeding to catch up on but at least the tomatoes are now in order - and the fruit on the remaining plants is looking good too.

I have a couple of spare hours this morning to begin catching up on the work that needs doing on the plot. The first job to tackle is the tomato plants. In two weeks they have grown to Frankenstein proportions with side shoots all over the place. I can't walk between the rows because the plants are so bushy. I begin cutting off side shoots and tying up the main stems. A couple of the plants are more-or-less growing along the ground. I chop away, sacrificing a few budding tomatoes so that the main trusses can grow properly. I am joined after a bit by my wife, Cath, and youngest son, Nathan. Cath cracks on with some weeding - the worst of it around the lettuces and strawberries. Nathan busies himself by picking off some nicely-developed plum tomatoes when neither of us is looking. Cath finally notices by which time the little angel has picked about 20. "Look daddy, bean," he says smiling up at me. I control my anger admirably and send him off to play in another part of the plot. I trim and tie up about half the plants. They'll still take a bit of sorting out tomorrow.

Today we come back from holiday and after unpacking and sorting out the house a bit, the whole family takes the short walk down the road to have a look at how the plot has faired. My parents have been watering it regularly and my mum also took it on herself to put some weedkiller on some of the weeds on a neighbouring overgrown plot as well as on a few of the thistles on mine. I find an empty packet of weedkiller in one of my compost bins and also notice that weedkiller has been put on some thistles right next to a strawberry plant that now looks to be suffering. Other than that, the tomato plants have turned into enormous bushes. It's unbelievable how they can have grown so much in two weeks - I can't even walk between the two rows. The squashes have begun to develop - three on one plant and the courgettes and growing nicely. A row of French beans that I planted just before we left have grown a foot tall. There are also obviously a lot of weeds too. My dad picked all the onions as he thought they were going bad. Unfortunately, the variety I planted don't keep so we now have a mountain of onions to eat our way through. Brambles have now begun reclaiming the onion bed but dad cleared the bind weed from around the compost bins. We pick a couple of courgettes and head for home, with me thinking about all the work I now need to crack on with to catch up. Maybe we shouldn't have a holiday next year.