My Cats

Celery in potato trench - will this work?

Not sure if this will work or not, but I transplanted some celery seedlings into the trench made when I earthed up the potatoes recently. I'm not sure if it's self-blanching celery or not as I lost the seed packet, so I planted some in this trench which I will earth up gradually, and also made a small block of the plants (each one 8 inches from the other) as this is a close-spacing method recommended for self-blanching types as they are so close together that they keep the light out. I may need to put planks around the block later and fill the gaps between the plants with straw, but I will worry about that later- if they grow!

Cauliflowers growing well under enviromesh

Lots of growth in the allotment (including weeds!) at present. This is the cauliflower bed covered with a floating mulch of enviromesh (held down by four wooden planks) which has about eight caulis plus onions in between them, and a pic of one of the young caulis which looks pretty firm and is about 4 inches across. I was surprised to see this as I had dug this bed over in spring and sometimes the books say the bed needs to be firm and that you should only have dug it in the previous autumn otherwise you get loose heads. But I had put lots of well rotted horse manure in this bed and that, combined with the enviromesh protection, must have done the trick. My other cauli bed which was not dug over but did not have much organic matter in it is not doing so well. So there's a lesson for me - "cauliflowers need lots of manure, and this is more important than being in undug, firm ground".

Making a garden seat from pallets

I saw this very rustic garden seat at some allotment plots in a nearby village and just had to share it. Why not have a go at making one yourself!

Rotovating

On our allotments there are the usual two types of allotmenteers - the organic women who like raised beds and a few chaotic flowers, and the old geezers who rotovate the whole plot each year and sow everything in rows measured and plotted with militaristic precision. However we all get along and even share ideas now and then. Here are some of my neighbours doing their manly work!

Broad Beans growing well - need string supports

Currently planting a lot of seeds but they don't look that exciting in a photo yet - so here's a pic of the broad beans instead. Had to put string round to give them a bit of support. Apparently you have to pinch out the tips to stop black fly at some point, not sure when though! In the USA they are called "fava beans" so I will try and find some recipes on Google. But I've found that you can make humus with pretty much any cooked bean, not just chick peas, just by adding some olive oil, salt, pepper, blob of tahini or peanut butter, plus any old spices that you like such as garlic or cumin. You can also find proper recipes online. I also like to pop in some leaves from the top of celery. Mmmm! I use a handheld blender that is very quick and easy to clean, and often we have humus "wraps" or burritos (using flour tortillas which we quickly heat up in a dry wok or frying pan), plus whatever is handly such as tomatoes, cheese, cucumber, lettuce, tofu etc. There is really no limit to what you can put in a wrap - there are whole restaurants selling just wraps in California and even one or two elsewhere too. The blender's also great for making fruit smoothies, but that's another topic!

Wordsworth daffodils rap squirrel - so bad it's good!

You have to see this video, at the Cumbria Tourist Board site.

April - cloches, plastic and fleece.

We're still mostly digging over beds and adding compost and other inputs. Have put lime on the brassica bed (Bed 2) and sharp sand to the carrots/roots bed (Bed 1) from the allotment plan done earlier in the year. Here's a pic of the seed bed, have just got a few lettuces under cloches for now. I like the 5 gallon water jugs the best as they are study and don't blow over and have a handy handly on top. Plus the water is only £1 per bottle at Iceland, so that's not too expensive - although generally we use a Brita filter. But now and again, like if you're going on a long car journey, a bottle of water is handy. Have also put fleece and clear plastic over beds to warm them up.

Corn salad lettuce - useful during "the hungry gap"

Here is one of my corn salad lettuce, also known as lamb's lettuce. Grows over winter so is very good this time of year when there is not much else in the ground. Interestingly, the best crop came from an area where I had thrown some of the weaker seedlings whilst thinning out. They somehow grew and survived the slugs far better than the area of soil with the original row!

Planting out broad beans & lots of digging!

Planted out some broad beans today, just next to the runner bean trench I dug last week. They are supposed to be ok in quite cold weather, so we'll see how they do. I grew them in the kitchen in root trainers, to give them a good start as the trainers allow the roots to grow quite big before planting out. I know the old guys rototilling think my plot is weird as I swaddled the beans in fleece, like a little baby! Here is the odd-loooking result.

I'm not sure if I know what they taste like but I think they might be like butter beans in a tin. Here are some recipes and a pic of what they look like when ready, apparently you can eat the whole pod when they are small, then eat the green beans, then dry the beans for soups etc over winter. Sounds quite useful!

Creating a trench for runner beans

My allotment neighbour, David, a sprightly 84-year-old, suggested I get going on a bean trench when I went up to the site yesterday. Good advice as the soil was mostly too wet to dig, but I could dig out the trench from the side path without treading on the soil. It wasn't too hard as I had already dug most of it over in the autumn. Here's how it should look (on the left) and how mine does look (shown below) - not quite so photogenic! Since I should have started this a few months ago I plan next weekend to dump in my current kitchen scraps plus a bag of well-rotted manure from the garden centre (as I don't have any compost yet since I haven't been diligent enough in collecting kitchen waste over the winter due to the need to drive it up to the allotment site from home). For more info on how to build one see the Garden Organics page on trenches. What that page does not say, however, is that it is helpful to put newspapers or cardboard at the bottom of the trench, as this retains moisture. David also suggested that if you don't have manure or kitchen scraps, to put in upside-down turfs (turves?) i.e. chunks of grass with the soil stuck to it that you dig up from elsewhere, which I did, then covered with a bit of compost.