Our London Allotment

Beer Ball

2009-09-28T08:43:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone, it's been a while since I've blogged about anything, but I'm going to try doing a few updates a week from now on, especially for the folks in Australia.

This is a picture from a softball tournament my team hosted this weekend in Finsbury Park. It's called Beer Ball and the rules say that you have to have a beer in hand from the early morning, and you have to chug it if you do anything stupid. And if you do something particularly stupid, like getting the start time of the tournament wrong and showing up after the first game was finished, oops, you get spun around in the air while chugging. Also you had to play with a ridiculous hat on and every now and then you would have to do pretty unhelpful things, like batting left-handed and everyone swapping fielding positions. It was great fun, and only one injury; poor Claire hurt her ankle pretty bad tripping over one of the bases and got carted off to hospital.

From now on I'll be adding posts to our old London Blog

First Harvest Food!

2009-02-02T03:00:00.000-08:00

Celebrations and high fives all round! This is the first meal prepared with freshly grown and picked harvest. We had a few tiny little leeks from pots last year and Guy and Sarah grew potatoes in their garden, so they managed to pick 6 lovely potatoes and maybe 4 tiny pencil sized leeks and make this delicious soup! Very well timed too, as now everything is covered with a few inches of freak snow!

Carrot Seedlings!

2009-01-29T03:30:00.001-08:00

These are some other seedlings we planted in early January. As you can see in the picture they are in little pots made of newspaper. I treated myself to a gardening kit for christmas and one of the things that came with it is a paper potter. It is used to turn old newspaper into little seedling pots - the business! I made them as tall as possible - they are around 6 inches high and around 2 inches wide.

There is mold growing on all the pots at the moment - it's the furry stuff in the picture. This is totally fine and won't harm the plants. It's the combination of compost, paper and wetness. I'm probably over-watering them so it'll dry out when I get the balance right.

January is very early for planting carrots though and most people I asked about it said that Febuary even was pushing it a bit, so I don't have a huge amount of hope for the little guys. Carrots have a thing called a tap root - a long, fast growing thin white root that goes straight down. This then swells over the growing season to become the carrot. If the carrot doesn't have enough room to grow down then the tap root gets twisted leading to some crazy mutant shaped carrots. The worry is that the root will reach the bottom of the pot long before it's warm enough to plant them out.

Here we have yellow carrots 'Jaune Obtuse de Doubs', regular orange 'Nantes' carrots, red 'Samurai' carrots and finally purple 'Purple Haze' carrots. The full carrot rainbow!

Aubergines

2009-01-28T04:27:00.001-08:00

Aubergines are among the seeds that we planted in early January. These little fellas went in on the 5th. I read in my veg magazine (I'm a veg nerd) that because our summers are so short, it's important to get aubergines going indoors so that they are ready to fruit the second it is sunny enough outside. They are slow growing so should be manageable enough indoors till April. Me and Hugh have a really sunny windowsill they can live on in the meantime.

This is how big they are now. As soon as a few appeared I took of the plastic lid and as soon as the little guy in the middle is a bit bigger I'll put them in their own little paper pots.

I got the seeds from Real Seeds, and they are of the variety "Diamond".

Seed Planting!

2009-01-27T06:15:00.001-08:00

I started off a pile of seeds a few weeks ago and they are now starting to look like proper seedlings! I'll put pictures up of them later but for now I wanted to show what I've been planting them in.

This is the style of pot that Wasabi restaurants use to sell their soya beans in. They are perfect for starting plants from seed. The plastic cover acts as a mini-greenhouse, and they are just the right size for getting around 8 seeds planted!

We have red onions, spring onions, leeks, aubergines, carrots, peas and sunflowers started this way. The peas and sunflowers are huge and are hardening off in our freezing cold kitchen before we put them in the greenhouse for the final hardening off. After a few weeks there they should hopefully be ready for planting in the real world!

Pea Shoots!

2009-01-26T09:36:00.000-08:00

This is what is keeping me sane while the weather is too freezing to go outside growing anything - Pea Shoots.

Below is a picture of the little fellas being planted. I soaked the peas (regular pea seeds) in water for an hour and then popped them into a little seedling tray, around a cm deep and covered them with compost. When they started appearing i put the whole round of compost with all seedlings into a bigger pot and voila - here they are growing happily in the top picture!

When they get to be a few inches high, cut them down to around an inch and eat the tops. They are nice flavourful little salad leaves. The stalk is nice too. They will grow back again a number of times before they start giving up the ghost.

Beans for Everyone!

2008-12-26T02:50:00.000-08:00

We planted a selection of beans around a month ago. We cleared around a foot of space on both sides of the bean support and mixed in a good lot of compost.

The first to be planted was a few seedlings from a clleague of Hugh's. These are at the back of the line in the picture here. I'm not sure what form of beans they were, but we'll soon find out. They look happy enough in their new home. They haven't grown any taller, but the weather has been very cold.

The next was a selection of broad beans from an allotment neighbour of ours. These are the big ones in this picture. These are moldy as they have been getting wet, but when we planted them they were all perfect. Our neighbour had milions of the seeds and said that we could plant them in August. He said to plant 2 together, with the split in a certain direction. We forgot what direction he said, so we planted them split down. Hopefully this was correct. We planted the rest of this side of the support with these beans, and half of the other side too.

We also replanted the beans that were growing on the climber when we got it. These are the white ones in the picture. I think these are some form of french bean, as they look like a picture I saw on some seed packets recently. We planted these over half of the far side of the support. Now we'll definitely need another structure!

Flower Bulbs

2008-12-24T00:15:00.001-08:00

A few weekends ago we finished planting the last of the daffodil and tulip bulbs. We now have an overenthusiastic 5 rows of them. They will flower some time around March I expect.

To plant the bulbs we dug a trench around 6 inches deep and the same wide. We scattered some compost at the bottom, Then lined the bulbs along around 2-3 inches apart. This is much closer than you need to plant, but we had hundreds and hundreds of the fellas, so threw them all in. I hope it will make a nice thick line of flowers as opposed to suffocating eachother. Then we put in a little more compost, then covered them all over again with the sods we had dug up. We broke through the sods with our fingers and tried to remove all the weeds we could find, but I think bulbs are pretty hardy and don't fear competing with surrounding growth so they should be fine.

This is what it looks like in the trench with all the bulbs.

I spent a few days as a daffodil picker when I was a kid, and am looking forward to getting massive bunches to give to friends. To pick daffodils, you get a piece of wood around the size of a ruler, thicker at one end and narrower at the other. You line the ruler along the daffodil with the thick end at the bulb and the thin end at the base of the stem, squeeze your thumb into the thin end, and snap the stem away from the base. This leaves you with a daffodil the same length as the stick. If the end is frayed it will not last so long so try to get a clean cut. Choose bulbs that look like they are just about to open - they will keep for longer and open in a vase no problem. A bunch of around 10 to 15 is perfect for a table indoors.

Sunny Weather?

2008-12-17T01:24:00.000-08:00

Mom came to visit a few weeks back and we brought her to see the allotment. It was an unnaturally sunny day and she got some nice pictures. Her blog is here.

We are standing here in front of the bean support and greenhouse. Roll on the planting season - am eager to get going! We got our last delivery of seeds form Suttons recently and now we have yellow, red, orange and purple carrots. I'm going to have to quit my job to find time for all the planting!

Garlic Success!

2008-12-15T14:28:00.000-08:00

This is a picture of our raised (slightly) bed garlic plot this weekend. The winners of the garlic race are all on the right of the plot. These are the lautrec wights. They are absolutely shooting up.

All of the garlic types are putting in a fair performance to be honest. Guy planted the extra cloves that had no space in this bed in a little pile by the greenhouse. Even these are flying! We can pick these early next spring to have spring garlic, much like spring onions.

Whitecurrant Bush and Bay Tree

2008-12-14T13:40:00.000-08:00

We planted these 2 shrubs around a month ago. We followed this video to plant them. I really like the video jug videos from Capel Manor College. They have all sorts of different ones for planting seeds, tomato plants, everything really.

The bay tree is looking pretty much the same as when we got it. On the label I think it said it needed pruning twice a year, but of course I lost the label, so we'll have to read a bit more about it.

The whitecurrant is looking a bit unhappy, but I think that's normal for this time of year. Apparently berries only grow on young branches/canes, so you have to keep cutting back bushes like these, raspberries and blackberries so that you always have new branches for fruit.

Winter Has Arrived

2008-12-09T09:01:00.000-08:00

I think we have probably finished the last of the planting for this year. I went up last weekend with great plans of erecting a new bean support thingy, but after my fingers froze solid and I got too scared of all the spiders running around on the wooden poles I was going to use, I totally chickened out.

Instead I put down the last of the Tulips that our friend Kat brought back from Amsterdam, and weeded the existing beds. The onions and garlic that we have down are starting to look pretty hopeful, especially the purple garlics. I took loads of pictures but haven't taken them off the camera yet. For the moment, here's a picture Guy got me to take one day so he could fool his mates into thinking that he was a gardening pro. Also observe the Holy Bucket lurking in the background.

East End

2008-12-04T02:20:00.000-08:00

This is a picture of the East side of our plot. There are lots of things here. First is the brick-circle bonfire. We use this to burn weeds and bits of old carpet that we found around the place. It's pretty difficult to keep lighting as we live in the rainiest country on Earth, but with a load of effort its handy for getting rid of unwanted stuff. Also Hugh's a natural with the arson.

Next is the greenhouse. It looks like it was made by a mad farmer-scientist - most of the wall panels are actually doors. Its around 7' by 5' so it will be great for things like melons and tomatoes. I find it a bit claustrophobic due to the enthusiastic spider population, but gradually it's seeming less and less scary.

Next is the bean support thingy (scientific term). It consists of two upright wooden poles onto which is stuck a metal mesh. Beans and climbers can be tied on easily and grow high up the mesh. At around 8' it will be brilliant for all kinds of beans.

Here are a few beans that were already growing when we got the plot. There must be pretty hardy fellas altogether to survive a few years of neglect! We have no idea what they are, but we replanted some of them. They were small long white beans. I'll get a picture up soon.

Behind the greenhouse, where Guy cleared the blackberry vines, we found loads more wooden poles and metal mesh, so we can make more climbing supports. Ideally i'd like to build 2 more - 1 for broad beans, 1 for french beans and peas, and 1 for vine tomatoes. Also we found a roll of what looks like chicken wire, so we could even make a little carrot enclosure to keep the evil rabbits away. That is based on the assumption that we will all be naturally gifted at making things even though we all grew up in towns and cities, and have never really engaged nature at this level before. Fingers crossed!

The Holy Bucket

2008-12-03T01:41:00.000-08:00

This is a really dark and pretty terrible picture of me standing in front of the first hole we dug. It later became the garlic bed. The reason I put this awful unclear picture up is I wanted to show you the holy bucket - the big yellow one at the front right.

Last year me and Hugh planted cherry tomatoes, leeks, broccoli and onions in pots in our yard. It was a small yard with high walls on all sides so not much sun except for the very height of the afternoon, so it was only averagely successful. I wanted to grow carrots too, but none of the pots we had were big enough. I went looking for a huge bucket but to no avail.

Then one morning I woke up and looked out into the yard and lo and behold there was a huge yellow bucket sitting out there looking back at me! Hugh didn't get it and I didn't get it, ergo God gave it to us so it is our holy bucket. We use it these days to carry weeds to the "weed hole" (I'll explain that another day) so it's still proving itself useful.

Freezing (and seeds!)

2008-12-02T02:04:00.001-08:00

Here's the weather forecast from the BBC news website - pretty grim. It has been totally freezing here for the last few days. Even with our heating on this morning the temperature still said 14C. Horrible. I hope the poor garlic, onions and beans are surviving the cold! The forecast for Saturday is an even colder 3 degrees, so hopefully we'll be able to get a shovel into the ground to put down some peas!

Loads of seeds arrived today. Perhaps we're being a bit over-ambitious, but here's the list of what seeds we got -

From Thompson and Morgan:

Strawberry popcorn (very exciting), marigold, sunflowers - Russian giant & Irish eyes, mix of violas (inedible but pretty).

From The Real Seed Catalogue:

Aubergine, brussels sprouts (gross, but Hugh likes them), red cabbage, courgette, yellow carrot, cucumber, basil, pak choi, parsnip, capsicum, butternut squash, patty-pan courgette, sweetcorn, vine tomato, turnip, French bean, climbing pea.

Our big plot is now seeming smaller and smaller!

Planting Garlic

2008-11-27T05:23:00.000-08:00

We have planted our first crop - garlic. We got a selection of garlic from The Garlic Farm. We got 6 kinds - Solent Wight, Early Purple Wight and Iberian Wight, which are all softneck types, and Purple Heritage Moldovan, Lautrec Wight and Chesnok Wight, which are all hardneck types. We got one head of each.

Our plot hasn't been worked in a long time, and the soil is gone very hard, so there is loads of digging to do before planting anything. We dug to a depth of around 2 spade heads, and by that stage we were in concrete-thick clay. We forked it and turned it over though and removed as many of the millions of weeds roots as we could so hopefully the little garlics will be ok. We also made a slightly raised bed to help with drainage. I'll get a picture soon.

Here's another action shot of Guy giving it welly with the digging. This is the upper layer of soil which is quite nice but full of weeds, especially a very thick stubborn grass.

To plant garlic, you simply separate a head of garlic into cloves, being really careful not to split the skins, and then pop each one into the ground, roots down, just underneath the surface. They need around 6 inches between cloves, and 12 to 18 inches between rows. We planted 6 cloves of each type. Only the bigger outer cloves are worth planting, so we took the rest home to eat. We also managed to split the skin of loads of them, its pretty hard to avoid.

We weren't aware of what hardneck and softneck garlic was before, but it was pretty apparent when we started taking them apart. The hardneck types have a thick stalk in the middle of the head, which make them pretty easy to take apart - just move the stalk from side to side and the cloves separate easy enough. This means that the stuff we buy in supermarkets must be softneck - no middle stalk.

We planted them in late October. I've read that the best date to plant them is winter solstice mid December, but we were too excited with the new plot to wait! Harvest is expected from May to July for the different types. They were already peeking their heads up when I was last at the plot, I'll get a picture the next time.

Die weeds die!

2008-11-27T01:19:00.000-08:00

This is a huge strimmers that we borrowed from the allotment shop. It comes with a full body harness and is run on testosterone and insanity. As you can see, the plot is pretty darn overgrown. The weeds were up to knee height before we started.

We took it in turns to strim parts of the plot as it is really big. The toughest part was the very back of the plot which was wild with blackberry vines. This is Guy leaping into commando strimming action hacking them all down. He said it was the closest he ever got to being in the army. You can also see our little greenhouse here, it's really cute and made of old doors.

And here's Hugh putting the final touches to the cleared plot. When the strimmers was running it sprayed grass and weeds and spiders and all sorts of muck everywhere, and it was really loud, so it was impossible to see or hear anything while strimming. I think it was shortly after this picture that Hugh mamaged to strim a poor frog. It was pretty grim. Since then I've been trying to make a load of noise to scare away other frogs so they don't suffer trajic allotment accidents. This makes me look a little mental to the neighbours, as I jump around shooing the ground. Ah well.

New Allotment!!

2008-11-26T05:35:00.000-08:00

Myself, Hugh and Guy have got an allotment! Well actually we've had one for a few months now, just I haven't gotten around to putting any pictures up yet. It's in North Finchley, around a mile away from our new flat (around 2 miles from Guy and Sarah's) and its lovely.

Above is a satellite view of the plots courtesy of Google Maps. The red x marks where I think our one is - note the total overgrown nature. This picture is a bit old though and I can't recognize any of the neighbouring allotments in it, as they are all now empty waiting for the spring, so I'm not certain if the marked plot is ours.

Ours is a new area of the North Finchley allotments, so a lot of our neighbouring plots are owned by beginners too, and they are friendly and helpful with advice. One of the lads gave us a bunch of broad beans to plant and we gave him daffodils. I'm pretty sure he was taken aback as you can't eat them, but he seemed happy enough.

So anyway we got the plot in September and we have quite a bit done already. I'll get more pictures tomorrow and will try to keep you posted on the growth!