Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Categories
- 241.4K All Categories
- 22 >> Start Here <<
- 12 New Members
- 8 FAQs
- 86.6K Gear
- 39.5K Guitar
- 3.4K Acoustics
- 1.3K Bass
- 14.6K Amps
- 17.2K FX
- 267 Digital & Modelling
- 765 Other Instruments
- 8.3K Making & Modding
- 420 Gear Reviews
- 107 Guitar Reviews
- 73 Amp Reviews
- 118 FX Reviews
- 87 Other Reviews
- 748 Made in the UK
- 973 Theory
- 1.8K Technique
- 2.1K Live
- 3.2K Studio & Recording
- 2.1K Making Music
- 218 Events
- 15 Guitar Show 2018
- 829 Plug My Stuff
- 105.1K Classifieds
- 41K Guitars £
- 2.8K Acoustics £
- 138 LH Guitars £
- 897 Basses £
- 10.5K Parts £
- 18.3K Amps £
- 34K FX £
- 2.8K Studio & Rec £
- 6.1K Misc £
- 465 Personnel
- 54.7K Chat
- 36.5K Off Topic
- 1.1K Tributes
- 6.6K Music
In this Discussion
Become a Subscriber!
Subscribe to our Patreon, and get image uploads with no ads on the site!
TPD's allotment thread
Base theme by DesignModo & ported to Powered by Vanilla by Chris Ireland, modified by the "theFB" team.
Comments
I'll post a proper allotment update tomorrow. Had my first few radishes. Typical early season radish - no heat at all, quite a fresh taste with some sweetness and loads of moisture. Delicious. Radishes get worse as the weather gets hotter I find!
I'm wondering what caused the flooding and if it's been fixed?
Soil cores showed compaction.
Compaction, even in heavy clay, is actually quite rare - but our site was layered with clay, then used to park building site vehicles. Then, a new layer was excavated, put in top and used for parking. This led to a true hard pan about 50cm below soil surface, which was completely impenetrable by water.
The fix was a deep rip - it's basically a big scoop dragged through about 2-3ft under, the break that pan. Last year, after completion, the site did not flood for the first time so I think it was a success. Only areas that were not ripped did (such as the hard standing). That should improve over time anyway, especially when the orchard has been planted.
So sometimes, mechanical intervention is needed! Fingers crossed it stays good. I'm hopeful but by mulching I get at least a few inches of excellent drainage and underneath the soil is being conditioned by insects and roots anyway, so I'm quite confident it'll work out.
More wood chip from a local person who had their tree cut down and chipped last year. Lovely lady who charged me half what a shop would, so pretty chuffed. That helped me finish the first main central path and begin the second today - still have half of that left, so that should be both main paths (and maybe a bit more).
The second pic shows the central and left side of the plot, which are completely unfinished. The far left bed was made this morning, just cardboard and compost. A row of soft neck garlic was sown, but it's a bit late for them so not sure of success. In the middle, I'll be sowing some carrots and some turnips, then at the back will be a row of sown red baron onions from modules, to produce a harvest of smaller onions in clumps. It's quite late in the season to make beds this way, but if it's not amazingly successful this year, I'll be rewarded next year with vastly improved soil.
I dug a hole in a bed that was made sometime in late winter - I needed to plant a new rhubarb, as the crown had rotted. I can verify that clay loves having compost on top - as I dug down into the soil, I was greeted with soil-dwelling lob worms and a much improved structure - more crumbly, with some aeration. That is after just 4 or 5 months or so, can't quite remember when it was done.
As such, I'm seeing this as a preparatory year - while I am hoping for some harvests, I'm expecting some mediocre results, although time will tell. I've had my first radishes and could have some pea shoots, although I'm hoping to grow for peas rather than shoots. The peas are establishing nicely.
At the back, I've got some broad beans that are establishing - however, some failed and others germinated in pairs, so tomorrow morning I'm going to dig them out, carefully split them and replant so I have a row of 5 plants in that small bed. Most of the cabbages at the front got squished by an enthusiastic child, so I'm going to transplant some kohl rabi I've sown in a couple of weeks in their place.
I feel... So happy. I love being outdoors, working with nature. It's just the best.
Compost heap is 40 degree C now. For a small heap, I'm unlikely to achieve more than a steady 50 - that produces excellent compost over a year, but doesn't kill weed seeds so I'm expecting lots of hoe action every spring
Ah, that's not too bad then I suppose. At least you're not needing to put in more drainage or fix a riverbank or anything.
Good luck with it all, you're doing a good job.
Filled the bottoms with some dead branches from local park, getting a bit of hugelkulture going ;-)
Not at all a derail! It's great to see.
I have so much fun reading allotment/gardening comments on Facebook. I saw someone say not digging was just container gardening! What an absolute banana. So many gate keepers.
Today I'm getting more wood chip to the plot this morning after a coffee, then maybe getting some more bags of manure over. I have run out of cardboard now, so if I can't find any more I'll probably just shallow dig and flip over the grasses and weeds, then mulch on top, in hope that kills most of the weeds well enough. Turning them in is a fool's errand here, there are loads of dormant weed seeds in the soil and it's been baked quite hard over the last week, so very hard work.
Purple sprouting broccoli, cos lettuce, lolla rossa lettuce, beetroot clumps and kohl rabi seedlings all germinated, and I'm just starting to see the red baron onions poking through. Alliums are very slow from seed, but once established they really get a move on - brassicas are super fast, I had a seedling after just 2 nights from kohl rabi!
Ladyprettydamned helped me build a tunnel (we call if the tortoise) last weekend. It's 3mm galvanised coated wire to form hoops, covered in green, thick fleece. Inside, I planted some tomatoes and peppers, and a single slime-fruit (aubergine).
This is ambitious and, perhaps, foolish - it is still very early, a full month or so before these should go out. However, Cambridgeshire usually is past last frost by late April, and the fleece I've used is a thick, green winter one - designed for lower light but greater warmth. Tomatoes and peppers at this stage need less light to grow, and rather it's heat they need. If this prevents frost over the next few weeks from hitting them, it's done the job. I also sowed some marigolds in there as a companion plant, and will probably drop in a couple of sacrificial nasturtiums. I may add a couple more peppers also, they don't need loads of space and can support each other in windy conditions, as the site is terribly exposed.
I hope to remove the fleece in two or three weeks. I tested temperature today at 3pm - it was 30 degrees inside, air temp! Soil was a solid 20, which is fantastic and should easily protect from a light frost (by 6.30pm it has dropped to 20 degrees). The plants within look to be healthy, the tomatoes are really growing. The peppers less so, but they are much older and a bit stunted - I expect they'll pick up should the plant decide to put out more roots.
Perennial herbs seem to be establishing, which is good, but they like poor soil - clay is nutrient rich, and I added manure for aeration and fungal activity - so I'm expecting a couple of years needed to deplete the nutrients before they're a bit happier.
Lavender is the same - I expect few flowers, due to nutrients, but they are establishing and putting out fresh leafy growth, which is fantastic.
Peonies went in, and two out of three are already sending out shoots so I'm hopeful.
On Monday, I'll be making some flower beds by digging in a small amount of compost and removing weeds around the border, and will plant out geums, lobelia and other beautiful perennial flowers to bring in pollinators and provide a bit of visual interest. I don't have a plan so will probably just mix them up and see what happens.
I have 14 sweetcorn plants in root trainers, and will be planting out in May - probably in a week or two, with less risk of frost yet. Once planted, I will give it a week or two to establish before sowing some French and runner beans among them - the corn should provide structure for the beans to climb, while the nitrogen-fixing beans will help the hungry sweetcorn to be in nutrient rich soil. Lastly, I will plant 4 winter squash plants around the edge, and train the leafy vines through the bed - providing shelter for the soil, reducing moisture loss to the oft-exposed corn roots.
I have some yellow courgettes seedlings germinated and ready to grow on, several lettuce seedlings (loose leaf and cos), purple sprouting broccoli and kohl rabi - these will all be going out in the coming weeks, with a bed of brassicas for netting and the lettuces dotted around. I am also going to sow some spring cabbages, for harvest late summer/early autumn. In summer I think I'll sow a few winter cabbage, which grow enormous - but they don't taste so good to me.
Very optimistic. I can definitely be more efficient, and will have far greater harvest next year, but this year is all about ground work - getting lots of organic matter on the soil, mulching out weeds, producing crops where I can and taking the losses with the wins.
As far as the effectiveness of mulching, some weeks back I put a bit less than 2 bags of composted manure on top of soil with weeds. I watered it on, then left it. A week ago, I watered once more and yesterday I dug it in - it was very easy, the soil had worms and it was clear it was full of life. As we didn't mulch the weeds with cardboard, we had to dig for potatoes (and planted main crops there today) - however, it really proved that "hard compact clay", often, is not as difficult as it first seems.
I also planned to get a flower border dug in and planted, as well as some kohl rabi, purple sprouting broccoli, lolla rossa lettuce and red onion seedlings out, but I ran out of steam after 3 hours.
Digging the herb area was hard. It was not mulched at all, and I suffered for it. Contrast with the potato bed I dug the other day, that benefited from about... 6 weeks of being mulched with a couple of bags of manure? Night and day. I'm not expecting great things from the herb bed this year, but even if it's a failure I'll be incorporating more compost in winter and trying again. I love the textures of fennel and rosemary, and the scents you get from them are incredible. Bonus points for the attraction of pollinators.
Perennial flowering plants tend not to need brilliant soil, so I'm hoping one bag of manure will suffice for the entire border, and they'll just get established, but if not I may be able to move some spent compost from the balcony there - just to provide a bit more aeration.
Still a long way to go, but I think it's starting to look more like a plot that's being looked after and less like a disaster!
I reckon they'll do great.
I grew some Butternut Squash on the window sill from reclaimed seeds from a supermarket squash. Crap photo, but 5 very healthy plants.
And then the cauliflower we bought to fill out the beds and pass our inspection last year has decided to grow again. Is that normal? Is it going to be edible? Tasty?
Yeah, weird terminology! It means starts to prepare a flowering stem - when this happens, leave become tough and very bitter. Edible but you wouldn't want to!
When you see that flowering stem, you either clear it and pop it in the compost heap, or let it flower - some veg can put up as astonishing display, especially brassica like broccoli or kale. A little lettuce might send up a 3-4 foot stem full of tiny white flowers!