Sowing more stuff

Since we have a lot of space to fill at the allotment and most of the crops seem to be up and running I have decided to sow some more seeds. For the record, today I have sown:
3 pots of lettuce, varieties: "Intred", "Lollo Rosso", "Red Amaze"
Beetroot "Burpees Golden" sown in 4x3 biodegradable modules
Chard "Bright Lights" sown in 6 biodegradable pots (1 seed per pot)
Peas "Kelvedon Wonder" sown in three 4x3 biodegradable modules (36 seeds sown in total)
In addition I have sown another row of carrots in the raised bed "Purple Dragon" and squeezed in another row of radishes variety "Sparkler"
The "Red Amaze" lettuce, beetroot, chard and carrots were from the Funky Veg Kits.
Biogradable pots are perfect for large single seeds that can be transferred directly into the ground with minimal root disturbance for the plant.

Making beds

After preparing the ground over the weekend and surveying the last remaining work was to actually build the raised beds. This once again actually involved planning, to the extent that there was actually a design involved:

The aim is to end up with beds about 1.5 x 3 m in size (5 x 10 feet in old money, or American) with posts on each corner and half way down the long sides to either use as plant supports or to hang netting from. For one bed this is the raw materials:

6 planks / 6 tree posts. Decided to first make the west-most bed (note to self: need to decide on an indexing scheme) as we have cabbages to go in and this bit is quite heavy (which cabbages like.) First assembled the ends using (i) string from surveying and (ii) an extra plank to make sure the spacing was the same top and bottom:

These were simply fixed with 4 x 40 mm PZ2 screws. The amount of post at the sharp end is around 450 mm, which should be enough to make sure things stay stable, and also means having to hammer it in nearly half a meter... 🤔hammered one into place then got it level:

Then measured up position wise for the far end, put the middle posts in and then kept hammering until all the posts were level - last part was to fix the sides on:


then level the sides up:

then finally rake all the soil around to make sure it was level and up to the bottom of the wood, to stop critters getting in if we cover it:

Today I learned:

• hammering wooden posts 450 mm into clay is hard work
• raking the soil level before you start is a good idea
• making two more of these beasties is likely to be a full morning or afternoon's work

but hopefully will do the job, and means we can avoid walking on there in future to stop soil from becoming compacted - once the others are in place will sow some grass seed to start making dedicated paths...

General seedling update

With the warmer weather the seeds planted over the last few months are germinating rapidly. The courgettes and cucumbers planted on the 8th April have gone from this:

To this:

The peas have gone from this:

to this:

The beans sown on the same day are also beginning to germinate. Some of the lettuce and shallots have been transferred into the raised bed in the garden:

Rainbow radishes from the Funky Veg Kit can be seen in the foreground.  The "Purple Sun" carrots sown on the 10th March  (in front of the radishes) were eaten by slugs several days after they germinated (though germination was very patchy) so I resowed last weekend. Cabbages, caulis, remaining shallots and lettuce are all ready to go out in the allotment as soon as the raised beds are built .....

Actual planning

Since we have previously treated the allotment mostly as a field, it gets walked on and the soil becomes compacted. In a perfect world this would not happen, so now we have more space we've decided to put in some raised beds on the newly prepared soil. This required some actual .... planning. Intended to put in beds of 3 x 1.5m as this is narrow enough that you can reach the middle from one side without standing on it, but big enough to actually be useful. Came up with some designs, ordered some timber then changed our minds on what we're doing! Anyhow, started survey work for 3 beds on the newly prepared half of the old plot:

Starting from the "fence" along the middle of the plot (which has posts 4m apart) as a baseline, we actually used first year trig to get some right angles to make sure we have nice wide (and parallel) paths around the beds:

This is the laying out, with the intention to get the following over the next couple of days:

Using this lot which arrived yesterday - also intend to put a windbreak along the southern edge of the new plot:

Plotting II / Gardening meets Farming

Following the start of some work last week on clearing the plot, went up in the week to till the other side to prepare for planting - was pretty straightforward:

 - the little tiller started first time despite not being used for near on a year, which was pretty good. Bits of this side needed some help though, had to break up a bit before the tiller would "bite" as the clay was pretty heavy:

Still, the end-game was good, got it all turned over before the sun set, always good 🙂

Was good timing, as later in the week went back with a bucket of strawberries which needed planting:

The other side was more of a "thing" - went up this morning to mow, as thousands of dandelion flowers had appeared:

Then the big one, tilling the other side of our "old" plot:

Got started with the little tiller, then by a happy accident a neighbour had rented a proper rotavator for the weekend and offered the use of it for a few minutes - really helped breaking down the hard clay:

Reasonable ending - got something on both sides of the old plot which we can consider planting into:

Soil pH

Tested the pH today, using a standard garden pH testing kit - given that we have clay soil and cabbages etc. grow quite well, was expecting it to be neutral or somewhat alkaline, and turns out this is the case:

Clearly came out as green - guessing pH somewhere in the 7-8 range - the pictures don't do a good job of representing the colours, it's quite dark green in real life. Guess this should not come as any surprise because the local water is pretty hard...

Plotting

With the run of pretty lousy weather we have had lately (related to Atlantic currents? Who knows...) it's been a very late start up at the plot. As much as anything it has been very very wet - here's the path from a couple of days ago:

Not good for digging, given we're on clay, but at the same time also need to get weeds out as they're doing rather well:

Good for them, less so for us... anyhow, couple of hours digging earlier in the week got a few of these out:

In addition we've had to clear some of the more persistent weeds from the no-mans-land between our plot and next door:

... because we are (foolishly, perhaps) taking that one on so we have a full plot, which will work out around 200 square metres in total. Went up this morning to mow, to stop the dandelions taking over the world - before:

and after:

our intention is to cultivate the new plot as raised beds, which are never walked on, and to grow grass in between - once we have the plans sorted will update here.

We're jammin'

Nearly a year ago we harvested black currants - finally got around to using them - at least some, to make some jam - we froze them in about 300g bags, which is handy:

Jamming was pretty easy - boil for 20 minutes with about 250ml water, add sugar, lemon, boil some more. We do not have a sugar thermometer, so decided it was cooked when it wrinkled when placed on a cold plate and pushed around. Made up two jars worth:

Will update on how it tasted once we've tried some...

Update: turns out to be a bit sweet - but jammed up well, maybe even a little thick. Next time run with a bit more lemon juice, a bit less sugar.

Done "A", now on to "B" and "C"

Apple went in this morning, this afternoon sowing B's and C's - beans, courgettes and cucumbers to be precise. Beans are purple queen which went very well last year, and two newcomers - black turtle and orient wonder:

Last two of these are from the US - Lowe's or Walmart, can't remember which! The black beans are a bush variety, the orient wonder a pole bean. Planted 20 x purple queen, 16 x black turtle and 12 x orient wonder:

The individual beans look quite distinct too (PQ, OW, BT):


On the C's we've planted some regular cucumbers and courgettes (burpless tasty and dundoo, like last year) and some new ones from the funky veg kits which are yellow (crystal cucumber, atena courgette) -

We planted two of each, not much to look at (oh look! pots...)

Apple planting season / fruit bushes

A couple of years back my father-in-law gave me an apple tree for the allotment - got another one this year - Granny Smith:

Just went to plant it this morning - good apple planting weather as no need to water in (also known as: raining!) We don't have any tree stakes handy so made do with a couple of sturdy canes for support:

The tree was bare root, but had been in a pot for a few weeks - the roots looked healthy:

In other news the black currants are also doing well - buds there, but need to do some weeding and maybe mulch the area:

Potting up chillis and planting peas

Most of our chilli plants are a couple of inches high and ready to be potted on. Germination and growth has been very slow, presumably due to the lack of light and warmth (we have hardly had any sun during the day to warm them up on the windowsill). So far we have potted on:
4 Red Cherry Hot (6 seeds sown)
5 Cascabella (7 seeds sown)
2 Chilli Shake (6 seeds sown)
4 out of 5 of the Cherry Bomb chillis have just germinated so we will leave them for a bit longer before we pot them on. The seeds were all sown on 5th Feb:

The rocket and beetroot grown as microleaves are now ready to eat and we shall be having them with our tea:

They are a bit leggy, presumably due to lack of light. In retrospect I could have been more generous with sowing the seeds.
Yesterday we started off a batch of peas in the greenhouse:

These are Waverex petit pois. Once they are up and transplanted to the allotment we will sow a second batch.