Last bed / plot overview

Put the last bed in over the last couple of days - should have dug it over before now as the recent dry weather has baked the ground to rock. Usual digging over / weed removal / build wooden stuff / fill with much compost -





Into this we planted lettuce:

Overview of the plot at the moment - most of the beds are full, just planted courgettes (summer squash)




Failed onion crop!

Tall beans (as yet not tall)


Peas

Strawberries, busy taking over the world.

Newly installed courgettes - Black Beauty, Atena, Zucchini?

Mixed beans

After the relative success of growing beans last year (certainly drying beans) we decided to go all out and grow 5 (yes, 5) varieties of bean -

• Borlotti (also known as cranberry bean, apparently, for drying)
• Black turtle (also for drying)
• Orient wonder (also known as asparagus bean, green)
• Purple queen (purple dwarf bean we grew last year) 
• Blue lake (green dwarf bean we have grown in the past)

Interestingly they largely look the same as one another:

We started them all in root trainers - as for the peas. 

Ground preparation was as elsewhere, dig over soil and put in raised beds - by design we made a long thin bed for the tall beans to allow easy access to both sides (since picking beans is fiddly)

Filled with compost, built a long A-frame as for the peas (though with 2.4m / 8 foot canes) tied in with posts to keep rigid:

Left hand (West side) planted with Orient Wonder, right with Blue Lake - since both are harvested green keeps things simpler. 

The other bed was a little less straightforward - as it had been dug over a while back the weeds had come back including the dreaded bindweed:

This is probably from a small fragment of root missed while weeding - there were a few 🙄- but removal was easy enough. After digging over put in a couple of traditional teepees:

The Borlotto are a tall drying bean so go onto the teepees, while the Black Turtle and Purple Queen are bushy self-supporting beans. As the PQ beans need picking during the year we put them at the opposite end of the bed, with the BT's in between:

Theory states they should be OK, but time will tell - overall planted some 13 Borlotto, 13 Blue Lake, 9 Orient Wonder, 12 Purple Queen and 30 Black Turtles - could have a lot of beans come the summer... Here's hoping we do not get a frost. 

Biological warfare

Last year we had a big problem in the garden with shrub leaves being eaten - leaves looked like this:

and we think the same critters finished off the blueberry. Best guess they were vine weevils and it seems the best way to tackle them is with more critters - in this case microscopic nematode worms Steinernema kraussei - sold as NEMASYS:

You have this "cake" in the pack which you water down, then water down the watered-down mixture to put on the soil - we bought a 100m pack which looked like this in the bucket:

but dissolved fairly easily - have put it all over the borders, under the hedge and in the pots around the back so hopefully this year we won't have little squares taken from all our shrub leaves.

The mechanism of action is pretty awesome: the worms hatch and then infect the grubs of the vine weevil, which get infected in turn with bacteria which multiply and then kill the grub. The worms then eat the bacteria - so there are three levels of warfare going on here.

Let's hope they work. Have released 50 million of the blighters!

Bean Season

After removing the peas from the root trainers immediately sowed some beans - some Orient Wonder long beans - also known as asparagus beans - which needed soaking overnight and the last of our Purple Queen dwarf french beans - 10 x OW + 20 x PQ beans in one tray, then a second tray completely filled with Black Turtle beans (which dry well, we still have a few from last year) and finally a tray half filled with Borlotto drying beans and Blue Lake green beans:

The Orient Wonder require rather warmer weather than we have here - apparently can grow to ~ 8' tall in ~ 8 weeks which will be interesting to watch. Did not germinate at all last year but this time we actually read the packet which told us to soak the beans overnight before sowing...

Yes, the picture above does include ~ 90 cells of bean plants (hopefully) so will need to do some more ground preparation up at the allotment to make space for them all...

Peas on Earth

After making a long A-frame for peas we planted them - Waverex Petit Pois and Hurst Green Shaft:

We started them off in root trainers - which are great as you can open them out to remove the seedlings without disturbing the roots. I would not buy them from Amazon as I got them for less than half of this from the local hardening association, but it is the same thing:

Had a few which would not fit so made a couple of traditional teepees for them -

Small for the petit pois, big for the other ones:

Making more beds / flowers / cat

Went up to the plot yesterday to get some more raised beds in, as well as finishing off the half-bed for peas. For the half bed we put in some tree stakes at either end, and made a long wigwam (more strictly is probably an A-frame) for peas to grow up - this is anchored at either end to the tree stakes to make it more wind-resistant than previous efforts...

This should be strong enough to grow almost anything up! The apex is made from a pair of 8' canes spliced together with strong garden wire, and the uprights are 4' canes at 1' intervals. We also put in some more full-sized raised beds - one for a neighbour who's borrowing a bit of our plot for a few beds:

We also had some flowers come - tulips planted in one of the beds for cutting (since cut) -

So it's not all vegetables! Finally we have an allotment cat (or a pair of cats, but they are rarely seen at the same time - and they are strictly probably kittens anyway) - good fun but do get under your feet!

Finishing Fences / Plant Support

Put some posts in a week ago, but plants need something to actually grow up so put some 2mm wire along today - nothing very interesting but decided to anchor the wire with a metpost to allow tensioning all wires at the same time:

The four wires total around 40m - looped through eyes on each of the posts:

and

Interesting fact: the apparent leaning is an optical effect because of how my camera was orientated...

Anyway, should have plenty of room for fruit bushes now!

Bed Making (reprise)

2019 raised bed season has started - been digging over the ground for the next three beds. Exciting stuff! Wet, heavy cold clay soil with bind weed roots / grass / buttercups etc. mixed in. Nice thing about the raised bed concept is not having to do this again. Anyhow - started with:

Some digging later first bed was better:

Some more digging later about half way through #2 bed:

This was the sort of stuff I was removing:

And while I was there had some "help" - a neighbourhood cat literally getting under my feet:

Construction at Allotment

Started 2019 season work - putting a fence along the west side of the plot to support raspberries and a loganberry I was given for my birthday, using an allotment-neighbours post knocker:

The posts are from ~ a year back! Plan is to put these along the full west side of the plot where the prevailing wind comes from, and string up some strong wire to tie in fruit canes (the raspberries got a little unruly last year). Also started laying out the next 6 raised beds for installation.

Couple weeks back also put in a demi-bed between the strawberries and black currant bushes -

The idea of this one is to put some teepees for sweet pees (now there's a way to use up e's in Scrabble) - it's half width so 0.75 x 3m in size, should be good for four teepees?

Blueberries

Last year our blueberry bush died. We bought it over 10+ years ago from Thompson & Morgan when they had an offer of "free" blueberry plants if you pay for the postage & packing. When it arrived it was a twig in a 1-litre pot but we nurtured it and over the years it got potted on and eventually ended up in a pot about the size of a half-barrel. Photo from June 2015:

It produced a large amount of fruit despite the fact it was the only plant we had. A couple of  years before the plant died I decided to take three cuttings. Only one has taken and is currently residing in a 5-litre pot. The cutting grew quite a lot last summer and is covered in buds so I am hoping that it might fruit this year. If memory serves the variety is called "Chandler".
A few weeks ago I did a quick search on-line and Thompson and Morgan were offering 2 "Duke" blueberries in 9 cm pots for the price of the postage and packing (£4.99) so we put in an order. We also found blueberries in Tesco for £2 each called "Patriot" so we bought two of those too:

All have been potted on and given a feed. I have no idea whether we will get any fruit this year but surely next year ???!

"Chandler" is the largest residing in the black pot.