Apples & Onions

Father in law bought me an apple tree for my birthday so went to the allotment today to plant it (weather was fantastic too which helps!) It's a golden delicious:

We decided on the allotment as there are other apple trees there and so some hope of getting apples! Planted in the northwest corner of the plot to avoid too much shadowing. Standard "look, digging" photos:

 

Put a decent amount of manure into the hole to give the tree a decent start. It's bare rooted:

However looks pretty happy where it is now. Will need to stake it tomorrow (did not take any string today, d'oh!)

And here's a photo of yours truly somewhere in the process:

You can see the onions on the left of the photo - Helen and Emily were busy planting these while I was making holes. We've moved the cabbage cover over to cover the newly planted onions to keep the pigeons off:

Meanwhile along the onion theme sewed some spring onions in the raised bed which google tells me has been there exactly a year:

Not much to see... overall the plot is looking OK though there's obviously plenty of work to do:

You can see the last of the leeks here as well as the end of the broccoli. In the top picture you can also see where we plan to put some spuds in the next couple of weeks....

A plethora of seedlings

Good news. The cabbages, cauliflowers and tomatoes are growing away nicely so have been potted up. The cabbages and caulis have been moved from a sunny windowsill into a plastic greenhouse in the garden. I'm hoping that they will be okay as temperatures are only in single figures during the day and close to freezing at night! After a slow start the Chadwick tomatoes finally germinated. I have kept 5 plants:

These seeds were 3 years out of date! In the right of the above pic you can see the coriander. The Chadwick seedlings are already overtaking the Garden Pearl seedlings that germinated a good 10 days earlier. I have kept 8 of these:

To my delight the chillis sown 2.5 weeks ago in an unheated propagator are germinating. So far we have 9 Cherry Bombs and 2 Ring Of Fire:

The tray in the background is filled with oriental mustards. I have'nt decided whether to harvest these as cut-and-come-again or grown on as individual plants...
I also sowed a tray of Musselburgh leeks in the propagator and some mixed salad leaves in a tray in the plastic greenhouse...

Clay not just in the soil

Bit of a site update - making some headway on getting the plot ready for the 2016 season - much easier than this time last year as the density of perennial weed roots is far lower. Half way through the onion plot digging right now:

This was where we planted spuds last year and salad later on. Clear the effect of digging over and adding some manure here. Speaking of which we are working out way through the autumn delivery:

This represents really good value and a key for improving our heavy soil. There's some other housekeeping to do on the site, repairing the windbreak:

Not impressed with this breaking, will try to find some better timber to make the fence from over the next couple of weeks. Finally, while we know we have a lot of clay on the site this is taking the mick:

(yes this is a clay pigeon) - given that our plot is in the middle of town decided it is far more likely that this came in with the manure than coming direct from the catapult...

Onions

Today I planted some shallots, variety Topper in one of our small raised beds:

 

We have not grown this variety before. Apparently they have good resistance to bolting and are high yielding. We shall see what happens! In total I planted 17 sets (one was discarded as it was rotten), which works out about 12 pence per shallot set:

I also checked on the Japanese onions and weeded around them. They are looking rather sad:

..but mostly still alive. Hopefully they will perk up as the weather improves.

Inspection of plot

It's been a while since we visited the allotment and actually it doesn't look in bad shape. Some of the purple sprouting brocolli is ready for picking:

.. and we are continuing to harvest leeks. We had a little tidy up, removing old runner beans and peas plus some canes. Graeme dug over part of the plot (where we had onions last year) in preparation for the potatoes. Before:

After:

Turns out we had done a decent job of weeding before as there was no bind weed growing in the patch - makes a really nice change for weeding to be as straightforward as that. Also added some of the manure delivered in the autumn to help lighten the soil a little - there is no doubting that we're on Oxford clay. Spuds should be happy there! It was a beautiful day:

South Devon Chilli Farm

This week we have been visiting family in Plymouth and on our way home we decided to take a short detour via the South Devon Chilli Farm. Unfortunately since we were visiting out of season their show polytunnel was closed and there were no plants available for purchase. The shop and cafe were open, however and we were able to sample lots of different chilli jams, chutneys and chocolate. We came away with a selection of goodies:

We could'nt resist buying a chilli grinder (or chilli cutter as it says on the packaging). We still have lots of dried chillis at home and this will allow us to add a bit of heat to various dishes without having to chop them up finely. We also chose two varieties of chilli seeds to sow:
1) "Ring of Fire": A hot cayenne type of chilli and;
2) "Cherry Bomb" (F1) A medium heat cherry variety.
Each pack contained 20 seeds so I have sown 10 of each in a pot indoors. Usually I would sow them a bit earlier but hopefully with a bit of TLC they will be ok.
In other news: Over the last couple of days the Garden Pearl tomato seeds (sown last Sunday) are germinating, as are the cabbage, cauliflower, coriander and basil seeds. The cress has mostly been eaten and the oriental mustard is also growing away nicely. No surprises that the tomato seeds "Chadwick" have'nt put in an appearance given that the seed is four years out of date! I will give them another week or so and if there is still no signs of germination I will discard them and sow something else!

Starting to think about the new growing season...

Its been nearly 3 months since the last post (eek!) but with good reason... Two days before Christmas we moved house. However, we only moved locally so get to keep our allotment - yippee! Now we are settled its time to think about the new growing season:

Yesterday we purchased our seed potatoes. Our local garden centre stocks well over a 100 different varieties making it very difficult to choose. We wanted to keep things simple so decided to go with just two varieties. Based on last years experience we chose a 2.5 kg bag of Estima (32 spuds). These are a second early but can be left in the ground and harvested as a main crop. Last year they gave a good yield with minimal slug damage and tasted good too. We also bought a 2.0 kg net of Charlotte (28 spuds). This is another second early that we have'nt grown before but is our 'potato of choice' from the supermarket. The spuds are now residing in seed trays in the garage.

In addition to seed potatoes we also purchased a net of Sturon onion sets for 70 pence (bargain!) from the local allotment shop and a reduced pack of leek seeds for 80 pence (variety: Musselborough).

Today I also sowed some seeds in pots indoors on the windowsill. These include:

Tomato - Garden Pearl. Our favourite from last year with sweet firm fruit that tend not to split. Although they are bred specifically for hanging baskets and containers we grew them as cordons in a growbag and the fruit was prolific!

Tomato - Chadwick. A cordon variety not grown before. Just using up an old (unopened) pack of seed with use by date 2012!

Cabbage - Gold Acre. Good success last year.

Cauliflower - All the Year Around. Also good success.

Basil - Dark Opal

Coriander, Cress and a tray of Oriental Mustards.