Greenhouse II

So the greenhouse was assembled however due to being dense incomplete planning the fixing of the greenhouse to the slabs ended something like this:

As you may see there is a certain amount of "play" in the screw, not helped by the fact that you canna get to the head:

A view from above showing exactly why putting the screw in is hard! Anyhow application of a certain amount of brainpower and spare wood suggested that if I lift the base then I can put the screw in with a ratchet thingummy. Hey presto:

... and the screws are in, eight of them each around 80mm long - that greenhouse is going nowhere, no Wizard of Oz happening in our back garden:

Also the comment yesterday about the slab area being too small meant there was some 60-70mm of "negative ease" resolved here by filling the gap with sand to avoid drafts:

Anyhow, job done, time to install growbags & tomato plants:

We decided to "hang" the tomato plants rather than staking them, using a bowline knot one or two branches up the plant then connected to a sky hook (in this case a horizontal line across the greenhouse):

The idea being that the plant will wind around the string which will support it, shown below. Anyhow, 6 tomato plants went in, 3 "chadwick" and 3 "garden pearl." Room left for a couple more tomatoes and the chilli plants behind:

Not a moment too soon, or maybe several moments too late, as some of these already have fruit on. Job done, will see how these get on.

Self Assembly Greenhouse, Palram Mythos 6x6

One of the things we wanted having moved was to have a greenhouse in the garden. Had some hard standing installed last week:

This was carefully calculated to be not quite large enough to put a greenhouse on (oops!) Anyhow we ordered a greenhouse on amazon (!) which arrived yesterday morning, to noises like "how can you fit a greenhouse in this little box!"

Turns out the two packages are well within my limits for lifting i.e. I could carry the whole greenhouse. Cue substantial doubt. Anyhow the experts unpacked and checked off the parts list:

Turned out all parts present and correct. Anyhow base goes down:

WARNING WARNING advice for anyone building this greenhouse at this stage drill and screw now. Anyhow we did not do this. Also at this stage turns out that a 6-foot-square greenhouse is slightly larger than 6-foot by 6-foot but that is fine, will just overlap the slabs a little which we will fill later. Assistants busy assembling greenhouse:

Note fantastic weather and sunglasses in evidence. More pieces go on, weather starts to turn:

Now start the "glazing" process: makes the structure a little more sound, though subsequently turns out much adjustment was needed:

Feels like half way:

Turns out when they advise you to wear gloves to do this work, they have a point though the nuts are properly fiddly. Decided against, at this stage regretting choice:

Starting to look like a greenhouse then one instruction took like an hour - these triangle bits which only require you to hold 37 pieces at once, weather turns as does my mood:

Then time for a pit stop, getting greenhouse like:

This was the point where I finally drilled holes (easy) and tried to screw down (much harder) but got there in the end. Will be needing mole grips tomorrow to finish tightening screws. Anyway, window, door installed:

Took about 4 goes to get the door hung right since brain stopped working at instruction 48, anyway:

All done:

Has some nice bumpers installed now to avoid catching passers by on the sharp edges and catch rain, generally happy with this now. Loosened some of the bolts, shuffled panes around and re-tightened. Next job: fill with plants!

What a beautiful day

The sun was shining at the allotment today:

Astonishing to think that it was snowing yesterday! We managed to get the cabbages in:

My daughter made me some white collars for them out of a builders bag:

We covered them in Enviromesh to keep out the cabbage whites:

We were also liberal with the slug pellets after some of our cabbages were badly damaged last year. Whilst Graeme was doing some more digging/ soil improving, I sowed a row of parsnips and a row of radishes/lollo rosso lettuces next to the row of beetroot and red onions. For the parsnips I dug a little trench, filled it up with sand, sowed the seeds and lightly covered with compost:

We left the canes along the ground to indicate where the rows are. The bit between the compost bin and the cabbages was dug over by Graeme and improved with lots of manure:

The manure heap is only a fraction of its former self now:

The blackcurrants are showing signs of life and have little flower buds:

The rhubarb is nearly ready for picking too.

At home the chillis are doing great:

The pot on the right is Cherry Bomb and the pot on the left is Ring of Fire. These have now been given individual pots and are kept indoors at the moment. However there is the promise of a greenhouse soon as our slabs are going down next weekend!

Sowing more stuff

Today I sowed some of the tender veg. These included:
Runner bean: "White Emergo"
French bean: "Blue Lake"
Pumpkin: "Jack O' Lantern"
Courgette: "Dundoo"

The beans were sown into modules and placed in our plastic greenhouse. I sowed 8 seeds of each. The courgette and pumpkin seeds were sown into 5 inch pots to be placed
. I put 4 of each seed in a pot. The courgette seeds are an F1 hybrid and claimed to have on average 5 seeds per packet. I got lucky and had 13 in mine!
In other news, many of the flower seeds sown the other week are beginning to germinate. The golden acre cabbages in the plastic greenhouse are doing particularly well (sown 7th Feb) so I have brought them out to begin hardening them off:

There are 13 plants in total. The cauliflowers sown on the same day are half the size and look rather unhappy!

The mother of all tomato plants...

Do you think we started our tomatoes off too early?!

These are "Chadwick" and are doing very nicely! They are now residing in slightly larger pots. The other variety we are growing, "Garden Pearl" are not quite as tall as Chadwick (presumably because they are a bush variety) have flower buds! I also potted up some "Sugardrop" seedlings given to me by my dad; a cherry variety grown from seeds saved from a supermarket tomato. I have no idea where we are going to put them all!

Pots 2: Charlotte

A week has passed and we had some time to get the charlotte potatoes in - these are not very chitted (6/31 spuds) but hey:

but we decided to get them in the ground anyway. One row alongside the estima which went in last week then three rows of 7 like this in this patch:


Ground turned out to be heavier than I remember... anyway end result:


Just to prove there is some green on the site somewhere:

Our black currants are starting to grow... and some strawberries. No signs of life yet from the apple...

In other news: spring onions have started to germinate, possible sighting of a beetroot seedling, Japanese onions doing well, set onions (sturon) have started to sprout, rhubarb growing well - seems like the plot is starting to come back to life...

Pot planting

It's easter, so it is time to get the potatoes in. The estima potatoes were further along so we decided to get them in first - three rows of 10. The soil where we planted them was already dug over and improved so it was just a matter of digging the trenches:

"Just a matter" - it was still hard work! No doubting the local geology! Anyhow, spuds get planted:

10 happy looking seed spuds. Tried earthing up a little:

But this kinda got lost when the next trench was dug, so will need to earth up as they grow. Repeat two more times until:

I did the digging, Helen and Emily the planting and some weeding around the blackcurrants:

Was lovely day, got some rain later on so the spuds should have had a good start... Next instalment: the Charlottes...