Allotment

[ian16th]

1st limes of the season in the shops today.

[Ex-Ascot]

Bit of gentleman's gardening this morning. Cut off all the floppy banana leaves, used to mulch said banana of course. Pruned our tree tunnel through to the orange and banana area. Did a bit of weeding. Grovelled around to see if I could find any sweet potatoes. After the house scrounger malakas dug up a whole mature bed including young and shoots we are a bit behind the drag curve there but felt a few developing. Maybe another month. Our first beans have appeared. Just a few toms and peppers left. Squashes all over the place, I harvested 10. Left whole piles of weeds and cuttings all over the place for someone else to wheelbarrow away. Come on, you see HRH PC at Highgrove with secateurs but never pushing a wheelbarrow. That's what I mean about 'gentleman's gardening'.

[Alisoncc]

Down in Oz, they are known as Butternut Pumpkin Ex-A, and very nice too. Gorgeous Winter spicy soup just add a bit of coriander, ginger and garlic to gently simmered B Pumpkin. Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste.

Alison

[Ex-Ascot]

In the UK butternut squash. Not sure about here. Yes indeed Mr Ex-Ascot made a cracking soup the other night from one. Not spicy, pots, onion, garlic, celery and carrot went in, plus seasoning and veg stock, jolly good.

[om15]

I now have my three sections of the allotment double dug, lightly manured with plans to lay a couple of inches of well rotted compost in autumn. One section has been planted with red onions, ordinary onions, garlic and shallots, a little area is left for some leeks which are growing from seed in the airing cupboard.
Middle section is ready for spuds, which are failing to chit in the shed.
Top section has a post and wire trellis with three grape vines planted, two of these transplanted and one cutting, we'll see how this goes, I am putting similar on the other side of the plot this week, with six raspberry plants ready to go in. The area between will, this year, be for brassicas, I have sweet corn and spring cabbages on the go, and will also have a couple of runs of spinach.
Suddenly the plot looks smaller and less daunting than when I started, I will talk to the allotment lady and see if there are any other half plots available for next year.
I have made a small bench seat from some rough timber, (larch I think), it is under treatment at the moment and aim to have that in place next month, I prefer sitting in the sun to digging in the sun.

[ian16th]

I have made a small bench seat from some rough timber, (larch I think), it is under treatment at the moment and aim to have that in place next month, I prefer sitting in the sun to digging in the sun.

Uncle Mort had an old railway coach!

[Ex-Ascot]

I was just thinking this morning, when pruning in the banana plantation, that it would be a nice cool place to sit but unfortunately no view due to 10' high bamboo fencing to stop the thieving local b@stards seeing what is in there. Friend of ours on the outskirts of town was growing water melons. He has a standard 1.5 m fence (it maybe restricted in suburbia). They all went.

Five more butternut squashes and two marrows harvested this morning. That's 15 squashes in three days. Gardener's family are going to start to look like squashes. Come to think of it they do resemble 'traditional figure'. Actually, these folk are quite slim, the mother is from Namibia not here.

Just noticed a typo in post 24.

Yes indeed Mr Ex-Ascot made a cracking soup the other night

An 's' missing at the end of 'Mr' of course.

[Ex-Ascot]

We have only one spare plot about 4x3m but it is completely shaded by massive acacia trees. Mrs Ex-Ascot got some spuds out of the cupboard this morning and they had started to shoot. They were requisitioned. We have masses of sweet potato plants but not growing ordinary spuds. Shoved 7 in to see how they go. I could live on new pots. The ground under these trees is rich in nitrogen so they should like it there. if they grow we will stagger planting. Possibly get an all year supply.

Most things will grow all year around here apart from heat sensitive like carrots which have to be planted in the winter.

[Ex-Ascot]

Just planning the planting for whilst we are away over the winter. It is impossible to rotate the crops properly as we have 5 rotatable beds and five fixed (3 sweet potato beds, 1 new potatoes and the beans which have to grow up the fence at the back). The problem is that we have tomato. squash and peppers all in the same grouping. Also the only place the carrots can go is where we tried to grow onions because of the soil/sand. They are in the same grouping. Oh well, I have a plan but it is not perfect. New banana flower spotted this morning.

[om15]

I have had a change of plan with my plot, it was three individual plots with two stone paths separating the sections, once dug I realised that I had lost about 10% by retaining the paths. However, what to do with the stones, each path was 3 ft wide, about 18 ft long and the depth of the stones about 6 inches. I transported all the stones in buckets to my garden and laid along my boundary with the field as a weed suppressant, massive job, but now I have dug over the complete plot it looks much bigger.
I have still kept the three areas and will rotate annually, brassicas, onions, spuds and so on, due to weather I have a shed full of stuff ready to go in when the temperature stabilises, possible mid April.
I have emailed the allotment lady to request permission for a shed, planning a 6 by 4 pent shed, just to keep tools in and provide a place to skive.

[Alisoncc]

Om, absolutely essential you get one of these round kero heaters for your shed. One like this you can stand a kettle on the top for a brew.

heater.jpg (11.7 KiB) Viewed 2726 times

[ian16th]

Stand a kettle on top?

At Istres we had the trusty Alladin in the billet and the bar, we cooked full fry ups on them.

Seems daft, a place where we had excellent food, but we missed bacon and English sausages.
We bribed the AQM's on the Abingdon Beverley's with duty free whiskey to bring bacon & sausages.
Then we nicked the sliced bread from his galley for toast.

[Ex-Ascot]

Here you go OM. This is the way forward.

[om15]

That is splendid Ex A, only problem is that my solitude may be threatened by the visitors and guests just "poppin round". Have the go ahead for the shed, having to throttle back a little as I must balance the pleasures of the allotment against the requirements of missus om, have done quite a lot of DIY and work in the garden, but not quite enough it seems.
I feel ten years younger, no M25, no lap tops, no chasing invoices, no dealing with the CAA on a daily basis, definitely no regrets.

[limeygal]

I feel ten years younger, no M25, no lap tops, no chasing invoices, no dealing with the CAA on a daily basis, definitely no regrets

I know. I sometimes wonder how I had time to work. Never bored

[ian16th]

I feel ten years younger, no M25, no lap tops, no chasing invoices, no dealing with the CAA on a daily basis, definitely no regrets

I know. I sometimes wonder how I had time to work. Never bored

..and the FREEDOM!

Whenever I'm asked what I do with all my time, my stock answer is: 'Whatever I want!'

[Ex-Ascot]

And, no one to answer to. Even when self employed in the tourism industry there were @rsehole clients who at the least you had to answer back.

The marrows and squashes are fighting with the sweet potatoes for each other's territory. The gardener picked 'his' prize marrow today which weighed in at 3 kg. It is not a large variety. He was really pleased with himself until I showed him a photo of the British record holder. Toms over but will replant next week as with the peppers. Put in three more potatoes today for new pots. Trying for a 365 day production in that bed by staggering planting. Not sure about the beans. Do not know what kind they are. The lady who gave them to us says that she picks them very young. We didn't have enough diddy ones to be worth picking so have grown them full size. Plan was to just chop them up in their pods to cook, as they do in Greece, but the pods seem a bit tough. May just shell them.

This all year around production is very interesting. We are definitely learning and getting better. Three marrows and four squashes harvested today. Stuffed marrow for lunch. Our veg/fruit rack is almost all home produced.

[om15]

I am battling the weather, I have to lay a concrete base this week, shed is due delivery in three weeks.
I have a house/airing cupboard/shed full of small plants, tomatoes, parsnips, cabbage, brussels, chard, sweet corn, all waiting for some warmer weather.
Have ordered some netting tunnels from the web this afternoon, apparently there is a rabbit and bird problem, also last year badgers were smart enough to munch through the roots of sweet corn to make the plant topple to gain access to the cobs.
Now all I need is to get up there.

[Ex-Ascot]

Birds and insects are our biggest problem. We put nets over most veg/salad but it is expensive

On a Monday morning I walk the estate with the gardener and we discuss what has to be done that week. He puts notes in his little book. i checked up on him this morning. He had dug out a whole veg bed 0.5m down 9.0m long and 1.5m across. This is what we did last year and then back filled with 1/3 sand, 1/3 manure, 1/3 compost. It doesn't need to be done every year. So he filled it in again. However he did add more cow dung (dried) and scrounged a wheel barrow full of goat dropping to chuck in. That was however 6 hours work in total. Nothing else got done.

Town day tomorrow so he is cutting the grass and irrigating. He can't get that wrong, can he?

[limeygal]

Any chance of some pics of your progress so far?