Allotment/Veg Patch -Thread 8 - Its spring - time to get busy!

[bookbook]

Thought I had better get a new thread ready to roll!
It has been a long, soggy winter , but the clocks go back soon, we may see the sun , so it will be all go, go ,go
Everyone welcome, join us the celebrate and commiserate on the joys of vegetables
previous thread HERE

Just checking in to say hello. Am drinking rum and feeling my sunburn after a lovely day- lots of weeding, plus sparkly gold material in shed palace went up with 'help' of small cousins , much excitement. I've been looking closely at bits of the lawn edges where the lawn peters out and weeds take over and wondering if I can sneak in some little beds . Was thinking about expanding my rhubarb empire but I also haven't lived up to a promise of gooseberry planting. How much sun do they need?

Love seeing everyone's photos and I am hugely impressed by hexangonal planter- I thought it was a catalogue picture!

We do enjoy the luxury of space. We started using wood edging on the beds as they make the mowing easier. It is a really nice quick tidy up sort of chore. Mow and strim the paths and suddenly the place looks tidy even if the beds are weedy.

Wow DoItTooJulia you have done a great job with clearing the bed of weeds and the soil looks great.

I am trying to stagger the planting out and inprobably did do too many, but in my defence we're a family of 7 and all vege, so we eat a lot of cauliflower curry! And at 3 people will have 10 each off us and I think we'll lose some to my novice pricking out!

Mind you, I have a similar amount of kale! I blame sowing the seeds with the dcs! They were very enthusiastic!

But next time, I will hold some seeds back-that's what I've learned!

Cath - I would say normally that gooseberries, like most fruit , really want to be in some decent light. It's not that they won't grow, but the fruit doesn't sweeten up so well.
DoIt - the trouble with cauliflower ( and I like them - ) is they all come at once! And they take quite a lot of space - I plant mine about 2' apart .
Successional sowing is tricky too - I try to do that, but its surprising how they all end up ripening together!

Well balls in that case. We don't have that much space! Maybe I'll do some stealth pottager gardening and put the spares in the herbaceous border!

I have a nice roast cauliflower and tahini sauce recipe which I got on here at some point if you want it?!

The possible gooseberry position gets some sun just not all day. Maybe I could put it in a big pot and then if it doesn't work I could move it .

DoIt
yes please Cath re recipe :). Good plan on the goosegog - is it still in a bucket?

Evening everyone. I'm aching today after trying to hoe my broad bean bed. My back is sore...

Tiz those planters are really lovely. I saw a flyer in GW magazine which had very similar planters and they cost £100s of pounds

Firefly so sorry to see the greenhouse devastation! I hope something can be salvaged.

Julia welcome!

It was very warm this morning so I decided to nip to the plot this afternoon to put broad bean seedlings in. However after about half an hour it suddenly turned very grey and a cold wind whipped in. Managed to plant about a dozen seedlings, covered them with my £1 cloche tunnel but unfortunately the strong breeze turned it into a wind tunnel (it is open at both ends) so I've had to cover the whole thing with fleece & weight the fleece with bricks. The few that didn't fit under the fleece have gone under bottle cloches. I did the same fleece/cloche cover over my beetroot seeds which again had a mini-cyclone blowing through the tunnel. Everything was quite dry & no signs of any new seedling growth - I'd hoped the radishes might have popped up, but no sign. Raspberries and whitecurrants look healthy which is good! Everything has been well-watered, trying not to get too impatient but I think I'll start some sweetcorn off at home this week.

Here's the latest photo...

Lovely photo!

Recipe - roast cauliflower in oven- drizzle with oil and leave to cook gently oven.
Then gently fry garlic in oil, when nearly done add a generous handful of chopped parsley , squeeze of lemon , dollop of tahini and water to thin to sauce consistency. It can look a bit curdled at this point but it cooks out to a nice smooth sauce. Drizzle over cauliflower and serve.

I have a tahini weakness not shared by anyone in the family so the danger for me is that I make this and then eat a whole cauliflower and frankly no one wants that.

gin - oh you poor things! Doing paths is absolutely back-breaking work. And it takes FOREVER if you're not a professional. It took me literally weeks of evenings just to mortar some bricks in a row in my garden - then a neighbour had a patio laid and this crew of lads did the whole thing in about 6 hours. I was . At least you now have a starting point, and if you do want to change it at a later date, you can do so when you have slightly less on!!

The edging stuff is Everedge. It's expensive, but it looks a million dollars when it's installed properly - I first saw it at an extremely posh garden in Devon, where they had the steel stuff and it really looked a cut above. They had it at the precise height of the lawn over the beds, with that channel you're supposed to have between lawn and bed and it did make the garden look amazing. I need to get some for my own rather less posh yard, as the cat is eternally pulling soil from the beds onto the path.

book - Yes, we will definitely be putting plans on hold and going for other quotes if we don't get it to fit in budget with this builder. I've asked the architect for a clear explanation from the builder of exactly why things are so far out. I think the worst thing is having a suspicion that this has been done deliberately to hook us in... even though it is only a suspicion and there could be a rational explanation, it has sort of damaged our trust in this builder before we've even started. I am really nervous about the build anyway. I'm not used to spending money on houses, I come from a family of quaker-like habits! And while I realise that it is actually necessary that we do something, the kind of figures involved really freak me out to the point of horrible levels of anxiety. (Very much my problem, not the builder's!)

Anyway, back to gardening - here's a moan you don't often hear from me! - it's so DRY out there! The soil at my plot is really, really going rock hard in places, especially where I haven't mulched or manured (e.g. fruit beds where I used hops). I have a load of broad bean seedlings that really need to go in (I'm away for a week on Thursday and I don't want to leave them in small pots when I can't water regularly), but I'm slightly concerned about planting them in! I'm not going to say we need a good downpour though - I spend too much of the year moaning about the amounts of rain here to do that!!

Morning everyone, I hope you all got to enjoy a bit of the sunshine at the weekend.

I'm loving all the plot and garden photos posted over the weekend. And those planters!!!! Amazing work...

So I was catching up on Beechgrove Garden at the weekend (Scottish version of Gardener's World) and they were using composted sheeps wool as a slug barrier. I've never heard of this before. Has anyone tried it?

Julia I'm veggie too and love cauliflower, should've done some! Wonder if it's too late now? Not sure I've got the space though so would probably have to do hem in a container and not sure they grow in containers...oh to have a bigger garden!!

Productive weekend here! I finished deweeding and digging over the bigger bed in our garden, planted up some nasturtium seeds and prepared space for my runner beans. I sowed beans into pots last week and I think a few are starting to germinate, which is great! My courgette seedlings are loving the warmth too, only 7/10 seeds germinated but given I'm a complete rookie I'll take that!! If they all do grow though I'm going to need some more containers for them...

I planted out two (supposedly hardy) tomato plants last week and kept one in the house (mainly because I couldn't think of where else to plant it), and the one on my kitchen windowsill is absolutely flourishing! It's getting on for double the size of the others now, so think I'll keep growing it inside for another couple of weeks then plant it out when weather is consistently warm and hope for the best!

Hope everyone managed to relax a little this weekend, between stints in gardens/allotments!

DH uses the everedge and swears by it-but yes, usually in the posher gardens he does!

The soil has taken a lot of work Gnome but we're hoping to go no dig so we needed to get it right!

Definitely not too late for caulis! I always boggle at the length of the sowing time for varieties like 'All the Year Round' (which also happens to be one of the usual Aldi varieties, for 19p).

it always fascinates me how different growing seasons are.
we are in northern europe for easter and it's definitly a good 3 weeks behind se england.

as a plus we had ground elder with pasta for lunch yesterday. if you are battling it, try it. it tastes a bit like spinach, it was very good wilted down with blue cheese & garlic.

Book that cauliflower is beautiful

A very busy last week digging- luckily the youngest sleeps find in his carrier on my back. Been just about everyday.

Potatoes are in. Going to plant asparagus this year. Need to make a shopping list of plants and seeds to get. So another busy couple of weeks to get more stuff planted.

I have relocated and divided the strawberry plants.
We've had the allotment for 3 years now. The last 18 months had been a bit slow with being pregnant and having a small one. But now it's getting there.

We are collecting the thousands and thousands of stones and doing the paths. My plot is on a slope.

Welcome Julia

Also trying to catch up on everyone's posts. Been too busy in the gorgeous weather and getting a tan.

Afternoon !

thanks Cath will try that !
timtam - that is looking so good, such a lot of work. Bricks are ugly, but boy do they come in handy. First year of my allotment I had a quite expensive grow tunnel disappear overnight in windy conditions, it was never found!
shove - a bit of a nightmare re builder- hope you don't lose sleep.
It is incredibly dry here - a bit damp a couple of inches down, due to lots of manure and mulch, but its not helping things along is it. I heard the forecaster on the BBC saying April is looking dry overall - no significant rain for the month!
And its going to be cold this week - I have looked up my local 7 day forecast on Netweather , and temperatures overnight with wind chill factor is -2º virtually all week ...
I have just sown cauliflower rosetinted - there are loads of varieties - the ones I am cropping at the moment are' Winter Aalsmer' , but have sown summer and autumn ones this week.
Ickle - dedication, digging with a baby on your back !
It is getting really busy now isn't it - full steam ahead.
Having said that, all I have done today is go and pick perpetual spinach for tea
Instead DH and I are sweeping, and shovelling up gravel off our drive and bagging it up. Tedious slog !

Everyone always seems to have done loads each day whilst I seem to do tiny amounts of work. I'm only working part time for 2 weeks but it's the same 2 weeks that DC are home from school for so will probably have even less time for the allotment.
I did manage an hour today though. I forked over the patch intended for grass (approx 2-3m x 4-5m), raked it over and scattered grass seeds over it willy nilly. I had intended to use a measuring cup to work out 30g per square metre and use my 1m bamboo canes to mark it out but by the time I'd finished raking, pulling out another bagful of random rubbish, stones and glass from the area and connecting the hosepipe to give it a soak, I couldn't be asked and just scattered it randomly. DS was with me and thought I had scattered far too much seed but by that time, I needed to get back home to the rest of the DC so ignored him and dumped a few more handfuls on for good measure.

I've also got a useless tree that sits bang in the middle of one of my beds that I'm trying to saw down so hacked at that a little more. It's a mesh of around 8 trunks and I've sawed 3 down with 5 to go.

Also, my polythene has arrived for my greenhouse. Yay! Hopefully DH and I can make time to put it up sometime this week. I should probably dig the ground up first but at least if the polythene is up, I can put some grow bags in if I don't get round to it until later in the year. I'm going to take bookbook's advice and unscrew some of the fence slats around the base first.

I spent the afternoon at the plot. I have now dug over and weeded 3 beds, just a big one to go. We have a recycling bit at the allotment I was getting some more small pots when another plotter came and spoke to me, she recognised me as a newbie and pointed out the 2 composting daleks that were going for free so I took one of those too. I finally feel like I am getting somewhere.

Treated myself...

So far my shopping list includes tin foil, aspirin , seaweed and jasmine oil.

Cath I bought that book for MIL! I've yet to have a flick through it myself though.

I've planted some perennials up out the back, and pulled out a lot of stinging nettles from another part of the garden, so no more veg progress but general garden progress is getting there! Slowly...

At the risk of sounding a bit frail, my knees feel knackered! Luckily MIL and I are off to Kew Gardens tomorrow so I can have a day off from gardening, and admire somebody else's plants!

Cath I think I can work out the aspirin, as that was mentioned earlier in the thread, seaweed as fertilizer? But are the foil and jasmine oil for?

*But what