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

Greengages sucker like that and have the rounder leaves. Also friend's greengage had no fruit last year.

oh good, someone who has one - mine are babies, and at the allotment, so I couldn't compare :)

It is of course possible that it isn't a fruit tree at all we have no idea at all. The blossom was white.

Are greengages a good thing to have?!

Greengages are the best, everyone should have one. They are even better than mirabelles.

Greengages are lovely, i buy them in the supermarket if i see them even though they are often very expensive. Very envious if you do have a greengage!

Thats why I have planted one - they are so rare to find these days :)

I've just ordered a dwarf greengage tree since you all reminded me how much I love them.

We've just had a look at the trees again properly, and we think the smaller thing is something separate - we've remembered there was an Apple tree in the same spot which fell down in a storm, and looking at the smaller bit, it does have different leaves to the bigger one.

I've told DP you think it might be a greengage, and his eyes lit up! (He's obviously more world wise than I - I'd never heard of them!)

We've also noticed a lot of the suspected greengage is dead, so he's cutting that off with the chainsaw as I type. We are hoping than between that and the smaller tree, we might have some success with fruit somehow. Maybe.

Another quick progress pic of the veg patch - I'm excited for the plants between the bricks and paving stones to start filling out.

Gin something to think about: if the apple has grown from a storm damaged tree then it is possible that what you have is the root stock rather than the fruiting tree. I think that a lot of root stocks are crab apple types.

Spent this morning on the plot, starting the tedious business of seeding the paths on the new plot.

This afternoon in the greenhouse. I now have the first lot of french bean seeds planted: blue lake. Also planted up seeds for courgettes, cucumber and squash. I am now out of space so really need to get things moved out onto the plot.

Yep, crab apple is another likely contender. Looks like you have enough space to go and purchase a new greengage tree. You know, just in case.

Latest photos from the plot. The plastic covered beds are the hot beds which will be planted up with the courgettes, cucumbers and squash.

Gnome that is not an allotment it is an empire.

Ooh - think we have a jostaberry. We bought it from an allotment on a garden open day. DH wanted to buy it because it was a cross between two different things! It's flourishing in a pot in a shady part of the garden.

I've converted the dining table into a makeshift greenhouse. After last week's disaster, my tomato seedlings didn't make it, but I appear to still have the ones I bought plus 2 cucumbers, a butternut squash, three bell peppers and some unidentified seedlings that were in the trays that got mixed up. There's a pea growing where the spring onions should be and several unidentified shoots popping up...

I direct sowed beetroot and radishes outside in long planters. The beetroot are coming through but not a sausage from the radishes.

I planted lots of cauliflower seeds a couple of weeks ago, and they all seem to have germinated. I read on a website that I need to nip the tips off all but one per pot. Is that right? It seems a bit harsh!

Is now too late to be thinking about getting raised beds to plant all these out? Should I get them for next year instead?

Fate has smiled upon me. I planned to allotment yesterday and today but two nights out with my best friends resulted two hungover mornings. Quiet day at home today with no wine at lunch and the heavens have finally opened ready for me to go dig out another bed tomorrow and plant my onions and rooster potatoes 😀

I definitely have plot size envy and shed envy after this thread today. Everything looks great. Gnome, as someone who has a tiny allotment plot, yours looks a stunning size. I considered getting a second plot on the same site but I'm put off by the amount of overgrowth on all the empty plots. They're like mini forests. However, one of my plot neighbours told me that 3 of the plots have been taken by someone who has a manged to get the council to dip into its grant pot and get it cleaned. I'm a bit envious but trying not to be. I thought the grant pot was fables and folklore as we'd hardly seen anything of it and heard much of it.

My peas are also going to be planted out tomorrow. It's forecast to be 0° for a couple of nights next week but they're getting really big and tendrils are beginning to cling to each other so out they go.

I haven't managed to go to the plot for a few days. Missing it. DC are home so everything's hectic. DH and I did go and pick up some manure from some stables today though. I've never been there before and didn't know what to expect but there was loads and much of it was covered in weeds. We managed to dig a hole and fill up the car boot with some from below though. I'm quite excited about it. Hoping we can make a few more trips in the week and get more.

shove, I mentioned palak vs spinach to my aunts and a couple of them say it's the same thing. Others disagree vehemently though and they say 'English' spinach is more mild and bland whereas palak is a big more stronger in taste and more pungent and a little more bitter. I'm unsure now... maybe it is the same thing but a different variety. Oh well. I certainly feel I can taste the difference though so I'm going to stick with my palak seeds, especially as I've got loads of them now!

I have a lovely chicken and palak recipe of my grans that I can give you if you like?

Pestilentialone the sad thing is that we have nobody on the waiting list and empty plots on the field. The high tide of the popularity of allotmenteering has receded in our area.

Our site is quite vacant too, Gnome. A few pages ago I talked about the diversity of our plot holders and their helpfulness but that aside, just under half of the plots are still empty. I think much of that is due to the sheer state of the empty plots. I know some work will definitely be required on any new plot but on some of the patches, there's a stupendous amount of work to do and not only would it require hiring a mini digger but there's fully grown trees and full hedges and rampant bushes and all sorts growing all over the plots. I do feel that if the council helped to clear some of them up, the whole site would improve.
Another problem we have is that people who take on plots seem to be happy to pay the £115 annual fee year upon year and then just leave it as it is and not cultivate it at all.

Lulooo please put up your recipe. £115 annual fee I hate to say we pay just under £30 .

Ours is £25. I think there is a waiting list but only a few months (I waited 4 years from 2009 to 2013). I live in an area where every bit of spare land is getting houses built on it, so it is extremely important to keep all the plots active to avoid any temptation for the council to sell off the land.

Grouchy - easily led....:)
Firefly not sure what you mean re cauliflowers . I sow thinly in a pot, then prick them out. Are yours in a seed bed? They need to be quite well apart. Don't see why you can't do raised beds this year - its only just getting going, as long as you have plenty of compost/rotted manure to fill them with.
goodness Lulooo- thats appalling. Ours is £20 for a half plot.( and its a big half plot ) with water as a part of it. And any really bad plots get sorted for the next tenant, or get a rent reduction. There are offers of help too. There was awaiting list of 5 years when we put our name down, but thats come down to about 6-12 months now only half plots are offered -( though I will be honest - I have a half plot, and DH has the adjoining one .) I would kick up a fuss tbh. with the council , if half are unlet they are not doing their job properly.
(And yes please to the recipe :))

I was chatting to DP about allotments yesterday, and he was telling me about another farm owner he knows, who was in the bad books with locals for selling land for houses. He decided to make allotment space on his land, and rent it out free of charge to locals to 'keep the peace'. Unfortunately, he had to move the site, and offered to move everyone's sheds to the new site, and broke over half of them in the move. Oh dear!! He's still a disliked farmer locally

Ours is £120 a year for full plots, which mine is, but they are only giving out half plots now as full plots were too much for most to manage.

There's still a waiting list as there are v few plots where I live and this is the biggest site.

But I think popularity is whining as othrrs have said.

Ours are fairly small, approx 10x7m.

Going back to the matter of rules about sheds, as I mentioned, they are tightly restricted on our site. I drove past a site in another town yesterday which clearly had no such rules, it was jam-packed with sheds and greenhouses of every shape and size and TBH it looked a right mess. Whereas at ours you can see the whole length and breadth of the site as nearly all of them are tucked along the boundary fences and it looks beautiful and tranquil.

Just checking back in to the thread - have posted under another name but I like to separate out my posting on here to keep things more anonymous, so this is now my garden-y name!

I got my allotment last summer and this is first year of proper allotmenting. I have fruit and herbs already planted, garlic growing well and some broad beans just staring to peek through. I've got pepper, chilli, aubergine, basil and munchkin pumpkin seedlings all doing well at home.

Next things to do are plant more seeds - more curcubits and tomatoes mainly now I have more incubator space. And keep weeding and preparing the beds for later in the year. I also need to get making on some of my container ideas - planning on making a fence of pallets along one edge of the plot and setting planters into the top for salads, radishes and paris market carrots - need to get the pallet planter fence up though to do that!

I am equally excited and daunted at the work over the next few months. Feel like it's a never ending battle with the weeds.

On the upside, I discovered some unexpected asparagus peeking through last week! So have had fresh asparagus for dinner a few times this week. Amazingly delicious, I don't feel I earned it though as I did nothing to cultivate it, it was just there!