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

I had parsnip cake once- sounds vile but tastes lovely!

Made a bench at the weekend to enjoy the sun (AKA stuck some planks on breeze blocks!), and I took a gas burner and kettle down today. It feels more homely with a cup of tea

Got my first seedlings coming up in the polytunnel. I'd forgotten how exciting it is when they sprout.

Polytunnel! I am so jealous! Absolutely agree about the tea. On the allotment I measure time with tea. Once the flask is empty it's time to go home (for a refill).

Also jealous! I dream of having a polytunnel!

Nipped up to the plot today to drop off my netting, tunnel cloches and plastic bottles. I removed a couple of bags of waste & did a bit of light weeding. About a week or so ago, someone left some old and very tall raspberry canes in a wheelbarrow on the main path, for people to help themselves to if they wanted any canes. They've been drying out a lot in the sunshine but i saw a glimpse of green shoot today. Went to investigate and there were some small prunings with a lot of roots and some new fresh growth. Although i haven't really got room for more raspberries I took pity on the prunings and have stuck them quickly into the soil on my plot, I'll find a permanent home for them later.

I watered my potato bed etc but of course there was a huge downpour here this evening so i needn't have bothered!

Evening!
nobody can turn down a raspberry cane in need :)
I just take a bottle of water with me . My trips are of the little and often type, and rarely stay for more than 2 or 3 hours at most .
Gearing myself up to get ready for potato planting next week I think.
Hopefully, I will get the chance to get some work done tomorrow or Thursday - the grass is desperate to be cut, and I need to have a good tidy in the brassica cage too.

Another one who only takes a bottle of water here. Several people at my site do take tea, and even go up there on an evening and sit out on the plot, sometimes with a camping stove. It looks lovely as an idea, but I can't get past my need to pull up weeds.

My peas and broad beans are being slow about germinating and I'm getting impatient!!

Early potatoes went in last week: Lady Christl, Wilja, Charlotte.

Hopefully this weekend I will be able to get broad beans in.

DH has nearly finished putting in the boards for the beds on the new plot. Next challenge will be to start digging them and get the rotavator onto them.

DP managed to sneak out of work for an hour last night to give the garden a go-over with the rotavator (at last!)

I'm going to give it a bit of a fork this week and then start working on the layout. Then I can finally start shoving stuff in the ground! Very exciting

I always take a flask of coffee and a sandwich as at the moment I'm spending 4 or 5 hours in the garden at a go, trying to get it cleared. One of the first things I did was take a bench down and I always spend a bit of time sitting, looking, and listening. My garden is literally 2 minutes walk from my house but I still resent having to leave pop home for any reason - it feels like wasted time. I did learn the lesson not to have too much coffee the other day though - I may plan a composting toilet some time!!!!

Morning!
its raining In truth I am a bit bushed - i tend to take a few days to get over a clock change, and I had a very full on day yesterday.
So I think pottering and sowing may be todays things to do.
Though a pop down to get a savoy or some sprouts I think .
DGS and I sowed sunflowers yesterday. They came from a Christmas present ( not from me...) for DGS along with a little gardener bundle - he loves the gloves! No idea how big they are going to grow - no variety so we are going to have to roll with it .

I'm finding the clock change a bit of a struggle this time round too book!

The weather is odd here today. Very warm, but keeps unexpectedly raining for short showers when I'm least expecting it!

Could I have mistaken a loganberry for a hawthorn?

I cut down a bush which I assumed was a hawthorn the other day - I have hawthorn hedges round my allotment and the bush I cut down was adjacent to and looked just like the hawthorn - but I've just looked at the plan of the allotment that the previous owner gave me and there's a loganberry marked at this exact spot.

Do loganberry bushes get very woody? Might it look like a hawthorn before the leaves came out?

Thank you!

I think it's unlikely. Even when woody, loganberries are very clearly cane fruits - you might have mistaken it for a bramble, but probably not for a hawthorn.
Maybe keep an eye out and see if new canes pop up over the next few weeks (mine are just emerging). But they fruit on 1yo canes, so you'd still have a wait, alas!

(I mean they fruit on the previous year's canes, so 1 and a bit years old, really)

goodenough - I will be popping to my plot this afternoon - I will take a picture of mine, and you can maybe see if its so :)
I am so hoping for enough fruit this year Spotted - I think the birds managed to find most of them last year, so am looking to net them this year!

I don't think I could ever have enough berries and currants!
That said, I do eek out what I have harvested. I hide them and protect them like Gollum. Just this weekend I smuggled out some tayberries from from the freezer and had them in a crumble with the last of the stored apples. So so good.

So good that all of my propagated tay- and loganberries get to be planted out this year, even if it means that I'm causing myself more hassle in keeping them under control. The front garden tayberries were a triumph last year, and I shall make another thorny patch of them.

Oh, I forgot to say I'm undecided about netting, booky I'm not sure that I'd get the netting taut enough to not be worried about trapping birds by mistake.

Thank you everyone! I do think it probably is/was a hawthorn, but there are lots of what I thought were brambles around it, so I might have to leave the rest of the 'bed' (read: overgrown plot of weeds, brambles, couch grass, mares tail and gooseberries ) for a few weeks to see what emerges.

No garden for me today or tomorrow, but the forecast is good for Friday and I'm planning a whole day with a friend removing junk. I'm desperate to get the garden safe and fun for my DD and her friends - clearing the junk, levelling holes, laying lawn and getting the swing/slide up are my current jobs.

On the growing front, the next tasks are preparing my asparagus trench (I've read up since someone mentioned it here) and digging a new potato bed.

No plot yesterday, as I was out the whole day.
Today it's raining and suppose to tomorrow too.

Just digging to finish. Weather permitting it will be done by the end of next week.

Hi everyone what a lot of activity! I've been out of the game with another lurgy so no real gardening for me but we've been doing a lot of internet shopping.

We ordered a couple of additional arches because we put one up for first time last year for climbing beans and it was really quite pretty so I want to make it more of a tunnel feature than it was last year.

We've also decided to abandon one-off growbags for the tomatoes and just use compost in big planters, so have ordered some new planters as don't have enough.

I'd be interested to hear how you all grow your tomatoes?

Holly any sign of your broad bean seedlings yet? I sowed some 2 weeks ago in the greenhouse and outdoors and no sign of either yet. However my autumn sown ones are looking lovely with beautiful white and purple flowers.

Afternoon!
well, it has rained on and off this afternoon, but managed nearly an hour at the plot. I ended up digging up the last of the sprout plants , and bringing home the last harvest, and putting the roots and stalks in the recycling trailer.
Spotted - funny thing is, I don't net the raspberries,they don't seem to bother with them but the loganberry was on a short trellis last year, perfect for perching and stealing. I have put up a new, taller, trellis for it this year, and hoped to drape the net from near the top over the front of the bush .
Pic is the loganberry goodenough
Ickle - the exciting bit to look forward to - sowing and planting!
clara - hope the broad beans come up soon for you. Mine came up fine in the greenhouse .
Tomatoes - I buy big multi purpose compost bags, lay them on their side and bang down , so the tomatoes have a deeper root run. Two plants per bag ( 50L bag), in the greenhouse.

I've just pricked out my sweet peas. Rhubarb from seed, kohl rabbi and swiss chard to do on the weekend, and probably broad beans. I've also found a lot more snail families, they are no more.

Not a very exciting picture, but I think I'm happy with this sort of lay out. (The green lines marking paths, but they will just be grass strips probably)

I thought I could do small things near the wall that are nice for picking - maybe strawberries, lettuce, that kind of thing. Then some fruit bushes like raspberries towards the right hand corner, tall beans near the gate maybe and then lots of flowers in between it all. I did wonder about having four squares with a cross shape path in between, to make it easier for crop rotation, but I've just fallen in love with the edible garden linked above by a PP, and want the more relaxed approach I think! Am I making a terrible mistake?

Have got some flower buckets (known as 'MFBs' n another forum but not from Morrisons!) to grow my toms n this year, they are black plastic,probably 15 or 20 litres capacity and the local shop saves them for me as they can't be recycled by the shop but are put in the bin - I have 10 of these so far. Went to a tesco yesterday and cajoled some of their lovely square flower buckets out of them, about 30 litre capacity, though Tesco do recycle them they let me take a dozen! I will put some holes in the bottom and then,plant toms/ aubergines etc in them.

My broad beans in pots show roots out the bottom of the pot a good week or so before the leaves appear, I have another dozen going at the moment to join the ones already planted out.

Another asparagus spear is on the way!

Hello just checking in as apart from plodding out to the greenhouse to collect spare seedlings fur a friend at work , I've done nothing the past few days. So excited to be heading for a holiday / time to garden. I'm tempted by your sideways growbag idea book as I need to pot up some tomatoes and I'm out of big pots. I'm going to have so many left over so I'm desperately trying to give them away.

gin could you put some bean arches over the paths as suggested by others? I think it will look lovely - as long as you are happy with access for weeding and picking. You could build in a little bench area in right corner so you could sit amongst it all??