I got my allotment!

1st February 2007

I’ve got an allotment! Had a phone call on Monday from an Irish chappie saying a plot had become available and I could go take a look at it to decide if I wanted to take it. He told me it was a bit “dirty” and would probably take a lot of work to get it into a decent state, so I was expecting the worst. When I went down and had a look I was quite surprised – firstly at how big the plot was (my mind started running wild about all the extra vegetables I’d have space to grow! And then about how good it looked – I was expecting loads of rubbish and masses of brambles and nettles and stuff. Okay, so it was covered in grass and a couple of patches of brambles, but it wasn’t as bad as I had thought. So I said I’d take it, and the nice Irish chappie looked at me and asked me if I was sure (which made me reconsider for a second!) but I said yes and so the plot is mine! Saturday was my first day down there and I did a bit of clearing – got rid of the brambles and a load a dry grass and weeds, and covered over an area with a tarpaulin I had found in the compost bins. Hopefully that will give me a helping hand with the weeds. Think I’ll have a bonfire with all the dead stuff if the site allows it. I also met a couple of nice people, my two neighbours. Both were very welcoming and said I have a lot of hard work ahead of me but wished me luck with it. One even gave me a barrow-load of strawberry runners to plant! I spent about 4 hours down there and was quite pleased with the start I had made. I went down again on Sunday and met another man who had owned the plot a few years ago. He lent me two more large sheets of plastic and helped me to cover another big patch. He was really nice and came back over with a bag of potatoes for me to take home! My next-plot-but-one neighbour cam along and introduced himself and gave me a load of advice about the best times to plant things and was keen to promote planting potatoes! Hadn’t planned to grow potatoes but I suppose if they can be planted quite early then at least they can be getting on with growing in the first bit of ground I prepare whilst I get on with preparing more space for when the other things can be planted. As most of the ground was now covered with the plastic, I didn’t have much left to do other than start to dig, so that’s what I did! I had started off by raking up more dead grass and came across some green tops sticking out of the ground and thought they looked like parsnips as there was a cream top sticking out too. I dug around them and pulled up a root about 4 inches long, but when I sniffed it I was disappointed because it didn’t smell like parsnip at all. It did however smell really familiar and then I realised it smelled like horseradish! I dug loads up and piled it up, all pleased with my first harvest! Later on though, one of my neighbours didn’t seem convinced that it was horseradish, so I will have to check before I eat it! Anyway, that had started me off with digging the ground and I was really pleased to find that it was quite easy to turn over and was nice and crumbly but held its shape when squished into a ball, just how the books describe good soil – yey! So by the end of the day I had managed to fork over a 3’ by 15’ patch, ready for either my strawberry runners or a set of spuds!

First load of pics...

The first day of work, clearing up...

Found a toad...












Then I dig some digging...









Gorgeous skies too...



Monday 5th February 2007

Just been down to the plot again – was all ready and prepared to go to work and remembered that I had booked the day off! Another day for digging – woohoo! It was so quiet and peaceful, I think I could spend every day down there. I got stuck in and finished off the strip and also dug out a bramble stump. Well, as much of it as I could get at, those roots don’t half get about! I’d made some pea and ham soup this morning so I had some of that in my flask, just what I needed at lunchtime. I dug a small patch at the front of the plot and sowed some sweet peas then covered them over with s sheet of pvc. Not sure if they will be okay with all the frost we’ve been getting, but hopefully the plastic will protect them and they will get a nice early start! I got a fab surprise too. As it was my birthday on Friday, my friends at work got me a pressie - £30 of garden centre vouchers! Bonus! Just have to decide what to buy with them now…

Allotment may be closer...?

Okay, so still not much gardening news to report back - although I did ring the allotment man yesterday and he said that he will ring me at the weekend when he has had chance to look at the list so he can tell me whereabouts I am on it. Hopefully I am near the top!

I have mostly cleared all the pots in my garden now, just a few peppers and chillis remain, and my one and only aubergine which I will be eating soon. Still got some bulbs left to plant - I put some tulips in at the end of October and I have some more to go in and also some snowdrops, which I am thinking I might put some on the edge of my "wild" area of the grass. ALso will put some in pots to have around the front of the house. We have some bulbs on the windowsill at work - dwarf daffs and tulips and large flowering crocus. They came from Morissons in super-cute little wooden pots that just look lovely on the sill. I'll try to remember to bring my camera in to work to take a pic of them. Although they've not sprouted yet so maybe I'll wait til then to make the pic more interesting!

Some other news - went to see The Feeling last Friday in Liverpool and they were FAB, and I'm going to see the Zutons tonight in Manchester. Can't wait, except I'm totally knackered cos I stayed up late last night making seed packets to do swaps with the nice people from A4A. Oh well, I'm sure I will overcome my tiredness when I get there!

That's all for now, will try to post some pics from the gigs, if any of them are good enough.

OH YEAH! Me and my mum have entered the Moonlight Walk, a ladies only half marathon that sets off at midnight! It's not tilnext June, but I've set up a sponsorship website if anyone fancies donating a few quid? Very worthy cause, check out my "Moonlight Walk" link to the left over there...

Not blogged for ages... Update!

Well, it’s been ages since I last posted – a mixture of not much going on in the garden, stuff going on elsewhere, and me being lazy! So here’s a quick update of the non-gardening stuff – I went to see Robbie Williams at Roundhay Park, Leeds on September 8th and it was FAB! Click the link to the right to see some pics. Saw my bro and his girlfriend yesterday with their dog Ayesha, she’s a cutie… The last time I saw her she was the size of my trainer – look at her now!

I’ve also been doing a bit of running and entered my first race of the year with my friend Andrea – Blackpool Beach 10k. It was actually shortened on the day to 5miles due to “adverse weather condition”, i.e. wind! What can you expect on the sea front? Here’s us running!

At the start...

Yes, we're at the back!

With our T-shirts!

Okay, so now for the gardening. Not heard from the allotment man and I know it’s early days but thought I might ring up at the beginning of October if only to see whether I’ve been added to the list and how near the top/bottom I am. In my garden I have had some firsts…

First set of aubergine flowers…



Then my first aubergine! I know it’s really late in the season for this to be starting, but I only sowed in May! See how it’s growing…



And here’s my ‘first’ pepper – bigger now! And turning red too!



My first ever strawberry! It’s an alpine variety, Mignonette – my parents were round the day I found it, so it got cut into four and we all had a tiny sliver each! Yum!



And my first passionflower, it really is beautiful! It has had buds for quite a while now, and I just happened to glance over at it today, as I wasn’t doing any work in the garden, and saw this…










I also have a new project in the garden. I was mowing the lawn last week and due to a combination of lots of wet weather, and my laziness (again!) it hadn’t been mown for a while, so was quite long. Anyway, I decided to leave a section long, to have as a “wild” section to hopefully attract some creatures into the garden. I know there is a bat that lives nearby because I’ve seen it swooping over in the evenings, so it would be nice to attract some nice creepy crawlies for it to eat! I plan to sow some wild flower seeds there so it is a bit meadow-like. Watch this space!



Everything else is still ticking over nicely – getting some lovely tomatoes that my bananas are helping along to ripeness! I made a tomato sauce for pasta tonight and didn’t use tinned tomatoes – it was the best! I hope the rest all turn red so I can make more sauce to store. The Cayenne chillies still have loads of chillis on them – here’s the littlest hobo…



The other varieties that I started late seem to be a bit stunted and I haven’t got any buds on them. I guess that might be as far as they go this year, but I could always overwinter them indoors and give them a nice early start next year.



In the next month or so I hope to start a plan for next year – I’ve bought some seeds already from the T&M sale, but have just received the catalogue in the post and I can feel another spend coming on! I really hope that I’ll have an allotment next year, when I rang up to enquire about plots I was told that there were only three people on the list and they were likely to be getting their plots in the next month or so once they had had time to tidy them up and sort out which ones were free. So fingers crossed!

Exciting news!

Well, I have sent off my application for an allotment! Whoop whoop! The guy said there is only a short waiting list, of about three months so fingers crossed I might have one before the year is out!

Also exciting stuff happening in the garden - my toms are ripening!



My costulotu fiorentino - am pleased with these as they were seeds given to me by my OH's mum who had no luck with them last year, and these have worked! Yippee! I've picked these two now and given them to her, hopefully they are tasty! I'm sure she'll tell me if they're not!



My alicante - this is the first one I started with and they're looking good! Am saving them until the weekend when my friends are coming round for a barbie, and I think we'll have them on a salad. Yum!

Growth standstill

Well, things seem to have come to a standstill in the kitchen garden recently. Tomatoes are still green, as are sweet peppers and most of the chillies. Orelia courgettes have been non-existant for a while now – I think there has been a lack of male flowers for pollination as fruit have been appearing but then falling off before developing. The Zucchini are not doing too badly, but I’m not overrun with them as I had expected I would be. However, there was a nice sight in the garden this morning – a huge bee in the open flowers. Lovely!





And here is Daisy, one of the local moggies. Quite friendly but can be a bit moody too. No more sightings of Mr Bunny so hopefully he will have been taken into somebody’s care.



Aubergines are starting to get going though – not as advanced as they should be at this time of year I don’t think, but I started them quite late (sometime in May). Anyway, they all have little tiny buds on them now so fingers crossed they will turn to flowers, then into fruit! Always the optimist! I have repotted three of them into bigger pots and they seem to be loving that. The others will unfortunately have to wait due to lack of funding in the garden area! Skint again.



I also have some okra but they are not doing that well – this is the best one…




I think that all the plants have been liking the weather recently – rain, sun, rain, sun, rain, sun… I can’t believe that today I overheard someone saying there was a touch of autumn in the air (!?!?!?!?!) Noooooo! There must be much more sunshine for ripening!

There’s not really much else to report on in the garden so here’s a few pictures of where I went at the weekend…. (Cockermouth, near Lake Bassenthwaite in the lake district)

This is the north part of Lake Windemere, on the journey up.






Cockermouth castle…





The sky!




Some mountains to the east of Lake Bassenthwaite, taken from Thornthwaite.





Geese! They hissed at me, so took the pic and ran!




There was a Food Festival in Cockermouth town centre and these lads were entertaining the crowds with some street circus – quite impressive actually!