Arbour / Pagoda grapevine support is finished, plus pictoral crop updates & balance sheet at 19th August 2010

 Once again I get 2 days off with a weather forecast thats less than perfect, but none the less, we managed to get a fair bit of work done before the rain arrived!

Yesterday we had a trip out to see if we could find something to top the uprights on the arbour (we found nothing that was at the right price, but we have hit upon an idea..... large pinecones!), but we did manage to find a bargain or two, a lovely birdhouse for £7 and a large redcurrant bush for £7.50! After a lovely lunch at Pat and Colin's (courgette soup, with courgette bread and courgette cake for afters!) we managed to get to the plot for a couple of hours (between the rain showers) and get a bit of painting done on the arbour (first coat on the uprights), then off to Stockport BBKA meeting about showing honey, along with candlemaking and making Mead! Needless to say Lee and I are now very interested in getting hold of some homebrew supplies to try our hand at making mead in the not too distant future!

 So, the arbour is now basically finished, its been painted, the birdhouse has been mounted at the back of the shed, and the bird feeders are hanging from the front, plus the 2 clematis have been planted in the beds directly in front of the uprights, next year they should grow up and over the front, making a lovely floral display!

 I've managed to get 4 lovely 6" celtic greenman plaques from ebay (spring, summer, autumn, winter), which will be hung from the front of the crosspieces, to cover the joints where they meet the uprights, I'll take some piccies to show you once they arrive and are mounted! All thats left to do now is repaint the shed, then find and mount some large pine cones at the top of the 3 uprights! I'd also like to set up a weather station of some type, possibly with a 'witch on broomstick' weathervane mounted on the arbour, but they are a bit too expensive atm, so I'm hoping that I may be able to either find one as a bargain, or perhaps get one for my Birthday!

 Lee planted the redcurrant and the clematis for me whilst I was painting, a relatively easy job, but one that left him with mucky hands....... mind you, not as mucky as me, I ended up covered in green paint!

 The redcurrant is a self fertile variety, we popped into the Vicarage Garden Center nearby, looking for a greenman plaque or something paganish for the top of the uprights on the arbour, and Lee spotted this redcurrant for £7.50, we'd seen them elsewhere for this price, but about 6" tall, so this lovely specimen just had to be brought back to the plot and planted! We cleared the bed and added some well rotted FYM before planting it, and are hoping that next year we can underplant it with a stunning floral display..... if we can learn what and how to grow!

The 2 frog tealight holders (at the top of the posts on the compost bin) were something one of our friends bought us last year for the plot, we've not yet found a place for them..... until now!

 I managed to get some general piccies of the plot today, once we'd done the bee inspections (Hive 7 now has 5 good queen cells in it, hopefully this will enable them to get a queen hatched, mated and ready for winter, even if we have to feed them), no-one got stung today (makes a change, its been 5 weeks since I wasnt stung!)! We've also got another super of capped honey in Hive 2, so hopefully it will be extracted next week!

So, as you can see, all the recent rain has caused a lot of weed germination, and with out attention being on the harvesting and building the grapevine arbour / pergola, they have got a bit out of hand, but hopefully we'll be able to get them taken care of soon!

 The sweetcorn, squashes, pumpkins, sunflowers are doing really well, this is one bed that doesnt need much weeding!

 The late sown broadies are just starting to crop nopw, the borlottis beans and late sown runners are doing well, but the purple podded peas are about over! We've left some pods to dry for next years seeds!

 The early runners are going great guns, and the leeks (although weed infested) are doing really well!

 The new strawberry bed we planted this year is coming on really well, these were grown from seed this year, so next year they should be well established and possibly be ready to provide us with a good crop!

 The late maincrop spuds are still growing, although they are fighting the blight!

 The main strawberry bed, pretty well established now after being cleared and replanted last winter, we're going to give it a good top dressing this winter and hopefully they will be even better than they were this year!

 The herb bed, flowering!

 Some of the toms in the greenhouse! We've had mixed results in the greenhouses, lots of crops, but because of this the string supports we set up have been snapping, so we've a few plants that are now growing in a heap, I've tried to retie the string on a few, but doing so usuallt damages the plant even more, so we've decided to let them be and use better string next year!

 The aubergines and peppers / chillies in the hothouse have done really well, despite the hot house falling apart around them! This is the reason we decided to treat ourselves to a proper coldframe before next year, we've seen one on another plot that we liked, but hadn't seen any for a reasonable price.....

........ this is the design we like, but online they were going for up to £50, until I spotted one in Argos sale, at half price! So, we bought 2 of them at £14.99 each! Next year the peppers and chillies and aubergines will be growing in 2 of these, not sure exactly which bed they are going in yet, or whether we will extend them upwards a little bit by using some scaffolding boards, we were hoping to have a look at them today, but then the rain started to fall!

Anyhows, cropping is going well, but with everything else that we've been working on we've not been concentrating as much as we'd like to, so with the weekend booked off as hols (for Lee's 40th on Sunday - BBQ on the plot with friends and fellow allotmenteers), its possible we may have another bumper harvest day on Saturday.... weather permitting!

Anyhows, onto the balance sheet!

Balance Sheet Update - 15th August 2010

Total Veg Plot Costs 2010

Rent + Subs for 2 full plots £100
Seeds £20
Seed Spuds £20
Onion Sets £6
Growbags £15
Chicken Manure Pellets £8
Plastic 'wannabe' Polytunnel £61
Bamboo Canes £8
Flower Plants £28
Scaffolding Boards £100
Watering Cans £8
Soft Fruits £16
Clematis £10
Arbour materials £ 40
Cold Frames (2) £30 (1/2 price at Argos)
Redcurrant £7.50
Birdhouse £7
Birdfeeders (for arbour) £10

Total Costs £ 504

The costings have again gone up, with the purchase of the bordhouse, some birdfeeders and 2 cold frames for use next year as our pepper / aubergine hothouse, a bargain at £14.99 each!

Total Veg Plot Harvests 2010

Rhubarb £ 35
Fartichokes £ 4
Volunteer Spuds £15
First Early Spuds £15
Lettuce £12
Radish £12
Garlic £85
Strawberries £65
Raspberries £35
Blackberries £8
Peas £40
Broad Beans £42
Courgettes £70
French Beans £50
Red Onions £20
White Onions £50
Cabbages £5
Peppers £4
Tomatoes £15
Turnip £4
Runner Beans £20
Broccolli £20
Apples £4
Plums £5

Total Veg Plot Harvests £ 623

So, a total nett profit of £ 129 so far this year, with a large amount of harvests still to come!

We've spent more on the plot this year than ever before, with the polytunnel, scaffolding boards, building the grapevine arbour and the 2 coldframes, but next years spend should be back to a much more usual lower level of just seeds, onion sets, rent, subs and seed spuds...... hopefully!

Hope your costs arent too high, your weeds are manageable and your crops are providing bumper harvests!

Thanks for reading!

Hothouse disaster averted, Queen Marking, allotment judging, community orchard and some great news!

What a difference a week makes! We've had some good news this week, the permission for the community orchard we've been talking about has been granted (though we cant start work until the autumn), and I've been given a different branch at work! The new branch is 10 miles closer to home (and a much easier drive, which should halve my travelling time), a lot newer building and a better size, smaller but with the same range of stock (making it much easier to run on our new staff structure) and means I'm going back to working for my old boss, a fantastic guy whos the best manager I've ever worked for! (Originally he was my branch manager, helped me get promoted to supervisor, then when he became an Area Manager he was the one who appointed me to my first store as manager!) I'm really looking forwards to the new branch and working for my old boss again, its going to be a lot less stressful and will free up 45 mins to an hour a day!

So, we got to the plot at a reasonable time today (our first of 2 days off), to see everything has shot up! Its got to be something to do with all the rain we've had recently, but most of our crops are looking really good, full of vigour and growing at a tremendous rate (unfortunately, so are the weeds, but thats another story!! Lol!) The plots arent looking too bad at all really, a few weeds coming up in the paths and a fair number of weed seedlings in the beds (which with the ground being so wet are impossible to remove with the hoe), but as soon as we get a dry enough spell for the topsoil to dry a bit we'll soon have it weed free again! Unfortunately the second visit of the Trafford Allotment Judges (the top judge who comes to check the plots that could be on for a possible certificate) has already happened, so removing the weeds wont make any diference to the judging, but will allow our crops to grow to their full potential! We should find out the judging results on Monday, so fingers crossed that the plots werent too weed infested to negate our earlier hard work in the hopes of getting a certificate!

The garlic is now finally ready for harvest (hopefully tomorrow, if the rain breaks for long enough), the early spuds are also looking about ready too, so we're going to take them tomorrow and plant that bed up with some more leeks!

The sweetcorn / squashes / pumpkin / sunflowers are all growing like mad, looking really good this year! Mind you, Lee thought he'd try and make you think that they were even bigger, so he had me take..........

......... this picture, in the hopes you'd think they were up to 9' tall already! Lol!

Mind you, its not all good, the blight we've been treating against seems to be gaining the upper hand in a couple of beds, this one of early spuds will be coming out tomorrow, along with......

........ this bed of second early spuds! We'll be planting the last of our leeks into these beds once they've been emptied!

The early maincrop spuds however are still fighting the blight, we'll keep treating them with bordeaux mixture and see how they go!

The late main spuds are looking much better, hardly any signs of blight here!

The heavy rain and winds we've had recently have also taken their toll on our hothouse, some of the brackets that we've reused from the old plastic greenhouse (that broke last year and we cannibalised to make the hothouse) have given up, so some emergancy repairs had to be carried out! Fortunately none of the plants were damaged in the collapse!

So, some of the things we spotted today....... the first broccolli crown is beginning to form!

The grapes are fattening up nicely..........

.............. and the first blueberries are now ready!

The brassicas are looking fab..............

............... as are the maincrop onions, these 2 are 4 1/2" diameter, and still swelling! Looks like its going to be a bumper year for a lot of crops!

The Dwarf French Beans are cropping like mad, we've had french beans the last 2 nights, and theres enough on the plants to allow us to freeze a few lb tomorrow!

The turnips and swede are fantastic, another bumper crop from these this year methinks!

The early runner beans have topped the cane supports and have loads of flowers, another possible bumper crop!

The borlotti beans are just topping the canes and beginning to flower, so hopefully these too will be nice and productive!

The Climbing French Beans however are still only just climbing the cane supports, so no idea yet as to what sort of crops we may possibly get!

The new strawberry bed (from seed) has alos come on really well, although we possibly may get a few fruit from it (some of the plants are flowering), but hopefully it will be well established for next year and increase our strawberry yield!

The lavender we grew from seed (in the pots surrounding the ploytunnel) is doing really good, we'll be transplanting some of these into the front beds on plot 1 next year, to supplement our soft fruit planting plans!

Whilst dodging the heavy showers today (inbetween doing the bee inspections) we talked about our soft fruit plans for next year, we've decided that these 4 beds at the front of plot 1 are going to have (from left to right) a new plum tree (underplanted with lavender and foxgloves), a goji berry (underplanted with sage and a few flowers), a redcurrant (underplanted with other herbs) and in the last bed (next to the compost bin) another goji berry (underplanted with flowers!)

So, onto our beekeeping adventure today! Pat and Colin were away today at the RHS Tatton Park Flower Show, so as the weather forecast looked better for today than tomorrow, we decided to get the inspections done! Aswell as inspecting the hives today we decided that as our hives are all now viable, we needed to 'mark' the queens, which makes it easier to spot them and allows you to be sure that the queen hasnt been superceeded by a new queen without your knowledge!

The queens are marked with a dot of colour on their back, the colour changes every year, so the idea is that you can tell how old the queen is from the colour of her mark. This years colour is blue, and last years colour is green! The marks are made with a special paint marker pen, that doesnt smell (which could cause the colony to reject the queen as any smell could mask her pheromones), but in order to hold the queen still - to apply the dot of paint - you have to use a 'crown of thorns'!

A crown of thorns is a queen cage that can be pressed into the honeycomb in order to trap the queen and hold her still for marking!

You have to be careful not to drown the queen, so its a good idea to dab the pen before use (we know of one queen that was suffocated when the paint came out too fast), then apply a dot to her back! This queen is the one from our Nucleus in Apiary 2.

And this queen is the one from Hive 5 (the headbangers!)

Once marked its much easier to spot the queen!

So, the inspections went ok, the bees were a bit feisty (possibly due to the weather and threat of thunder), and one from Hive 4 (Hippy Hive) managed to sting Lee through his gauntlet! (His first sting, hes officially a proper beekeeper now! Lol!) One mistake we did make tho, was to bring the super of frames we extracted into Apiary 1 before we were ready to put it onto a hive! As soon as the bees discovered it, they went beserk, masses of them went to it to remove any remaining honey that was coating the comb, so we had to leave it there until they had finished!

We didnt find any frames of honey fully capped, (although there are some not too far from being capped), so we werent able to harvest any this week (and as all the hives still had space for bringing in honey) nor did we actually need to give the super to any of the hives!

So, fianlly, a couple of pictures of the area thats going to become our new allotment community orchard in the not too distant future!

Currently its being used as a tree nursery, which was set up by Groundworks and is operated by Red Rose Forest, but due to budget changes it hasnt been used much recently, so we applied for permission to take it back, and got the word today! Not only can we have it as a community orchard, but Red Rose will help us with clearing and possibly with some fruit trees! We're going to have a word with a couple of folks from Trafford council about plans and what (if any) support we may be able to get, either through the council or from any grants that we may qualify for!

Tomorrow we're off again, so will be going to the plot and harvesting, so there could be a balance sheet update tomorrow!

Hope your crops are growing well and your harvests are bunper ones! Thanks for reading!

Time for a pictoral update of the plots!

Morning Guys n Gals! Apologies for no blog update yesterday, with only a few days left of our hols we decided to push on and get as much done as we can, not only to try for a commended in the allotment judging, but also to make it easier for us to keep on top of things when we go back to work on Friday! We were at the allotment for 10am yesterday, and left at 830pm last night, if we were employers forcing our staff to work as hard and as long, then I'm sure we'd end up in trouble, but as its a labour of love, then its worth it (even tho my back and feet disagree! lol!)

Both plots have been (almost) fully weeded, the messy areas tidied up, all traces of untidyness removed and the few uncultivated areas are now planted up with late sowings of various crops!

So, we'll start with Plot 1, completely weeded, the broad beans and victorian purple podded peas have been tied round with string to try and keep them under a bit of control (and stop them falling onto the paths)

The early leeks have been weeded, as have the beans! The small areas between the beans and the paths (to the left) have now been planted with lettuce seeds, protected from the local rabbits with upturned empty hanging baskets, we hope that this may keep them safe from being nibbled!

The swede and turnips are looking great, mind you, there was a lot of weeds mixed in with them, so it took a bit of time to hand weed them, specially after the rain on Sunday night meant we were unable to hoe them!

The brassica beds have also been completely weeded, some of the cabbages are looking great, not ong now methinks! Lee also finished sorting the last bit of path near the polytunnel, so its been completely covered with weed control fabric and bark chippings, it looks great!

I spent a few hours in the greenhouses, weeding, tidying, tying in the side shoots, side shooting where needed, and although it was a hot, sweaty and dirty job (dont you just love pulling weeds up and getting showered in dry soil, especially when you are all sticky with sweat!), but they look much better for it! This greenhouse is the smaller one (8'x6') that was on Plot 1 when we took it over, we've 9 toms in here (we decided to limit the numbers of plants in the greenhouses this year in an attempt to reduce the chances of blight that we suffered with last year!)

Finally for Plot 1, the path to the right hand edge of the plot, where we moved the compost bins to this year, weeded, tidied and the straggly bits of trees/bushes that were coming out into the path area have all been cut back, making it much neater!

So, onto Plot2! Again, the whole plot has been weeded, the paths rebarked and the messy areas tidied. Lee tackled the overgrown area to the left of the apiary at the bottom, removing the weeds, relaying the path in front of it and covering that area with black plastic. Its where we go to observe the bees in Hives 1 and 2, (which are both in Apiary 1), but we're not sure what we are doing with it yet! Lee wants to keep it as a viewing area, so I've told him it will need properly leveling, covering and bark chippings laid, with perhaps a seat or two put there (and some steps to get up to it), but I'm not so sure it wouldnt be better to put some small fruit bushes on there, say some redcurrants and possibly Goji berries, but its a job for later in the year!

The bed in the middle here (covered with fleece) is our maincrop carrots, we have always had major problems with carrots on the plot, generally with carrot root fly attacking them, so in an attempt to try and keep them safe we've delayed planting the maincrops until after the cow parsley is out (local lore says its safe to plant carrots then as the carrot fly leave them alone, but we'll see) and covered them with fleece! I know its late to plant carrots, but we may get a crop, even if its smaller than it would otherwise be!

The onion and garlic beds have been weeded and the volunteer spuds removed! We got about 8lb of lovely new spuds from the volunteers in these beds, some of which we had for tea last night, wow, what flavour!

Just some of the volunteer new potatoes! Yummy, especially with some fresh peas and broad beans!

The garlic is looking great, almost ready to be harvested, but as we are in no rush for this bed we'll leave it until they are completely ready!

The sweetcorn and squash/pumpkin bed is looking great! Lee weeded it whilst I weeded the spuds, we have high hopes for a good harvest of sweetcorn this year!

Plot 2's greenhouse was also tidied, weeded and had the sideshoots tied in yesterday, another long hot job, but worth it! Theres lots of toms in here, and the first cucumbers have now set, hopefully we will be eating them soon!

The pond area just has a few bits of wood to be moved to tidy it up, the plants we put in a week or two ago are doing well!

The spud beds are looking good, the blight treatment seems to be working, though we have lost a couple of haulms, but I'm reapplying some more bordeaux solution today to help keep them safe!

The last thing we did yesterday was to give everything a really good watering, with the recent hot windy weather and lack of rain the ground is bone dry, so regular watering is essential to keep the plants healthy and ensure we get some decent crops!

So, its not looking too bad at all, hopefully we'll be able to keep on top of watering, weeding and harvesting once we go back to work on Friday!

So, still to do? The 2 broccolli beds at the front of Plot 2 still need weeding, there's a small bed besides the fartichokes that we are planting up with the homegrown sweet potato plantlets, tho we have to build another hothouse for them as they are really a tropical plant! There's a few small area that I'm going to plant some catch crops of salad in, a few pieces of wood in the compost bin at the front of Plot 2 to tidy up, the front of the compost bin on plot1 want the grass trimming, then its time to get some more harvests in, it looks like the first of the summer fruiting raspberries are just about ready, so I'll be taking some of them, plus more strawbs, more peas and beans, the last harvest of rhubarb and anything else that looks ready, possibly some turnip thinnings (they are at large marble size now)

Finally a couple of pictures, the first is from Pat and Colin's plot, in their 'nature reserve', we noticed the other night when we were BBQing a chinese lantern in the sky that didnt seem to be working quite right, what we didnt know was that it was coming down on the allotment!

It landed on the edge of thier pond, and set fire to the liner, damaging it for about 3'! Its a right mess and is going to be difficult to repair, and will leak if the water level gets any higher, but just goes to show that these chinese lanterns that have recently become popular arent actually as safe as you would think! I'm just glad it didnt land on someones shed, or in the apiary!

And finally, I've seen this insect around the plot a few times, it looks like 2 dead twigs, really effective camouflage, but I've no idea what it is, can anyone enlighten me?

Oh, and the beetle we saw and photographed last week has now been identified, its a Violet Ground Beetle, and eats slugs, so its a welcome visitor to the plot!

Hope your plots are looking good and that the harvests are going to be bumper ones!

More updates to follow soon, thanks for reading!