A tour around the allotment - part 2

So last week I took some photos on my day off on Wednesday, and shared my Allotment Tour Part 1. Now it's time for Part 2! The photos are from the same day so things've changed a bit since then but you get the idea.

Continuing around the far end, in my fruity area, I have a lovely red gooseberry bush (one of the first things I bought for the plot) you can see the pretty flowers here. It's covered in them! I'm not very diligent when it comes to pruning and tend to let it just grow all over the place. This does make picking the fruit tricky as the branches are very thorny, so I stick a load of canes or sticks into the ground and tie the branches to them, trying to space the branches out so I can reach through easier.

Red dessert gooseberry

I actually have 6 gooseberry bushes! The red one which I bought, a green one given to me by a friend at work (which over the winter I moved slightly and split into two plants) and 3 green ones from a plot neighbour, which I've put in along one of my boundaries. I think they're all dessert varieties, they're very sweet anyway.

In this photo you can see one near the base of the large redcurrant bush (centre) - this is one I moved and split as it was even closer to the currant before. The red gooseberry is just to the left of this. Next to the red gooseberry is a row of 3 different blueberry varieties that I bought last year.

Here's one of the blueberries, it has loads of flowers but the leaves are a bit red which I think I means it's not that happy, I probably need to increase the acidity of the soil around it more as blueberries like low pH. I have given them some mixed leafmold mulch and I only water with rainwater but I should try and find some pine leafmold or something.

Next up is one of my 'U' shaped raised beds, made out of pallets. Across one side of my plot there's a steep slope, so I made these to try and level it up. They're 3 pallets wide all the way round, with a space one pallet wide, two pallets deep, in the middle of the U. I have two of these U beds facing each other. They're a few years old now and starting to rot, plus the couch grass has got into the beds, so at some point I'll need to do something different here. They've been good while they lasted though.

In this piccie are some short rows of brassicas I've just sown, to transplant elsewhere later on. There's already some couch grass poking through, darn. To the left is where I've had most of my over wintered chard, leeks and corn salad, under some environmesh.

Here you can see the change in height, I'm standing in the lowest spot.

Just to left are two small beds of garlic, where I had my early potatoes last year. Today I moved the enviromesh over these to protect them from leek moth caterpillars

And beside that is my new hugel bed, currently under plastic. I've made it in a natural dip: first a layer of small logs from the buddliea cuttings, then smaller sticks, then bramble leafmold, then old compost from the tomatoes at home. I took photos as I went along, so will share them another time. I'm going to plant two squshes in it this year.

Up in one of my U beds I've left a couple of parsnips to go to seed. The flowers will be good for wildlife first and maybe I'll get self sown parsnips too. Under the enviromesh behind is most of my overwintered brassicas (mainly PSB and kale)

Here you can see it from the other side, near the top of my plot. I have a bramble hedge all the way down the left (East) side which produces lots of tasty blackberries for free!

Behind me are the two dwarf Apple trees I showed last time, here they are again as a reminder

I could go even more but that's enough for now, I hope you enjoyed Part 2 of the tour!

 

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Harvest Monday - a giant parsnip

It's warmed up this week and on Saturday I went to collect some really well-rotted horse poo from a farm owned by the dad of a friend of a friend, (with said friend). It was nice being out in the countryside, with skylarks and yellowhammers singing (the first yellowhammer I've heard for a while, with its 'little bit of bread and no cheeeeese' characteristic song).

I don't have a car anymore so we went in my friend's and filled up 10 bags (5 each). We dropped off hers first (she has an allotment on a different site to me) and then went to drop off mine. It had been a lovely morning so far but all went awry when we realised the housing estate next to the allotments was cordoned off by police and there were police cars and ambulances blocking the area, including the allotments. My friend did a skilful turn around in the narrow road and we instead dropped the bags off in my front garden (where they still sit). A police helicopter was overhead for quite a while too. I found out later that there had been a serious incident. I won't go into detail but this kind of thing is fortunately unusual in Norwich and they caught the person responsible that afternoon.

So I'll have to take the horse poo bags down to the plot one by one on my little trolley, which can take a surprising amount of weight. I'll also keep one of the bags at home and use it on my tomatoes. There's still a huge muck heap left so we'll probably go back another time. I'll use this lot for the potatoes and the next lot for squashes.

I had a few hours on the plot yesterday and got carried away doing none of the things on my list. I did move my leaf mould pile nearer to the edge of my plot so that it's less in the way, as and when I clear that part. My two robin friends came to say hello and when my back was turned, they decided to get active - I'd put a small stack of pots on their side, on top of a bag of leaf mould that I'm going to use soon. Over the next half hour they started filling it up with leaves! Ok, so whilst this was really sweet, it was a terrible place for a nest, completely open and at the mercy of the local cats. So I moved it a couple of feet away, wedging it into the low branches of my buddliea, facing away from the prevailing wind, and cut a load of brambles and stuck them all around it as some protection. The robins were a bit confused and one kept going back to the place the pot had been but they were also hopping around where I'd moved it to so I hope they realise what had happened. I don't know how long it might take for them to lay eggs but I'll have a very careful peep next time I'm down.

In other naturey news, I saw my first butterfly of the year (a small tortoiseshell) and also sadly the remains of a dead fox in the undergrowth at the end of my plot. I hope it died of natural causes. I left it untouched as other beasties will make use of it and I'm not doing anything with that space this year.

It started to rain and I realised I hadn't picked any harvests yet so I did a quick whip round - the parsnips had started shooting again(after losing their leaves over winter). This means they start to get woody, so I dug them all up. This included two huge specimens! A nice surprise. Here's one of them, that got roasted with some potatoes.

I picked a whole load of greens too - most of my Nero kale, so that it will produce some tender side shoots from the remaining stalks this spring. I also picked my last tiny cabbages as I'll be planting out early potatoes in the patch soon, after weeding and adding horse poo. I picked some curly kale too. Didn't get any photos of all of them but here's the Nero, not a bad crop.

I meant to pick some more corn salad but forgot in the rush.

Oh and here's how my tom seedlings are getting on (pic from yesterday morning), they're starting to get their true leaves. And one of the chillis had germinated too.

My potatoes in storage have started to shoot so Friday night I made a big pan of mashed potato and mixed it up with some fried onion and garlic and froze in portions. I still have a huge bag of potatoes though, so this week I really need to get mashing!

So a bit of a wierd weekend and sorry for rambling on!

Linking in with Harvest Monday on Daphne's Dandelions

 

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Harvest Monday - parsnips (and a starling murmeration)

 I headed to the plot for a few hours on Sunday, it was a bit overcast to begin with but then brightened up....lovely. I did some more work on my hugel bed (which I'll report on another time) and spent a bit of time moving one of my enviromesh covers. It was only covering a couple of small cabbages and a purple sprouting broccoli, so I decided to use it over my leeks, chard and some self-seeded lambs-lettuce, which are all growing in the same bed, slowly but steadily.

And in the morning we'd watched the birdies in our garden, to take part in the RSPB's Big Garden Bird Watch (14 individual birds with 8 species, which is our best year EVER!). There were lots of birds around the plot too, including two robins having a bit of a fight.

Anyhoo, on to the week's veggies which I was pretty pleased with, all from the plot on Sunday:

 Some kale (nero), a little cabbage and my last onions from the shed.

A leek, some little carrots that I'd missed before (they were so sweet, we ate them raw), and two massive parsnips!

Here's one of them cleaned up - no canker, which is good for me. I roasted these lovelies.

And here's why I missed last week's Harvest Monday. I was visiting my folks for a few days down on the south coast. I usually try and get across to Brighton, especially in winter when the huge flocks of starlings roost under the pier.

This is where they used to roost - the West Pier. Not much left of it now, damage from fires and storms. I popped here first as the sunset was so lovely, to get a few pics.

 

 This is where they roost now, It used to be called the Palace Pier but now is just Brighton Pier. This pic is just to show how far apart they are.

  

I could easily fill up the blog with dozens of pics of starlings and the piers but will stick to a couple of videos of the mumeration (the name of the flocking action) taken from Brighton Pier on my little camera (you get a great soundtrack from the pier rides and stalls too!)

Looking west, a large flock, just before coming in to roost right under my feet

 

Looking east, another large flock that flew around for a while longer after the ones on the other side had already headed under the pier.

 

It was the largest murmeration I've seen there for a few years. I had a feeling it was going to be a good one, there'd been lots of starlings in Norwich too (we even have a reasonable murmeration in the city at the moment, which roosts on an office block).

I love seeing people notice the flocks, they're hard to miss! One of nature's spectacles for sure. And the sound when they've come in to roost, thousands of birds right under your feet!

Apologies for the digression, I just had to share :) and it's the reason I missed last week.

Linking in with Daphne's Dandelions for Harvest Monday.

Harvest Monday - parsnips

Unsurprisingly, a bit of a quiet week. Haven't got on the plot very much but I did collect up 4 big bags of leaves for making leaf mould. I could do with some more but ran out of time on Saturday. And then Sunday was a bit cold and rainy so I didn't go down. Of course today, when I was at work, it was lovely and sunny and perfect for a day on the plot, darn.

I popped across during my lunch break though today and dug up some parsnips. Quite a mixture of lengths! This was all the 'snips from one of my little rows. I have another 3 or 4 rows. I sow them in between the rows of broad beans.

I was given another bag of apples this week too from someone at work, which I used to make a big batch of stewed fruit for the freezer yesterday. I'll be giving a jar of preserve as a thanks. The last one (blackberry and red currant jam) went down well.

I roasted my last butternut squash with cashews and flaked almonds (no pics). It was so good, gutted that was my last one. I do still have a couple of large 'orange' squashes and a couple of little ones too but wanted to use up the butternut first as they don't keep so long.

And finally, a little wrinkly chilli pepper that went into scrambled eggs. There's a few more left on the plant but having brought it indoors, the naughty aphids have warmed up too and are going on a rampage.So I don't think it will last that much longer.

Well, that's me for the week!

Linking in with Harvest Monday over at Daphne's Dandelions.

 

 

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Whopper parsnip

Okay, so it's not your traditional allotment competition-size parsnip - no metre long parsnip chips for us - but still we were pretty impressed with it! There's always that element of mystery when pulling out roots - will it be a whopper or a mini-me of its true self, or will there be anything at all!

Luckily in this case it was pretty decent sized and made a lovely parnsip and potato mash, drizzled with olive oil and nicely seasoned!