Monday 29 January 2018
Harvest Monday
Wednesday 24 January 2018
Harvest Monday - rainy days
From storage, I'm also eating up the last of the dessert apples. There's a couple of trays of cookers left as well. And that reminds me, there's a tray of beetroot which needs using up too, the beets are starting to go a bit soft. Apart from that, we've got plenty of fruit and other goodies in the freezer including sweetcorn and courgette.
A couple of interesting items arrived in the mail this week - the diary from My Harvest (for recording allotment visits) and the Organic Gardening Catalogue. So hooray I can now sort out my seed order (that's a job for Weds as I'm volunteering at Eves Hill Veg Co tomorrow), and I must fill in the allotment diary with today's visit.
And excitingly, the little wren has been flitting around again in the lean-to greenhouse at home, picking off tiny insects from plants. I got a really good view of it yesterday, I was standing right at the window with it just a couple of feet away. It's helping with the aphid problem too, so is welcome any time.
That's me for now, thanks for reading. I'm linking in with Harvest Monday kindly hosted this month by Michelle at From Seed to Table.
Monday 15 January 2018
Harvest Monday - mid January already
I've been hoping to order my seeds for this year but apparently the main catalogue doesn't come out until the end of January - usually I order my seeds in Autumn (from the Organic Gardening Catalogue) so I've been very tardy this season. Still, it's a bit early for me to be sowing anything, so I'm not too worried, apart from whether the seed potatoes I want will be in stock by then. Some people like to start their chilli and onion seeds off around now but that's mainly if they have a heat source and 'grow lights' to support the early seedlings, which otherwise would get leggy in the weak winter light. I usually sow my tomatoes and peppers around mid-February and will try and do the same this year too.
Thanks for reading this week - apologies about the poor photos, the light in the house is not good for evening pics! I'm linking in with Harvest Monday kindly hosted this month by Michelle at From Seed to Table.
Monday 8 January 2018
Harvest Monday - a new year
Back down at the allotment, I had a good few hours yesterday in the sun (yes....sun!), mainly pruning a big old buddliea (to encourage new growth) and moving a stack of timber that had been near a couple of my rotational beds, and had been a source of hidey places for slugs, snails and woodlice. I don't use much timber on the plot anymore but it's still handy every now and then, so the stack is now further away from any annual plants. I also want to get on with clearing more of the weedy beds (which actually includes a lot of self-sown rainbow chard) and around the fruit bushes, then spreading compost or leafmould on top. I aim to disturb the soil as little as possible, so in some cases the clearance will just involve snipping the plants off at ground level and leaving the roots to decompose in place. I also want to lay cardboard to kill off some of the grass paths (too much hassle to keep cutting them all, plus the couch grass encroaches from them). So that's my plans for the next couple of months, plus no doubt getting side-tracked by many other things along the way. How about you?
Ooh, one other thing, I've just signed up to My Harvest - a study by Sheffield University into different aspects of allotmenting throughout the year, including how many hours spent there, physical inputs, harvests etc, recorded in a diary. I thought it would help improve my record keeping as at the moment I only really record quantity / timing of seeds sown. They're still looking for participants if anyone else is interested.
Thanks for reading this week, I'm linking in as usual with Harvest Monday, this month kindly hosted by Michelle at From Seed to Table.