Plant fun!
Well, I haven’t posted about plants for a couple of weeks. But I have been busy both in the greenhouse and at the allotment. So has the couch grass as well mind, and I also found we have an invasion of convolvulus which looks like its come from the paths between the allotments. This has really brittle root structures and seems to go on forever! So something else to keep digging out. To be fair though, the sections we’ve cleared of couch grass haven’t come back with avengence – mostly a few tufts of grass (probably not actually couch) some annual weeds (to be expected) and some thistle/dock has reappeared, though I’ll just keep digging the roots out on that ’till it gives up. I’ve also dug a trench part way down the allotment to separate the area which has been cleared to try and stop re-invasion whilst we get around to clearing the lower part. I’ve also found its necessary to dig the soil at least twice when preparing areas for plants – the first time breaking up the big lumps, the second making them into smaller lumps (though I still don’t really have an area where I feel seeds could be sown direct.
(Incidentally I’m writing this whilst fighting with a Virus Scanner on a laptop, so blame that if the sentence structure gets broken up)
I did take some photos last week of the seedling progress, but didn’t actually get round to uploading them, I’ll either post a few here or just take some more as everything has grown on quite a bit since then!
We now have courgettes in at the allotment – a combination of All Green Bush and Parthenon – the latter I think was supposed to do well even with a poor summer, we shall see! The broccoli has also now gone into the allotment site, I was waiting until I’d got hold of some anti-bird netting – I was strongly recommended by the site treasurer to put something up “as the pigeons don’t share anything”. I also added some Perlka, which the treasurer gave me last week. Its not organic but is supposed to help prevent club-root and needs applying 7-10 days before planting out occurs. Anyway, the anti-bird netting (and greenhouse shading – it got to 39C several days last week!) were from Allplas.co.uk who are a bulk plastics supplier, given the volume of sheeting I bought, it was actually quite cheap – they were also very efficient, I ordered around 11am and the stuff was with me the next day!
The spuds are all poking their heads up now, including a load of random ones spread around the plot – I guess from last year’s owner… Evidently the massive sprouting on the Kind Edward ones hasn’t affected their ability to put out greenery. Another week or so and I think everything will need earthing up.
Back at the greenhouse, the sweet-corn is doing quite nicely now, I got quite a high germination rate, so I should have about 50 plants all told to go up to the allotment in a week or two (need to prep some more ground though!). The chilli and sweet peppers have all been potted on into 2″ pots. As have my moneymakers tomatoes. The Balconi (a bush cherry tomato variety) are all doing well. Peas have been sprouting nicely – sown in drain pipes, some (~ 12″) have been planted into the small raised bed at home and the third succession sowing has gone in. The dwarf French beans are doing OK (though only 3 germinated) and the French climbing are also doing quite well – I think they they need to go up to the allotment site really as well, but will have to wait until I’ve dug a bit more soil!
My Edonis melon plants seem to be quite healthy, though they look like they really need to go into a growbag now, until I get hold of some more growbags, they’re going in bigger and bigger pots. I think I’m going to take a couple up to the allotment and put them under a glass cloche there (I’ve got a couple of sheets of spare greenhouse class). The cucumber plants are also doing quite well, I think I need to find out what I’m supposed to do about pinching out the growing tips quite soon……… The piccy on the right shows the status from last weekend – cucumbers at the very back, broccoli and courgette and some coriander. The courgettes are quite a large now, the Parthenon having caught up pretty well in terms of size. They were definitely in need of planting out as the roots were starting to grow out the bottom of the pots…