Roaming Zebra

Surprisingly, my seedlings are all still quite happy. I was expected at least some to be a bit upset for having been left for a while.

Potted on the cucumbers into their final 9″ pots. Also potted on the remaining Balconi Tomatoes and some brocolli. Planted Swift and SuperSweet? Sweetcorn seeds - wonder if we’ll manage to get them to grow properly this year?

The courgettes are looking quite healthy, the All Green Bush are much larger than the Parthenon.

Most of my Peppers (both sweet and chilli) have germinated now, I suspect in another week they’ll need transplanting as well - lacking on space in the Greenhouse at the moment, so some plants have been evicted now.

The cheap fruit I bought from Woolies a couple of weeks ago was one of the first to be moved out. The cranberry and redcurrant look like they should be OK when they eventually get moved to their final location!

I’ve had mixed success with the climbing and dwarf French bean so far - about 50% germination rate at the moment, but we’ll see how things get on.

Also transferred some of the Sweet green basil and coriander to bigger pots to try and encourage them to grow a little…

Maincrop (King Edward) went in on Monday evening. Attacked the couch grass a bit more…

I think some heavy duty plastic sheeting might be needed to cover the parts of the site which have been covered for sometime.

And on a seedling front, the cucumbers are looking quite healty, so obviously survived the transplanting. The first real leaves are coming through now. Balconi tomatoes are also looking like they need potting into larger pots quite soon.

Both sweet and chilli peppers are just about starting to poke their heads up. A number of the courgette plants are sprouting as well. First planting of peas (in drain pipe in the green house at the moment) are looking like they need planting out. I guess a second sowing is needed, though I really wanted to get that done directly onto the allotment.

Tendergreen calabrese is looking healty, again it needs transplanting from the small cells, with the second sowing looking ok.

A small number of basil seeds are just coming up, and the coriander is definately looking like it wants potting on!

Sweet peas are starting to sprout, they went in a bit late really, but are mostly in jiffies so should survive being transplanted ok.

Didn’t need the green house heater last night! Which is a good thing, looks like there aren’t going to be any frosts for the next few nights. Bought a cheap max/min thermometer from Wilko at the weekend, and its dropping to about 5 overnight, and has been up to 30 a couple of days this week, 25 on others, so things really should be waking up now!

Spent a couple of hours on Friday night digging. Got the Pink Fir and other first early (can’t remember the name!) in. Also got the shallots into the ground on Friday including the stack of ~40 that were in the shed left un-planted from last Autumn (the rest of the pack already went in the garden at home).

Amusingly on Gardener’s World on Friday night, Joe Swift was starting off his allotment, from one minute going on about how he was going to dig the plot over properly, to the next rotovating all the grass roots into the soil … Well, I don’t have a filming schedule for home, so digging out the grass as we go is still on the cards, and we aren’t desperate to use the whole plot this season!

On Sunday evening, I popped over to the site for an hour or so of preparing the site for the main crop King Edward’s. Had a chat with the neighbouring allotmenteers, they mentioned that the bottom of our plot had been covered for a long while with plastic sheeting and hadn’t been properly dug for some time. I think I’m going to try and get some plastic sheeting on the way home to recover it for now, I’m still not sure if it will kill the couch grass properly, but at least it’ll stop other things popping up for the time being. I’ve read that plastic covering might be really bad for the soil, and other places that it should be fine. Given that its been covered for a while and the soil has a high clay proportion, I don’t think being covered for a bit longer is going to hurt, and it’ll keep the soil from becoming too waterlogged and so difficult to dig.

The people next door also mentioned they have a band of heavy clay across the plot, which seems to run across ours too (more than a spade’s depth, it becomes solid clay anyway).

Spent a couple of hours this evening over at the allotment! There’s a lot of deep rooted dock on the plot, which goes right down into the almost solid clay below. I suspect digging the dock out will be an ongoing task … possibly even a job for some herbicide, but we’ll have to see how things go.

Started stacking the large tufts of grass upside down towards the bottom of the plot, my plan is to stack some cardboard between the layers and then to cover it with a sheet.

Rather unexpected snow on Sunday, so we decided trying to dig the allotment would be a Bad Plan (shifting a good couple of inches snow before starting to dig …)

So instead a trip finding things to grow. Good old Wilko for some cheap onion sets, though no sign of any red onions… I blame Gardener’s World for encouraging people to plant onions sets ;-). Got some King Edward spuds as well which should help to fill up a bit of the plot this year!

Spent some time in the greenhouse getting this sown as well.

• Broccoli (Autumn Calabrese, Tendergreen)
• Climbing French bean (Cobra)
• Dwarf French bean (Tendergreen)
• Courgette (Parthenon, All Green Bush)
• Sage
• and some ornamental tobacco plant for the garden

Of course, I’ve already got cucumbers, tomatoes, some brocoli, sweet and chilli peppers sown… In fact, we decided it worthwhile transplanting the cucumbers before they get too big. As much as I’m not keen on using peat-based products, I did opt for some of the peat plantpots for the cucumbers - I’ve read they don’t transplant easily and dislike their roots being distrupted. Using the peat pots means they’ll degrade when planted properly and the roots won’t be disturbed again.

Got a new allotment today, Bob’s Coppice, Quarry Bank.

We’ve been thinking about an allotment for a while, though its only quite recently that I’ve actually gotten round to doing something about it.

The plot has only recently been vacated, and apparently they don’t come up very often so I guess we were quite lucky about the time of year when I phoned to enquire about availability. Handily the site is quite near our house and it seems relatively quiet.

Spent several hours starting to dig over the plot, luckily its not massively overgrown or invaded by brambles (given how much trouble I have getting rid of them at home) though its still going to need quite a bit of work to get it into shape.