Roaming Zebra

Went hunting for growbags today. I have been buying them from Ashwood Nurseries, but theirs are peat-based, so I’ve been looking for something alternative.

We’ve been trying to find the New Horizon ones featured on the Gardener’s World special some weeks ago and also got a Which Best Buy, but nowhere round here seems to sell them. The only place we hadn’t tried was Barnett Hill.

They didn’t have them either, but I did find an alternative which was interesting – the Vital Earth Kayak grow bag. They were £2.99 each, and only had a few left. We’ll have to see how they perform… See link for picture.

Oh and as for the steps, I finally got round to finishing the deck by building the steps … people kept complaining about the gap as some sort of animal trap! That took a lot longer than I anticipated, mostly trying to get things level as neither the old steps or path were, oh and the old steps took a lot more removing than you might think from looking at them!

And on books

And finally, a quick note on books, whilst milling round a shopping centre, I popped into WHSmith and poked around the gardening section.  I was amazed how many allotment books they now have on the shelves. I’m sure last year there weren’t half as many – just goes to show how popular growing your own is getting!

I did see an interesting RHS pair of books, the first on Vegetable growing, the second on Organic Gardening. The first has a wealth of information on growing all sorts of different things, and not just the regular stuff either. The second had a whole section of tips on dealing with pests and diseases in an organic way. I think I might invest.

We have the RHS guide to cuttings and propagation, which is excellent. They don’t have glossy photos, just clear guidance and illustrations, which I think is part of their charm!

Planted a number of rows of peas at home, mostly to try and stop cats from digging in that bit of the garden. A couple of different varieties to be ready at different times and some mangetout and sugar snap varieties

• Twinkle ( ~12 weeks)
• Javelin (~14 weeks)
• Oregon (mangetout)
• Cascadia (sugar snap)

Finally managed to get the potatoes in at the plot – they’ve been chitting in the house for sometime now and I’ve been meaning to get them in the ground for a while.

Dug trenches and planted at the bottom of them with just a bit of earth on top. Added in B&Q potatoe fertiliser as well as some chicken manure pellets to keep them fed. We’ve got two varieties in, first earlies (Pentland Javelin), which are supposed to be somewhat eel-worm resistant and should be out before blight becomes a problem.

The maincrop is desiree which isn’t resistant to anything as far as I know. So we’ll have to see how things go.

Did a quite count of onion sets:

• 104 red
• 57 first left bed (winter)
• 23 shallot giselle
• 28 far right (winter)
• 28 lower middle left (winter)

There are a number of gaps – need to fill them with some new sets.

Kale & broccoli potted on as well as Balconi tomatoes that hadn’t been done yet.

Second sowing of Bounty sweetcorn due to low germination rate from first sowing. We suspect this might have been down to compost that was too wet – we’ve found that the peat based seed compost often stays very wet.

Bought a pile of pressure treated timber from Wickes to build some new anti-bird and anti-fly cages for the allotment. Rebuilt the cage for the brassicas to stop the pigeons getting at them (learnt the hard way last year!).

Also built a smaller cage using scaffold net to see if it works at stopping allium fly from attacking the leeks – last year a number of our leeks and a lot of the others on the site got attacked by some sort of allium fly … maybe its the one that has been featured on Gardener’s World as not hot in the Midlands?

Also built a triangular cage covered in fleece to protect the carrots (autumn king 2) from carrotflt attacks.

Built a compost heap from pallets collected from work and the timber that our greenhouse glass came in. Also had some timber from building concrete base for the greenhouse and shed, so that got used for making up the gaps in the pallets. So we now have a two-bay compost bin.

Planted a couple of rows of Twinkle peas and Palace parsnips. Last year I lost the parsnips, so these are clearly marked this year. Put some bottle tops over the peas to protect the shoots from birds when (if!) they germinate.

Back at home, planted sunflowers (3 per pot, varioious varieties) and dahlia seeds in a tray. These will get transplanted to the plot when they are big enough. We’re also planning on adding some drift sunflowers to the plot later in the year if I ever get the planned area cleared.

Finished mulching the garden at home today – added more coco shells on the small top-left bed. Added a couple of bags of pine chippings to the lower right beds. Hopefully the cats won’t like the mulch surfaces too much …

The garden is actually looking quite tidy at the moment! – If you ignore the long, narrow side bed which was supposed to have wild-flowers, but is currently full of daffodils!

Got a chance to sow a load 0f seeds this evening (yoga pregnancy evening so I was home on my own for a while).

Under a glass sheet (spare bit from the greenhouse!):

• catmint
• sweetcorn lark
• courgette parthenon
• Zucchino Tonda di Toscana (2 per pot)

Half trays:

• Sonette lettuce
• Jeffereson Iceberg
• Little Gem lettuce
• Cos lettuce

And then a few other bits

• Climbing French Bean
• Hungarian Wax Chili (for picking in 2010!)
• Pumpkin Mars
• Pea Twinkle (in pots for a trial)

Spent some time clearing cooch grass at home from the front rockery … it seems to be the only thing that grows well in the solid clay there – maybe we should just leave it in!

Potted on calabrese, red peppers and Balconi yellow tomatoes

Was only permitted a short time on the plot today

And under duress as well!

Anyway, planted out some calabrese plugs which have been waiting around since being bought to go out. Netted to keep the birds off them.

Found some Leek Musselbrugh and Carrot early nantes seed tape from last year, so I popped them out for a try. Will need to build something using scaffold net to see if we can keep various flies away from the crops.

Unfurled a huge black plastic sheet bought from allplas. It covers the large section at the bottom of the plot that really, really needs a good clearing and tidy up. Its where all the random cooch grass and junk has been being piled to rot down. We really need to build a proper compost heap (got some pallets, just not enough yet) for the crap to go in.

Having unfurled the sheet, I think we need some more bricks up at the plot to hold it down.

Broadcast planted some Maestro carrots in the big green tub.

And back at home …

Had a general tidy of the garden and weeded the top left bed nearest the house. Mulched the bed with a bag of coco shells which was left over from last season. It was all quite wet and squidgy, but it should for a good mulch.

Had a good weed of the bottom right bed, removing several trugs worth of cooch grass – its all going in the green wheely bin for the council to compost though – definitely not putting cooch grass in our compost bin at home!

Removed a lot of the other plants which are smothering or tend to smother the whole bed.

Mowed the lawn to avoid too much trouble!

The kale has started to sprout!

It rainied soooooo much on Saturday that we didn’t see the point in going to the plot on Sunday – the soil will be just solid clay wetness and impossible to dig.

There was a Gardeners World special on Friday night on peat and compost. With mention to peat-free alternatives. New Horizon grow bags have been tested to be the best peat-free product for growing seedlings. Will have to see if we can find any in the local stores.

The local B&Q didn’t have any, but it did have the highly rated Westland peat-free product so we bought a bag of that to try it out.

As there was no allotment trip, cleaned the greenhouse and trays (at last!).

Sowed a load of seeds, on a window sill inside the house:

• Tasty red peppers
• Meek and Mild chilis
• Jalapenos
• Tomato moneymaker

And in the greenhouse

• Onion squash
• Comfrey
• Celery monarch
• Redbor Kale
• Broccoli
• Sweetcorn – Bounty & Swift

Moved some red peppers from the windowsill into the greenhouse.

Where are our courgette seeds? All the seeds are packed into monthly sowings, but I can’t find the courgettes!

Today was the first time the lawn at home has been mowed. The cats have been crapping in as usual. Its always a problem when it gets too long!

I also got to go on a trip to the tip taking cardboard for recycling and just general accumulated junk from around the garden.

Soo much stuff to do that I only got chance to drop stuff atthe plot – 4 bags of home-brewed compost from the bin at home (two years worth!). Not sure where to spread it, but its quite a nice vintage compost now though!

Most of my allotment time recently has been spent clearing the weeds and digging the soil.

My dad popped up last weekend and spent several hours with me digging up at the plot. This meant we got some quite large areas of the plot cleared and forked over. I still need to run over these bits with the soil miller, but it should have dried out a bit and should hopefully be easyish to mill. Going to try and get a bit of time in there on Saturday to finish pre ping the soil for planting.

There’s still a large bit in the middle with couch grass, but I think I’ll save that for a bit later – I’d like to get some things into the bits that are already clear first!

At the very bottom of the plot, the weeds are getting a bit out of hand, so I think a purchase of some large, black plastic sheeting is needed to keep them down for the time being.

Certainly helpful having an extra pair of hands!

Well, I haven’t been updating very much recently – been kinda busy.

Have been repainting the doors from the kitchen cuoboards, which is a right pain. The doors were waxed, so I’ve had to get a lot of that off them before I can start painting. A combination of a hard work with wet and dry sandpaper, and a got with both white spirit and methlylated spirit with wire wool. As well as a go with some special wax remover seems to be working OK on them.

Having stripped off what I thought was all the wax, I started priming with a Farrow & Ball eco undercoat/primer. I noticed in a few places that some of the wax was coming thorugh, so ended up buying a shellac based paint (B.I.N.), which is supposed to stick to anything & block stains coming through. Its not the cheapest paint in the world (£15 / L), but seems to have done the trick. Its also useful for painting onto the formica type cupboard surfaces, as it sticks to anything to give a good base coat.

A couple more coats of undercoat and I was ready to start top-coating. Again I’m using a Farrow & Ball eco paint (eggshell) in tallow. The primer for this is the white F&B primer. I purchased this from my local paint store (a branch of Brewers), for some reason they stock a full range of eco paints, but not the undercoats, so I had to order that specially. It only took a couple of days to arrive, but you’d think that having the range of paints would mean they’d have the undercoats as well!

Anyway, both the undercoat and eggshell were quite good to work with, drying quickly and with very little smell (hence the Eco status of the paint). The eggshell is very low sheen (listed as 20% I think) and is “fully washable” according to the data sheets. Hopefully this means it will be easy to keep clean and won’t object to the odd splash of water from the sink!

The Eggshell paint has a very rich colour – I could probably have got away with just the one coat, but I wanted to make sure the cupboards have a hardwearing finish, and there were a few places I missed with the first coat.

I opted for applying the paint mostly using a foam gloss roller which gives a very fine finish and no brush marks. There’s a few places where a brush was necessary, like into the mouldings, but the paint is quite thick and the brush lines disappeared into the finish themselves.

I’ve finished phase 1 of the re-paint, that is to say I’ve done the doors from the ground level cupboards, kick-boards and some end-panels. Still have the drawer fronts and wall cupboards to do … must get around to starting on them soon!

Well, we ventured up to the plot on Saturday for the first time in a long while … it wasn’t as bad as I thought it might have been!

The soil is pretty wet at the moment, no big surprise there though given its clay and has been raining a bit recently. Though the bits that got well dug over last year and milled with my Wolf Soil Miller are actually in quite good condition. Applied some lime to bits of this and some compressed chicken manure fertiliser which then got dug in. I think lime is supposed to be applied late autumn really, but it should be fine and I’m sure we’ve got a few frosts yet!

Cut down the raspberry canes to ground level, the should be dormant by now … need to have a good weed in-between them before they grow up again for this year. Also weeded amongst the winter onions and shallots that went in late autumn. Looks like maybe the pigeons have been pulling some out as there are a few gaps.

Trip to both Wilkinson and Ashwood on Sunday to purchase various bits – Wilko for seed trays, some seed potatoes and red-onion set. Ashwood for compost and a few other bits and pieces … luckily it wasn’t one of their Hellibore weekends (they start next weekend, 31st Jan) so it was quite quiet there.

Incidentally, from last year’s crop, we were a little disappointed to find that the leeks we grew had been infested with some sort of larvae, probably some fly that goes for the allium family. When I did some googling late last year, there was some suggestion that a particular fly lays its eggs in August/September time, so I think some sort of fine netting will be needed this year!

Well, its been raining.

Quite a lot for the past few days.

Which has meant no allotment time for us.

River Stour flooding the road...

In fact it rained so much on Saturday that the river flooded the road at the bottom of our road – I’ve only seen it happen once before. Given the high volume of rain in a short period, I’d guess there wasn’t enough room under the bridge for all the water, so it just flooded around the side…

Several people tried to drive through, most backed out – apart from the Peugeot driver who of course got water in the exhaust and then couldn’t move anywhere. You’d think when the water is clearly deep, you’d stop and go back, well I would anyway!

And to finish off, a video of a bus forcing its way through the floods (apologies for the shaky start – someone walked in front of me as I started to film…)