December allotment tasks

Okay, in lieu of what we are doing, shall I tell you about what we should be doing?

• Scrubbing out the cold frame which had our cucumbers in it. Okay, honesty is called for. The cold frame that still has our (deceased) cucumber plants in it! The glass needs washing down with hot soapy water and then all the gremlins like moss and algae need to be scraped off with a palette knife.
• Fence repairs – we’ve never actually got around to replacing the fence at the front of the plot, where it joins the ‘road’ and I suspect we never will now, but the fence panel (half pallet) nearest the gate has rotted through its support and needs replacing. We should really give it all another coat of wood preservative too, as I suspect the preservative is the only thing holding most of the fence together!
• I ought to be earthing up my kale and Brussels sprouts too.
• I’ve already mulched my rhubarb and globe artichokes but I notice that the Guardian allotment blog also advises putting straw or bracken around globe artichoke crowns, so I am relaxed about my own plant-to-plant mulching system and actually think I might be able to teach their blogger a trick!

And why am I not doing any of this? Because it’s still raining …

PS - isn't this the BEST scarecrow ever?

Labels: allotment-fences, allotment-scarecrow, allotment-tasks-december

Allotment frosts and fears

So, after we spent the weekend planting out peas (Meteor) and second early potatoes (Charlotte), we had a heavy frost on Sunday night.

The peas on 201, which is fully fenced, are planted against a bit of old wire mesh with metal posts to hold it steady and Himself pegged some horticultural fleece over them in a sort of makeshift tent. I have every confidence that they will be fine. But on 235, where there is no fence to provide even limited frost protection, the peas are being supported by twiggy branches and they don’t have any fleece over them. I have every expectation that they will have been blighted by air frost, but I’m hoping I might just be able to nip out the blackened tips and they’ll get back on course.

The broad beans on 235 have been overwintered – they were protected by old double-glazing panels supported on bricks until about a week ago when they got too tall and were pressing their heads against the glass. I know that if they’ve been frost-blighted, they should come back if I take out the tops, which we’d probably do anyway, given that broad bean tops attract blackfly like nobody’s business. The second sowing of broad beans is still in the cold frame at 201, so they should be fine.

The good news, as far as I am concerned, is that I prevented Himself watering the onion sets on 201 on Sunday afternoon – onions don’t need a vast amount of water, and had they been given a good soak, they would probably have lifted from the ground on the frost and could have been wiped out. Of course, all this is speculation until I get up there, this afternoon, to see what the actual damage is.

Our latest frost date is, as far as I can discover, 18 April, so there are plenty more frightening nights ahead. Some plants, like the Japanese quince hedge in the photograph, have a special enzyme that protects them from frost damage: snowdrops have it too, which is why they don't blacken when they are blanketed in snow. I could wish that some clever boffin would hybridise it into spring vegetables ...

Labels: allotment-broad-beans, allotment-fences, allotment-frost, allotment-peas, allotment-potatoes, horticultural fleece

November – no end to allotment tasks!

I don’t quite understand why, when everybody else seems to be winding down, and Soilman has even gone into hibernation, I seem to be getting busier!

Partly it’s because the days are so short now, that I’m lucky to get half an hour of gloom on the allotment when I’ve finished my ‘real’ work, so everything seems to take forever to get done, and partly it’s because a new allotment, particularly one that’s been neglected, just has so much that needs to be done.

So far we’ve:

1. sort of sorted the shed – more to be done in Spring, but it’s at least watertight now
2. begun to restore the cold frame – or at least, Tony has, while I just make admiring noises
3. cleared about a tenth of the runners, slugs, bindweed and thistles from the strawberry bed – that’s my job, and horrible, fiddly, backbreaking work it is too
4. started to clear the brick path – very satisfying, especially as it means less risk of slipping on something slimy and end up on your a**e!
5. laid some shuttering to make new paths – again, very satisfying, it gives the allotment a sense of structure.

What we haven’t begun on yet is:

1. mending dodgy fence posts
2. laying a new hardstanding
3. cutting back the holly tree
4. moving the compost bins
5. refixing the entire far end fence which is now leaning against the rest of the fence, looking pathetic
6. any planting
7. any digging.

If we had brassicas this year then this is also what I’d be doing:

1. keeping my Brussels sprouts, purple sprouting broccoli and kale tidy and weed-free, and staking the outer Brussels against wind damage
2. sowing broad beans is something I’ve already done on Duncan’s allotment, although how many will come up, given that we appear to have mice, is anybody’s guess.

I wonder if things will slow down in December ...?

Labels: allotment-brassicas, allotment-fences, allotment-paths, allotment-tasks-november