My Allotment's Work In Progress

I don't know about JG either JJ but I do know and love the other 2,
Jenny

 

So disappointing when you wait years for your first crop and then disaster strikes! I planted a Lord Derby 20 years ago, supposed to be a good Victorian cooker, crops brilliantly but tastes of wet cotton wool. Luckily the neighbour's pigs like them

 

Onions and shallots are starting to pop up (along with the weeds). No signs of my potatoes though.


Havebeen weeding around my raspberry canes finally too. There was all thick lumps of grass growing up between the canes and it's starting to look a bit tidier now.

 

Brilliant thread JJ, glad I finally caught up with it! I have an old bungalow bath, it's bottom needs repair if you want it for water, but it would serve brilliantly as an individual herb garden particularly for containing mint and those spreading plants. Give me a shout if you are interested. Just want a home for it, no charge!

 

Loved reading through this. You've been given such a good allotment with so much potential. It may have looked daunting to begin with but at least you had everything there you needed.
Have you managed to get much in there this year crops-wise?
On our plot we've just had the leaves of our first early spuds coming up - i think we planted them on the same day as you, so i'm guessing yours cant be far off now.
My girlfriend and I are having a little debate over whether the shed at our plot is big enough. She says it isnt, I say it is, and it looks of a similar size to yours. Any idea on how big yours is?

Mark

 

Thanks. Most of my beds are filled with some sort of crop but most are ones I can just leave to look after themselves like onions, shallots and potatoes. A lot of fruit, like rhubarb and raspberries, blackcurrents and a blackberry bush too. My onions and shallots have been popping up but my potatoes are still not. I think we need a good deal of rain and then hopefully things will then get going for them.

I still have a large area to dig over but this is right next to my raspberry canes and I've been having lots of suckers pop up since I removed the membrane for this bit. So this area still needs a lot of work before I can really start planting in it. I hope to be able to plant some butternut squash next year though.

My shed is 4x6 I think. I'm happy with it but am going to build a little porch outside for me to sit in during the rain. Am contemplating growing a grape vine up it if one crosses my path but I doubt it will.

Thank you so much for the offer moyra. I'm sorry I will have to decline this time but thank you for the lovely thought

 

Loving your progress, JJ!

by the way, I am envious of your James Grieve apple- we planted one last year, but think we have a patch of "bad" ground just there, as that's the second tree that has died in that spot. It is a beautiful sweet and juicy eater, which you can cook with, rather than a cooker you can eat. It doesn't store well thoug, which is why you don't see them in the shops. An apple from my childhood!!

 

How have you got the blackberry bush? We have them growing along the hedges all round our plots. The bloke on plots 1&2 told us he got about 30lbs of blackberries last year from just the bushes around his plot. They'll go brilliantly in a pie/crumble with your apples.

I heard somewhere that you should plant onions and carrots with one another as the smell of the onions deters carrot root fly and the carrots deter something that affects the onions. Whether there's any truth in that is an entirely different story though.

Hope your spuds pop through soon. They can't be far away.

 

I have to confess I haven't tried a James grieve yet. What does it taste similar too?

The blackberry bush I have was inherited from the previous tennant who had planted it. I think its called long Ruben and made massive blackberries an inch wide. The ones your talking about sound like brambles to me, although I could be wrong....

 

Oh. I meant like, have you got it growing as a standalone bush or around a cage or something. I wasn't aware there was more than one type of blackberry if I'm honest.

 

Oh, now I would need to think....

To be honest, I probably base most other apples against a JG! I certainly remember them to be juicy - almost slurpy, with juice down your chin! Sweet, and quite a gentle flavour. Not perfumed like a Worcester can be... Maybe a little like a Discovery? They had a slightly waxy feel to the skin, as I recall. But I'm digging back to memories nearly 40 years ago, and so hope I haven't confused the other apples! I remember that people were very happy to receive them, in an apple-growing county, when the tree did a bumper crop. I think it was because they had the flavour of a good main crop Apple, but quite a few weeks earlier?

 

Potatoes, shallots and onions are really coming through now. I went there yesterday briefly to plant some garlic bulbs and got caught in the rain.

I opened my shed to find it full of butterflies too. I suspect they are cabbage whites but felt quite sorry for them and there were a number that had died since I was last there so released as many as I could.

 

Everything starting to come up now. Potatoes and onions in this photo

 

looking good jane

I've got a bit behind on my allotment, early I had the murphy law hit... It kept raining on my days off agahh.... Then I was knocked side ways by the Norvo virus, so behind in my planting, and weeds have invaded my beds once again

But saying that, I have discovered the bare plant I didn't have a clue what it was, is actually a raspberry bush, now covered in flowers my earlies potatoes that I planted before murphy's law hit. are coming up lovely, but in the spud bed last year, I've got loads of potatoes growing, so on the advice from one of the other tennents, who said they looked very healthy, and as I've got behind a little to let them grow... leaving a little less work to day

But managed to get some, dwaf beans, pea's, parsnips in last Friday. And out this afternoon, to get some more sorted..

The if the weather holds for the weekend, I will spend most of the weekend out on the allotment and will have hubby to give a hand..

 

Great stuff Ellie.