Cold Frames for the Hot Bed

Those cold frames are just about finished now, sawn, hammered, screwed and painted into submission. I think I may paint my allotment number on to them, it might make them look a bit smarter. Working out the cost of the frames was a bit difficult, having to buy some tools and rather more screws than you need and also overestimating on the paint; but you can never have too much white gloss can you? Well using a variety of cost accounting methods that would make your average city banker pretty chuffed, I reckon that the pair of frames should cost around 60 squid for the pair. Not bad bearing in mind that the build quality is of a pretty high standard in terms of the materials, not my carpentry skills, and a double lick of paint is worth more than it's weight in gold. So there you go, voila!

Battered Broad Beans and Goosgog Chips

No, that's not a weak Scottish attempt at trying to get a healthy diet. But on Sunday I had to put in 60 odd broad beans to replace the ones that had disappeared over the winter; I had roughly 50 left and growing. other beans on the site look a lot healthier; what's the secret? maybe the weather was a lot better, soil warmer when they were planted? last year the Broad Beans were a magnificent sight.

I also tried to tidy up the old goosegog bush by opening it up a bit and sorting out some of the mesh of branches. Ended up with what looks like 18 cuttings. It's the wrong time of year to take cuttings, apparently, but the couple I accidentally took last year; snapping them off hamfistedly, have just sprouted over the last few days. If these cuttings do take then I might use some of them, but they might also make nice presents.

Chit! It's that Time already

Yes, it's that time already. Time to chit your taters, though the jury does seem to be out on whether it does any good anyway. As some people have been quibbling but the National Vegetable Society is pretty firm about it:

The "Chitting of seed tubers is one of the vital factors in successful potato cultivation. As potatoes are half hardy in Britain, to have good sturdy sprouts before planting will get the crop off to an excellent start. Early cultivars will mature up to two weeks earlier from properly chitted seed than from unchitted seed."

So, who am I to argue.

But I do have to make my mind up on which varieties to choose. And in this I shall take the wise advice of Dr Hessayon in his vegetable guide and Nigel Slater in the first volume of his Eat series.

I think this time I'll try to go for quantity, though inevitably I'll be seduced by taste, how different from real life.

Now Nigel reckons... to be continued when I get home

A Hot Bed of Activity

I love it when a plan sort of comes together even if it is all a bit synchronistic. The allotments are getting a delivery of horse poo this morning, straight from her maj Liz. All good stuff, but it does need to rot down for a year or so. That's a long time but I've had a bit of a brain wave; I'll use some of it to make a hot bed like the Victorian gardeners used to do to bring on veg and fruit early.

I had a dig around on the internet and turned up some interesting pages such as @ and also a very informative site @.

These cover all the basics. And then another layer of synchronicity was added when I looked through the recent blog postings on my blog roll and found this at Our Happy Acres where the latest post was about cold frames.

Which all fits rather nicely into building the lights to go on top of the hot beds to keep the heat in.

And what plants to force on? Well, I think I'll try strawberries and checking out how to force strawbs I found this book on google books .

This book, An Encyclopedia of Gardening might be worthwhile checking out for other nuggets of info.

But for the moment, I think I'll try strawberries, and then use the reduced heap to grow on melons, probably under the lights, as suggested here, depending on how hot the summer might be. A nice one might be Petit Gris de Rennes @, and Thompson & Morgan seem to have some nice melons. I must be maturing not a fnaaar in sight, doh!

That Went Quick

Gosh, it's been quite a long time since I've put fingers to key board. Overall it's been a funny old season, with long weeks of watering by hand, the runner beans and the pumpkins never really recovered, followed by a dull August, the coldest for quite a while apparently, which hit the tomatoes quite a bit.

But there have been highlights, the soil quality on the hill of pain has started to improve, may be one day I'll be able to grow carrots there in a fine tilth, maybe, one day. The soil was to the broad beans' liking, producing a very big crop from the autumn sowing. The peas were not so good, also from an autumn sowing.

The tomatoes produced a ton of fruit, but I've had to strip the bushes in the last week as I noticed that a neighbours plot up the hill had been hit fairly hard by blight. Hence the industrial chutney making Sunday. Green tomato and ham soup will be on the menu, which can also be frozen, to use up more of the harvest.

I'm still crossing my fingers that the pumpkins will be able to ripen up a few pumps, there's two for sure, but never count your pumpkins until you've oven roasted them, as they say. Thinking about it the HoP hasn't been that productive this year. Some cabbages, three beds of toms, two big lines of broad beans, a few peas, and two-and-a-bit beds of pumpkins. And 50 odd onions and 30 heads of garlic. Well, not that bad, but could do better.

At the moment, I've sown some green manures: phacelia, fenugreek, a bit late, I know, and buck wheat. There is most of a bed of swedes to thin a bit more. I'm waiting to clear the pumpkins and then I should be able to put in one bed of onions, and one bed of garlic. Then I will have one complete bed of broad beans and one of peas.

I will also have to prepare the back of the plot for some pear cordons. And I'm mulling having a row of vines, or is that a little too greedy of space. Also the dearest one has finally made up her mind about her olive tree, in a pot in the back garden, that she doesn't know where to transplant and the desision is, she doesn't know. So I have one highly pot-bound olive tree on my hands and the task of freeing it from its ceramic pot. And where shall that go?

But, maybe, there is a seed of an idea there. Vines, olive tree, some lavender, how very provencal. I can't wait for the south London mistralinnit to blow.

The pond has been going well, never really dried out over the summer. I need to do some clearing out later. It's looking a little choked and maybe there is some of that invasive pond weed being invasive. I keep seeing froggies around, smoking untipped gauloise and mulling infidelity, so it's had an effect.

On my little plot of heaven things have been less of a struggle, though I was lacksadasical putting in the spring cabbage. they only went in a couple of weeks ago, after being sown in September all very slow.

But there have been a lot of carrots, not that badly affected by the carrot fly, and there are some still to be picked. The parsnips seem a little on the thin side, must have been because the summeer was quite dry, but there will be plenty for the Christmas dinner.

That dryness also seemed to hit the runner beans, the plants seemd to be confused as to whether they should be climbing or not, but still got quite a few beans off them.

The real turn up for the book were the caulies. I thgought with it being so dry they'd all curl up, lose their flowers and not produce. But we've had quite a few this autumn. I was dead chuffed to see them. I'm defintely going to grow more caulies. It feels like a real achievement. Though I have done not that much.

I also had a lot of decent potatoes after loads of manure was dug in. And now the turnips and beer radishes are thriving. Though I think i sowed them too densely; too densely to thin, so will enough big roots form? But they certainly looked a cheering sight, all that vibrant green in dark November.

Digging the Dig

And yet more digging. This time, however, in the back garden, digging up the overgrown roundy bed left by the previous owners. The plan is to use it for a tomato bed this summer, so along with the toms on the allotment, touching wood and hoping that global warming isn't some sort of hysterical millenial cult, then all things being equal, and if your aunt had balls she'd be your uncle, then maybe there might be a few toms.

To Dig and To Dig and To Dig

Did some more digging and weeding on the plot of clay, after some thought, naturally,


"To dig or not to dig – that is the question:
Whether 'tis easier on the back to suffer
The stings and scratches of outrageous brambles,
Or to take scythes against a sea of nettles
And, by opposing, end them. To sigh, to sweat
A lot more – and by sweating to say we end
The heartache and the thousand natural jibes
That laziness is heir to – ‘tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep
To sleep, perchance to make a planting plan. Ay, there's the rub,
For in that sleep of winter what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off the muddy plot,
Must give us pause. There's the respect
That makes calamity of so long left digging.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of t'committee,
Th’ oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised weediness, the hoe's delay,
The insolence of thistles, and the nettles
That patient goading the workshy take,
When he himself might his excuses make
With a bare-faced cheek? Who would guilt bear,
To grunt and sweat on a weary 'lotment,
But that the dread of something at the end,
The undiscovered country after whose bourn
All slugs are safe, puzzles the keen
And makes us rather bear those weeds we have
Than fly to other 'lotments that we know not of?
Thus laziness does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of dissembling,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment
With this regard their plans turn awry,
And lose the name of action.—Soft you now!
The fair Roundup! Answer my orisons
See all my weeds dismembered."

So after mulling it all over, I dug a couple more beds.

Original idea by Bill Shakespeare