Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat
Growing => Grow Your Own => Topic started by: DHM on October 16, 2018, 06:51
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Mostly laying slabs, building pallet fences and drying bad weeds and prunings for bonfire night.
What are you doing this month?
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Playing catch up with the rampant ivy growing out at the base of the very old hedges around the plot.
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Tending to the polytunnel crops, cutting back the trees and bushes that overhang my plot and very little else!
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Clearing the old plants off the beds, turning the compost bins again & again. Maybe setting off a Berkeley method of speedy compost if I recover from this blasted cough I’ve got. Emptying & cleaning the greenhouse & clearing the garden borders ready for the spent greenhouse compost. And if there’s time getting loads of well rotted manure & adding it to both Home & plot beds.
Then I’ll mostly be laying down 😂😂😂
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I'm clearing beds and forking over, adding compost where I can - then covering them over for the winter.
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I'm clearing beds and forking over, adding compost where I can - then covering them over for the winter.
Just the same as mum plus clearing greenhouse when crops of peppers (terrific this year) let me and replacing with overwintering plants, mostly fuchsias and trailing geraniums from home.
I don’t cover the beds however.
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Bit of building work, digging the beds and sowing green manure and talking to me chucks.
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like most clearing the plots ready to plough the ground cleaning the greenhouse putting pots away tidy potting on some perennials and moving some tender plants into the greenhouse
still have some potatoes to get up of the allotments weather permitting then there's the usual chores cutting logs and stick wood still plenty to do :D
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Gardening from an armchair. I keep turning it over in my mind. :D
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Gardening from an armchair. I keep turning it over in my mind. :D
🤣🤣🤣
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Breaking down the pallets I collected over the summer. Making Borders and paths around the beds with the pallets planks and wood chippings. Planting some current bushes, a peach tree and a apricot tree. :)
Waiting on the job agency for a new contract. :mad:
Taking Wife out for coffee. :wacko:
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Giving the paths a good tidy and topping up the wood chipping, this year the foxes have had a great time digging big holes looking for worms so they are all now very uneven.
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The pallets coming in handy again on peoples plots!
I have 7 really heavy duty brick pallets but cant decide how to put them up. Cant afford spikes so will probably resort to driving lengths of scrap 3x2 into the ground and slotting them over the tops...
Still waiting to clear the peppers and Swiss Chard, they seem to want to go on and on!
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Pulling up all the bindweed, brambles, random weeds.
Hopefully then i'll start digging over. But i'm expecting it to take all winter to get anywhere near bare ground.
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Getting my raised beds ready for next year by adding well rotted horse muck to some and seaweed to others ready for another year of no dig
Planting more fruit trees and planting a thornless blackberry hedge
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Managed to finally get the paving done behind the shed this weekend, so now theres a potting bench area, the space marked out for the polytunnel (now used for storage of pallets, scrap wood and bricks) with paths around each and between the shed. Grand.
As usual it ended up being a voyage of discovery; I dug up a plastic freezer drawer and an iron bottomless bucket, both full of fetid mud and rubbish, a load of buried plastic sheeting and carpet, and about 20 AA batteries. I mean, what's wrong with people?!
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I dug up a plastic freezer drawer and an iron bottomless bucket, both full of fetid mud and rubbish, a load of buried plastic sheeting and carpet, and about 20 AA batteries. I mean, what's wrong with people?!
I reckon those responsible should be put on a charge.
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Feeding the soil in my no dig beds, then feeding it some more etc etc.
Seaweed, horse muck and compost
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Currently rebuilding three bird-tables. Current ones are at least 15 years old and disintegrating. Tomorrow's job is a complete muck-out and tidy-up of the building I use for woodwork and metal-work jobs
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As usual it ended up being a voyage of discovery; I dug up a plastic freezer drawer and an iron bottomless bucket, both full of fetid mud and rubbish, a load of buried plastic sheeting and carpet, and about 20 AA batteries. I mean, what's wrong with people?!
Bucket for containing mint or other spreading useful plants?
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I've started to clear and dig over the plot but am only about 1/5th of the way there. I won't get it finished before the end of the month, but hope to get half way there. Also still have some potatoes to harvest. If I can be bothered after that then I will built a leafmould cage, but I expect that will be a job for next month.
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As usual it ended up being a voyage of discovery; I dug up a plastic freezer drawer and an iron bottomless bucket, both full of fetid mud and rubbish, a load of buried plastic sheeting and carpet, and about 20 AA batteries. I mean, what's wrong with people?!
Bucket for containing mint or other spreading useful plants?
Could do actually, I never thought of that!
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I feel for you DHM, having been there. It has taken me 2 years to clear my plot and there's probably more rubbish lurking.
Re jobs this month, the wind is changing at the weekend to blow away from the houses, so I feel a big bonfire coming on!
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I feel for you DHM, having been there. It has taken me 2 years to clear my plot and there's probably more rubbish lurking.
I know what you mean. The old lad before me had the plot since 1986 so when we took it on it was a kind of shrine to his vision and practice. Unfortunately that vision included burying batteries, tins of paint, rubber backed carpet and some things which frankly are unidentifiable. Add so that massive mounds of soil concealing wire mesh, old metal dustbins, broken tools, broken plastic chairs, hundreds of choc bar wrappers and drinks cans, an old BBQ etc etc... seems he just used it as a personal rubbish tip.
The worst thing though has been broken glass. Rumour has that a mini tornado ripped through the site 2 years ago and the greenhouse matey boy didnt tether down properly literally got lifted up into the air and dumped again, with sheets smashing all over ours and others plots. He carefully stacked the unbroken pieces and just left the rest!
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You do have to wonder on the mentality of some people don’t you? They’ve actively transported that dodo to the allotment & buried it, surely more effort than putting it in the bin at home. Our allotments have a skip once a year & the stuff that surfaces to be put in it is amazing, although I’m never sure if some of it isn’t transported there just prior to skip day!!
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The plot holder on my number 2 before me cleared out many van loads of debris - most as described above.
This morning I thought I'll just skim that patch of weeds and shake them into bucket for compost heap but the spade made a strange noise and I thought "that's not weeds". Spent an hour digging out glass and bagging up. I suspect that more will appear when the soil has dried. It's only a 4 x 2 foot patch which is no digging at all. No shouldn't be. Have also been brick mining in narrow length next to the fence behind what was once a greenhouse area. It looks like I shall be doing a tour of discovery all winter here and there in the remaining corners of this plot. Plan to put clover seed down in the glass mine and top up with decent soil for a length of herb fennel in the brick mine as I have discovered I have two packets for some reason.
I didn't realise just what a good state number 1 allotment was in when I took it over till I took on another for clearance for the allotment committee (next tenant let it revert and it's as bad as ever now though it was taken over with all sorts of donated goodies on it).
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My friend got his first plot last month. This was the 'inheritance' we cleared. It filled a council tipper wagon...
Then we started on the couch grass...
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Will it be as much fun when it comes to growing is the question? The tenant before me on plot 2 gave up when he discovered the joys of regular weeding, digging, hedge cutting and the vagaries of what grows well each year.
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Will it be as much fun when it comes to growing is the question? The tenant before me on plot 2 gave up when he discovered the joys of regular weeding, digging, hedge cutting and the vagaries of what grows well each year.
I expect he or she will find those things more fun than clearing up after the idiot who left all that rubbish behind... for me and my wife we've enjoyed the clearing process as it's made the plot 'ours' but for me the fun has been making quite elaborate planting and costing plans and researching cultivars, sourcing free stuff... now that stage is done I'm almost at a loose end, just waiting for the mundanity (if that's a word) of normal allotment work the spring will inevitably deliver... I reckon I'll end up getting a 2nd plot tbh just to have something to plan. (",)
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We had a little working party of 4 laying weed suppressant fibre between the trees on our shared orchard this morning, prior to covering with gravel. Left a suitable gap to mulch the trees in future.
Then on my own plots, clearing away the remains of this year's planting. Spreading manure on top of the cleared beds. I am about half way through this task now. I also planted next year's garlic today and harvested some more carrots.
This coming week, I hope to finish clearing and adding manure, clear out and tidy the polytunnel and sow field beans. That will be most of what I need to do until next spring. MrB has some construction jobs to repair a few raised beds and put a couple of new ones in on the second plot.
We didn't inspect the association's bees today, MrB and our other beekeepers normally do that on a Sunday, but deemed too cold today.
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One night of low temperatures blackened my Crimson Crush tomatoes. sweet peppers and chillies. Cleared them all this morning and weeded their beds. Checked compost bin lids against the winds to come and cleared shed gutters of leaves.
Fed the birds, cleaned the spade and home for lunch...
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Well, my season is up and running, well almost........
Drove out to local nursery and got car loaded with twelve 60L sacks of m/p compost which are now stacked behind the greenhouse. Bought a kilo of Lady Christl seed spuds which are now in the greenhouse ready for chitting and then planting into sacks to go into polytunnel when the weather warms up a bit to try and give me a really early crop.
Just noticed that the first of the onion seed I planted on 28th December are showing through. Oh and Parcelforce delivered my new polytunnel cover just an hour ago
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I've now dug and flattened half the plot and marked the beds out with 1ft paving, 6 of the 8 beds ready to go!
This weekend I'll be flattening the sloping area behind the shed in readiness for the polytunnel frame, an area about 14ftx12ft, and using the excess soil to level up at the front.
All that leaves then is the paving of the family area, installation of a pond and pallet fencing. Should be all done by the end of Feb!