Bank Holiday allotmenteering

Long time no post, but there's not been much activity on the plot apart from infrequent bouts of clearing/digging ground. Until this long weekend, that is.


Rather than watch the Royal Wedding live on Friday we went to the plot, and ended up spending almost the whole day glazing the greenhouse. When I took over the second half of our plot the previous owner left behind a 6x4' aluminium greenhouse frame, assembled, and a stack of glass panels. It turned out that these panels had originally been stacked with sheets of newspaper between them, probably to provide some protection. However over time being stacked on one plot or another (a long time, the newspapers were dated 1999!) the paper had all but composted, which meant that every single pane of glass had to be scraped and cleaned  on both sides with soapy water before assembling into the greenhouse frame. A long a tedious job, but with thanks to my lovely wife doing most of the cleaning while I attempted the ultimate breakable 3D jigsaw, we got it done.

Shiny and clean greenhouse

So I am now the proud owner of a functioning greenhouse. Now to fill it. Before I do so, I am going to rig up a drip irrigation system linked to a water butt (collecting rainwater from the greenhouse roof), as I cannot visit the plot every day so any contents may shrivel and die if the current sunshine levels we're experiencing in the South East continue!

On Saturday we visited our local garden centre near Sunbury-on-Thames, that has been completely refurbished into a shiny new flagship store. We managed to come away with some new plants for the garden at home as well as some flowers and a few veggies for the plot. This included two already quite large aubergine plants (Moneymaker) that I have re-potted into large pots and will move into the greenhouse once my irrigation system is up and running.


We also bought some marigolds and nasturtiums for the "flower bed" at the front of our plot. This was supplemented with three lupins purchased on Sunday's visit to the Hertfordshire Garden Show at Knebworth House. This was a seriously garden-related long weekend! The flower bed was planted today in another marathon session on the plot, and once they have bedded in they'll look rather nice, and hopefully attract lots of bees!

Flower bed at the front of the plot

Anne also planted some flowers (including three striking pink Phlox) in a smaller "flower bed" near the shed/ seating area of the plot, which will also look great when they mature. No pictures yet as the area was in some shade once planted as the afternoon wore on.


Behind the flower bed in the shot on the left are my spuds, first earlies and maincrop, which are coming on nicely.


Further back are the onions (red), garlic and a row of leeks sown from seed. A little late but the ones I had growing on from home were singed in the hot weather and didn't pull through.


Also sown today were beetroot (Solo F1), a variety I've not tried before. The under-gardener helped with sowing those, as the seeds were big enough to handle. I'd hoped to sow some carrots as well but it was so windy on the plot that I didn't dare, for fear of broad-casting the things across the entire allotment site!


I also planted a small block of Minipop baby sweetcorn, more as an experiment than anything else. I detest "big" sweetcorn but quite like the baby variety in stir fries etc so it's worth a punt. I have heard that they don't give a huge crop, but we'll see.

Courgettes in their individual watering holes

The last things I planted today were three courgette plants (see photo) and a pumpkin, all bought cheaply from the garden centre in Saturday. The courgette variety was not specified so we'll have to wait and see how they turn out. The pumpkin is known as "Ghost Rider", which is the main reason I chose it, and is now known and labelled as "Sam's Pumpkin" for the under-gardener to look after.


All in all a very productive weekend and the plot is starting to look more like an allotment with a plan. How much pain we're in tomorrow remains to be seen...


We still have approximately half the ground to clear - some was largely grass, which has now been killed off and is awaiting digging, and the rest still under black plastic, where it will probably remain for this season whilst we work on the rest.