Seeds start new life in polytunnel!

Had a good weekend up at the allotment. We got lots more done and I feel like we are really starting to get somewhere now. (Do I always say that?!).

I moved about 16 raspberry canes over to their new home. I wasn't sure if I moved the 'best' ones. Some seemed much older, more established, I think in the end I moved some of the younger ones and a few slightly older ones. We have loads left so will be giving some to Mum and I'll probably post something on Greencycle (Freegle) to offer them to people.

Here's where they were:

And here's where I moved them to:

Not the most exciting pictures. I don't fully understand it to be honest but last year we had some bear fruit in early summer and some in late summer/early autumn. The early ones we cut down and the later ones we left so that when we moved them we knew which were which. The thing I don't understand is that I think it will be opposite this year so that the early ones from last year will bear fruit later on and vice versa. Is that right? Who bloody knows, as long as we get raspberries I don't really mind.

I was pretty excited to start sowing seeds in the polytunnel!!! I even felt like I knew what I was doing. My friend Suzanne and her daughter Oiana came up to visit and we put tomato, chilli and cauliflower seeds into small pots, like so:

I will be so chuffed if even one of them grows! Our friend works for this local company that sell chilli products and last year she gave us some chilli seeds, so we have ten different chilli seeds starting a new life in our polytunnel now! Me and Baz are both into our chilli- my body not so much but I still eat it!- so it will be great if we can grow it.

Baz made great progress with the paths and securing the polytunnel with paving slabs.

I'll leave you with a lovely picture of a flower that has sprung up in one of the beds....

-x-

  

February

It's been a while. I have been pretty unwell these last few months, hence why I haven't really posted. Plus it being the winter and all, we haven't been at the allotment all that much. But we've started putting the hours in again recently, including this weekend. We spent a few hours there on Saturday and the same on Sunday. One thing we did was clear a space for and erect a polytunnel which Mum bought us, which looks like this:

When we started putting it all together......

...the weather was lovely; the sun was out and it didn't even feel that cold. But gradually it got more windy, cold and wet and so whilst we were putting the polythene on it was a battle against the wind and rain.

But it's up now and I think with some extra reinforcements it should hopefully withstand the strong winds we get on the site, which start to come in March/April.

We were pretty excited about starting to build the beds and create the new paths. We bought some wood from Wickes recently, walked it up to the allotment, and voila:

So we have 10' by 4' wooden beds, which we've sunk in a little bit and they look pretty damn good. We bought some lining which we've laid down on the paths in between the beds and on top of that have put some woodchip. There's free woodchip at our site and luckily the nearest pile is pretty close, so we just go down there with our barrow and load it up.

Ah, it's all starting to take shape now. And as you can see the green manure we sowed from September time did pretty well. It wilted with the frost/snow we had about a month ago, and then we just dig it in a few weeks before we're ready to sow/plant stuff. We'll be putting in potatoes into the couple of beds you can see in this picture (above). We've started chitting some at home. We went for one lot each of an early, second early and a maincrop. Arran Pilot, Maris Peer and King Edward. Had no idea which ones to buy, but hopefully they'll all yield a good crop, and we'll have our own potatoes for several months.

We'll be going again this weekend, one job we have is to move the raspberries, which neither of us can really be bothered to do for some reason. We'll need to make sure the polytunnel is still standing. Fingers crossed... Baz will no doubt be lopping something down, that's one of his favourite pastimes at the allotment, and actually there's a tree which we're getting rid of at the bottom of the plot near the shed so he'll be doing that. I think we have radish and chilli peppers that can go in so we might put that in the polytunnel. Ok well until next time... -x-

December

Not much to report really. We've been continuing to make our new beds, Baz has spent more time up here than me. We now have quite a few beds with green manure growing in them, including some we did recently with forage peas.

Me and Baz have totally different ways of sowing seeds, me being ocd about it, and Baz being more carefree and wild, so my beds will be all uniform and Baz's will look more ad-hoc! I wish I could be less anal about it, it would save time.

 Here you can see it all coming together! We've done a lot in just a few months and all the greenery you can see is green manure!

 Our makeshift pond with Buddha keeping watch for frog activity.

 Me sowing forage pea seeds.

 Not sure why I am so grumpy here.

 Baz spotted this fox! Beautiful.

Ok well, think the blog will be pretty quiet until the spring, but I will update as and when. See ya.
-x-

Bonfire night weekend

Ok so been very slack with updating the blog...

Since I last wrote we've been carrying on with building our beds and digging over the soil and planting green manure. We had a bonfire on bonfire night, which was great, had a few people there, had some vegan hot dogs and watched the nearby fireworks. My friend Suzanne and her daughter made a cool guy...

 The next day we went for about an hour, stuck some more stuff on the fire and I dug over some soil in one of the beds...

The whole place is looking so different now than a couple of months ago. It's taking shape which is cool, although it's obviously a long way from all being finished, not that it's probably ever going to be 'finished' as such.

-x-

Stockfree September

Haven't posted for nearly two months, the plot is looking pretty different these days. We have entered into PHASE 4 as Baz likes to put it, which means we have started work on changing the plot to how we want it rather than maintaining how it was when we took it over.


Here is the plan:

Here is what the plot looked like on Day 1:

and how it's looking today on Day 147:

We had a good yield of crops over the summer, we're still digging up potatoes as and when we need them (as I write I am frying some for my breakfast...) and picking from a seemingly everlasting supply of summer squash:

This is really gross, but the woodlice like to burrow in through the base of the squashes, so if you don't pick them early enough, there are several tiny woodlice crawling around inside the bottom. Ewwww.


What else have we harvested recently? Well partly thanks to my friend's little girl, Oiana, who did an ace job of picking fruit and veg for us on Saturday, this week we have had:
-potatoes
-summer squash
-chard
-spinach
-raspberries
-carrots
-mizuna
-onions
-kohl rabi


Which is pretty good seeing as we put in fairly minimal effort over the summer. The carrots did pretty badly, I don't know whether it was because they all came from seed packs given to us and they were a bit old, or whether it's because the soil wasn't very fertile. It could also be due to my sowing skills, I tend to mess up sometimes with putting the seeds in too deep. It's probably a combination of these things, and probably other reasons that I don't know about due to my lack of veg growing experience.


So, how has it worked so far, starting up a vegan organic plot? Well, due to the fact that me and Baz have been living under the poverty line this year because I was too ill to work and not eligible for any ESA or the like, we haven't been able to buy anything really other than the odd bit of netting and a couple of hosepipe parts to replace the ones which mysteriously went missing, apparently it could have been me leaving them on the tap, but that's doubtful, even given the fact that Baz saw me walk away from the tap yesterday and go back 30 seconds later because I had...ahem...left the bit on the tap. (Damn, he caught me). Anyway, so had we been able to purchase things for the allotment since we took it on in April, we would have, I'm sure, been able to buy some things related to having an organic, stockfree* plot. But here's what we've done so far:


-not used horse manure on our soil like most other people on the site (reason: all the nutrients that have gone into a horse when they are grazing and then through their body and out the other end, well these are better acquired first-hand, directly from things like compost and green manure).


-put all our veggie waste from home into a compost heap along with all suitable stuff when clearing on the plot like certain weeds. And then mixed in some 'browns' like cardboard. And added things like seaweed from Hove beach, and watered it to keep it moist.


-not killed any bugs (knowingly), and moving slugs to the corner of the plot until we figure out where else to put them


-not using any slug killer or any other pest control other than removing with our hands and relocating


-not using any chemicals or weed killer or anything that would be harmful to us or the soil and crops


-sown lots of green manure seed in the last week- we bought two types of mustard seed. When the time is right this can be fed into the soil to create lovely fertile soil for our veg growing.


-put a whole load of nettles in a large container, filled it with water, waited until it stank and then used it to feed the soil/veg


There might be some other things, but that's all I can think of at the moment. It feels lonely sometimes doing it this way because although most of the people on our site probably do some organic stuff with their plot, I don't think there are many people doing it the vegan organic way. This website is really useful which I've posted a link to before: http://www.veganorganic.net/index.php There is also this article which I just found on the Vegan Society's website: http://www.vegansociety.com/resources/food-security/international-development.aspx 


Ok well, I'll leave you with a selection of pictures from the last 6 weeks..........

Above: a meal Baz made a few weeks back- almost everything in this is from our allotment, apart from the lentils and sunflower seeds.

Above: the nettle stuff.

Above: the first of the new beds under some netting.

Above: two more new beds marked out by slabs and whatever that black stuff is called.

Above: kohl rabi- really lovely grated and eaten raw.

Hope you've enjoyed reading this. I've enjoyed writing this a lot. It has been roughly a year since my anxiety flared up again and led me to being depressed. It has taken a lot of courage and determination to get through it, I came off an anti-depressant back in March, which was pure hell, but I am lucky to have several people in my life who have supported me so much and now I hope that the worst is behind me and I can look forward to enjoying life again, getting really stuck in at the allotment, and enjoying my time there and at home planning all the cool things me and Baz are going to do there.........like having a bug hotel.
-x-


*stockfree = any system of cultivation that avoids artificial chemicals and sprays, livestock manures and animal remains from slaughterhouses (http://www.veganorganic.net/information-sheets/4-vegan-organic-growing-the-basics)