My last day

Yesterday was my last day as an Online Sales Manager before moving up to the top floor on Monday.

Thankfully, they respected my request for no leaving speech or collection and rather than a leaving do, I took the team to lunch at cafe rouge, which was very relaxing and fun. The team did buy me some wonderful flowers, a funky filofax and a delicious bottle of rose. So thank you, Vishali, Kieran, Ruth, Nick, Darren, Pravin (for three days) and Abi.

They obviously know me well as the arrangement included ornamental cabbages and my favorite Blue Moon roses.

By the time they had traveled on the tube the lilies had started to open so everybody in the second carriage of the 1605 Poole train out of Waterloo benefited from them as well.

Anyway, from the buzz of high finance, today it is back to the even more thrilling world of muck spreading.

Winter veg

It is wonderful to realise that your diet should change with the seasons i.e. what is ready for harvesting. Today is the turn of the parsnips), although Ted told me off as they like to have a frost on them to sweeten them up, but I was weeding and got curious to what was going on under the ground. The first two were standard Tesco size but then a whopper came up. It is much easier harvesting that when we did the carrots, as the ground is nice and soft (although muddy) it is possible to get a parsnip out without breking it in half.

So that I could make a casserole I also pulled a leek, a couple of small swede and some celery. Now that mixture really did make the car smell!

I also started a new tub of comfrey tea and also a tub of nettle tea, which is (according to Bob Flowerdew) excellent for getting rid of caterpillas, so a good investment for the spring.

Haloween

The crop of the day is the 'giant' pumpkin. I am thinking of writing to Thompson and Morgan as this was the biggest we got - we planted it in manure, watered it daily, gave it a dose of comfrey tea every sunday and still it would not get any bigger. It is too big for me to carry so maybe it is just as well. There are three others that are going to be made into pies but hopefully we can preserve the skin for carving.

I also harvested the rest of the beetroot, a load of peppers, a marrow, two courgettes and a couple of aubergines.

Spring cleaning

To us allotmenteers, spring cleaning is actually autumn cleaning. This is where the hard work starts. Every season brings surprises as we didn't have the pleasure of the big clean last year, it is somewhat of a shock how much work is required, although a day of sunshine makes it so much better. I have cleared most of the small beds leaving only the chard, the everlasting onions, fennel and the bed with parsnips and swede. One small problem is, I didn't realise quite how many plastic bottles and canes we used so the greenhouse is filling up. We need to have a good tidy up in the shed to make room for winter storage.

I took up the 100 gladioli that were planted and, having consulted Ted on what to do with them, it appears that I need to hang them to dry. He was very impressed by the size of my corms!




The big excitement of the week is the manure delivery. A much larger load than I expected but smells lovelly and the boys popped round to inspect and gave their approval. In fact, they are going to get theirs in now that they have seen it.



Nick has prepared the strawberry bed on 53, ready to move them from Old Basing. We have a problem with couch grass on 53 so it took a lot of deep digging. There is a clump of raspberry canes that we have had to dig round as they are still providing a lot of fruit and it seems a shame to miss out on them.

We also seem to have been adopted by the allotment cat who took a lot of interest in the digging but we move interested in sleeping in the small greenhouse as there is a hole in the back that she can go in and out as she wishes.

Water, water everywhere

As mentioned, I have planted some cabbages at Old Basing. These are in the small bed next to the shed, where I planted 100 onions earlier in the week. Spacing them 12 inches apart meant that 60 went in at OB, so with the 60 that I planted at CW, allowing for a 50% success rate, we are going to be looking for plenty of new cabbage recipes in the spring.

Instead of troughs, there are stand pipes at OB and as we haven't got our equipment up to date all I could find was a coil of hose left in the shed by the previous occupants. There were a few kinks which I struggled to iron out, a few holes which squirted water at various places along the path, and no nozzle to control the water. It did get the cabbages watered in but I am much happier with a watering can.

Now that autumn is here a change of diet is required

As the courgettes seem to have ceased production we have to look at what preparation we made the the autumn harvest. Although the brassicas are doing well it is going to be a while before any broccoli, sprouts and cabbages are ready but we did get a shock to find a large swede hidden under the leaves of the broccoli. The leeks are doing well so we thought we would give one of them a try as well.

I know I have said it before but there is nothing like the taste of home grown veg. The sweed was much paler than expected but the flavour much stronger, and the leek was heavenly. They were so tasty that a before and after picture is provided.

We had (from left to right) courgettes cooked in olive oil with garlic, chard stalks cooked the same way, swede (mashed) chard leaves (lightly boiled), french beans, leeks and roasted potatoes. All home grown and all delicious. So was the roast beef, gravy and horseradish - delicious that is, but not home grown.


I must at this stage also make an apology for being so rude about chard. We made the mistake of thinking the bigger the better, but our friend Baptista put us right. We were letting the leaves get too big which made them bitter, so we tried some of the new young leaves and it is delicious. I cooked the stalks with oil and garlic and the leaves separately as greens and both are great. So, sorry chard - you are both pretty and tasty.

Nick and Janette went to the tip and they bought................

................. a pond and a role of alcathene pipe. And a bargain they were too.

Aparently, yellow signifies gas but in this case it is going to be the framework of cloches. Watch this space for the finished result.

The pond is for 53. We were going to dig a hole (or at least Matt was) and get a sheet of plastic for a liner but this should do instead. It will still need a hole though but can be built up more to stop the dabbling ducks making such a mess.

A pond is a must on an allotment, in my opinion, as it attracts beneficial wildlife. The area at the bottom of 53 is going to be a wildlife area so we are going to leave a patch of nettles and plant more herbs and flowers that will attract insects etc to polinate the fruit.

Hi ho - its off to work we go

Rebecca came to visit at the weekend and I did warn her that we would be working at the allotment. She seemed quite excited at being able to join us - and work she did......

She dug all the potatoes having pulled back all the black plastic which has a mind of its own.






She shifted barrow loads of weeds. Mainly bindweed which had grown long, pale and straggley under the plastic.






She made a start at digging over the bed, forked in a load of pelletted chicken manure and planted two rows of garlic.







We still have quite a lot of work to do on the bed to get it dug over ready for the overwintering onions. We haven't had a chance to get any manure dug in so chicken manure it is. I have 300 onion sets to go in and these should be ready for harvesting in June next year. I will use the rest of the bed to plant another loads of onions in the spring (I estimage about 500 should fill the bed) which will give us a September harvest as well.

The spring greens are overgrown in their pots so must get in the ground this week. There are far too many so I might try a bed at Old Basing to see which grows best. It is much more moisture retentive at OB so I am worried that they may rot over wintering but only one way to find out.

They are going to miss me

As there is not much going on at the allotment I thought I would share with you how much I will be missed at work.