Day 51 - If weeds can grow, so can potatoes.

Today the weather has been less than favourable. Windy, rainy, turbulent conditions, then a sudden calm. It was during this calm today that we planted our first early potatoes. They were Maris Bard and Swift, now I say we planted them, it was my choice as our lass has been saying to hold on, but the chitting room was not as cold as I thought it would be and my worry now is that they were starting to wither. I separated the chitted from the non chitted as we got two bags of each variety and I was going to see how they compared (chitted to the right non chitted to the left of each divided bed), but the potatoes stored in the dark cooler garage grew white spaghetti type tubers, so I thought the ground was the best place for them. As stated in the header, "If weeds can grow, so can potatoes" and the weeds seem to be starting to push their way back out of the soil again, so why not the potatoes. The first earlies should be ready in 60 days, then we will see if it worked out alright.

We did happen to have a few spare of each variety of potatoes, so I put the spare into buckets and will grow them in the green house, this again as with many things was not planned, it was barely a thought. But it might be a serendipitous action as it may well be the only first early potatoes we may get if the others fail due to my haste.

The Wooden markers (headstones) for the potatoes have been put at the fence side to save us falling or tripping on them, not the best photograph as this was a rare moment of sunshine so was taken quickly

Not quite chicken in a basket but potatoes in a bucket, this could be the whole of the first earlies harvest if it all goes horribly wrong, always best to have a back up, and nets which the potatoes came in tied to the handle so I can identify the survivors.

Day 50 - Half way there

 Day 50, and I am sure I have clarified this before, but days are the days we have worked and pottered not simply days of having the allotment.

Another thing I have written as advice is that you need to take lots of photographs, it helps for when you are in the middle of it all, simply awaiting for your work to be fruitful so that you can actually see where you have come from compared to where you currently are. One great example of this is our lasses greenhouse, today a hive of activity for new seedlings but as you will see from the photographs below it has had a big change from where it was originally when we took it over.

We have a wheelbarrow with a new wheel which is always useful.

The potato beds for the first earlies, has been done early. I must concede that yet again our lass is, as always right and the rest of the potato bed is simply not ready (too wet), although I am as ever impatiently wanting it to be.

Our lass forever the busy little bear, has been busy with some log roll which we had, to make an edging which means flowers can be planted along side the vegetables and it also keeps the soil in.

And finally, our neighbour offered us a fennel plant, can't say it is something we would have chosen ourselves, but I like the sound of the aniseed and it reportedly has great flowers which I thought our lass would enjoy, we will keep you posted.

Our lasses green house which we took over

The hive of activity it is today

We had no choice with the colour but it is a very cheery one.

two beds are ready for the first earlies, but will the weather allow this tomorrow is another question.

Our lass reused some log roll, with wooden pole supports, makes a defined edge for some flowers.

fennel from our neighbour, I like aniseed our lass likes flowers could be good.

Day 46 - A chill wind is the benchmark

 Today down the allotment we barely got past four degrees but it felt so much colder, now having been up their in the snow, it seemed strange that today should affect us so much. Maybe it was the contrast of the warm sun of Sunday that hit us for six today.

We are also struggling with wanting to crack on and get planting yet this just seems another delay. I feel very much like a young child looking at all the presents under the Christmas tree with a week still to go and feeling as though it is an eternity away.

Our lass, I think judging my mood better than I judge my own let me do a folly of putting the scaffolding planks out on the potato bed, my autistic side wants order and it is a perfect way of dividing the six varieties we will have whilst hopefully ensuring I only walk on one particular part of the bed when hoeing. I had hoped the soil would be nearly ready, but it is at least one full dig over away.

So whilst our lass set away some more seeds, I got onto building a bench/table, having just come from one disappointment I seemed to rattle into another which climaxed with the leg falling off. Team work though meant we got this sorted and as you will see in the final photograph we have an end product sturdy enough to take my mighty frame. Then we will see in the future if that created any cracks.

Perspective doesn't help but they are equally spaced, but this is the general idea.

The chairs make a great work bench

We have all the parts cut roughly to size

Our finished bench, with a big thank you to our lass.

Day 45 - Women work 6 times harder than men

I am feeling much like your mobile phone does once you have owned it for a few years, remember when you first charged your phone it would last all day and a bit into the next, possibly two days if not used much. But then you get to the point that you can have your mobile fully charged first thing and it be nearly out of juice just after lunch. This is me just lately, our lass says that I am one of the non duracell bunnies. 

Why do I mention this, well, today I finally got around to doing the job I had been thinking about for a while, which was sorting the compost, moving it from one bin to another whilst adding some from the manure pile to make sure that is rotting down well, as well, once that was done I would make a few trips to add to the manure pile. I only did half a job and that was helped at the end by our lass. The compost though is finally, finely mulched, as the large roots and stalks had still been rotting down so today with loppers available broke them down smaller.

In this time though, our lass had dug over the potato bed, dug over the bed by the front fence, replaced an edging plank (I did bring the plank down though ;o), removed pansies from the front, put some slate down out front and sorted some seeds in her green house.

Before going to the allotment I did sort some seedlings out at home, but as our lass pointed out, I could have waited till in the week, as all I really managed to do was get in the way and the stuff is still set out on the dining room table. I do have a use, it is still to be quantified.

Aubergine and tomato seedlings potted on

The scene of my one job

Potato bed, fence bed dug by our lass and new plank

Last bit of slate sorted

Am sat in the shed looking out, our lass was off doing more jobs.

Chitting potatoes, un chitted potatoes and wood.

The hours of sunlight are forever getting longer, as of today we have an extra 1hour and 16 minutes compared to the shortest hours of day light back on the 21st December. But we still need more to get into the full swing of growing, you should never wish your life away, but this time of year is much like Christmas to a small child, you simply can not wait to open the presents. As adults though we learn to wait, and distract ourselves with other things, there is still jobs to do, and although we are 6 weeks away from sowing potatoes we have to prepare, and one of those jobs is chitting potatoes.

We have 6 varieties of which I will list below, 2 bags of each. Our lass bought this very useful shelving, which as per usual I found the use for it before our lass did. As you can see I have put out to chit one bag of each variety we have, whilst leaving the other bag of each type of potato in a cool dry garage. Then when planting we will do a row of chitted and non chitted and lets see what happens.

This was the selection purchased.

• Potato 'Cara' (Late maincrop) - Creamy skin and striking bright red eyes.
• Potato 'Maris Bard' (First early) - Smooth white skinned tubers with white flesh, heavy cropping variety with good drought and common scab resistant.
• Potato 'Kestrel' (Second early) - Producing tubers of consistent size and shape, with attractive, smooth skins and violet eyes.
• Potato 'Lady Christl' (First early) - Very early, smooth oval, pale yellow skinned tubers with creamy flesh that remains firm on cooking.
• Potato 'King Edward' (Late maincrop) - The creamy white flesh has a light, floury texture and rarely discolours on cooking
• Potato 'Valor' (Late maincrop) - Exceptional yields of quality general purpose potatoes for all culinary uses.

• Lady Christi has been replaced by 
• First early.Potato 'Swift' is among the fastest maturing of the first early varieties, being the quickest to produce heavy crops of round, smooth, white-fleshed baby new potatoes, and producing larger tubers than Potato 'Rocket'. Its short bushy habit makes it ideal for containers or potato bags where space is limited. Potato 'Swift also has partial double eelworm resistance.

The plan is that the whole bed will be ready for 2nd to 3rd week of March as much as any plans stay the same, split the bed into six, then sow chitted potatoes to the right unchitted to the left. Well, thats the plan, still to be done as of yet.

The potato bed, when the frosts allow, hope to dig in the last of the manure/straw so it can be ready for sowing.

And finally.....

We put out a general request if anyone had any spare scaffolding boards. The above photograph shows the haul we got. Walkways, raised beds and I even have an idea for a table. Watch this space.

Day 37 - We do give a fork.

We had a nice leisurely walk to the allotment today, the snow and ice of the previous days had gone, so we could walk with the assurance of not slipping. You will see from the first Photograph it was a lovely day, so it gave us chance to sort things, the manure has been rotting down and so we added some more to it, and whilst I was going up and down the hill, our lass sorted the leaf mould and forked over the beds and did a dirty dig over on the potato bed. The days are slowly getting longer, there is prospect of more snow in the days ahead but soon it will be spring and full steam ahead.

A lovely day as you can see.

Our lass forked over the soil breaking it down the clods of earth a bit more, also started the division of the bed, eventual this will be split into four.

Another bed forked over, and starting to portion them out

To give the worms a helping hand our lass forked in some of the manure we put on, so it will be well rotted in time for the potatoes in March / April

A long term project, as it can take three years for manure to become well rotted, but we topped up the pile, as it had rotted down by a third.

Jobs for January and plans for the future.

Lockdown 3 is now with us in the UK but thankfully we have the allotment. Our very own place of sanity, we have in recent days walked up to, or like today as it was too slippy, gone in the car and taken a few more bits to the allotment. 

We do have to think of doing some jobs and as with most of my thinking it is normally followed by "Should we put the kettle on?"

The Greenhouse roof which we inherited, Our lass is slowly getting more and more ticked off with bailing out the water, so we will have to think up a solution, well our lass has thought up the solution, I have to find the gumption to do it. Could be a while.

Digging in the straw and manure for the potato bed. that way it will have a couple of months to fully rot down for the end of March when we start sowing the potatoes.

A plan for the future, what goes where, it may change but helps in case we forget before planting.

Day 33 - Then there will be light, muck, onions, leaf mould and an improvised bird feeder

I am sure I have wrote this before, but the very jobs you plan to go and do are not always the ones you end up doing or if you do get them done, other jobs crop up. Today was one of those days, on going to up to our allotment, we passed a fresh delivery of leaves then on the next corner a fresh delivery of horse muck.

So three trips for the horse muck filled in the gaps where it was looking a little bare from our last muck spreading. Then two trips for the leaves, one of which I took the dalek, and being the clever so and so I am got it filled to the brim, but left the small point of how to turn it the right way from barrow to position as it has no bottom. As always our lass put us right. sending me back off with the black bin, whilst sorting the Dalek, which is king of floating at the moment.

We had a brew, then actually got on with the jobs we had gone to do. First job to bring light to the shed, the bright sunny winters day was not lost on me for the irony, but the dark dreary days will be the times when we will get the benefit. Our lass sourced the light from Wickes, our lass is good at finding the bargain buy. 

Second job, to let the onions breathe. Well, it was to stop them from getting to wet from the netting as it seemed to be holding the rain water above them and sometimes on them. I removed the netting as the shoots are showing long enough to not make the birds think they are worms. I also did a mix of compost and grit to put around the onions. I did this after watching videos of where I should have done a hole with dibber or finger but put them on top, A layer of the mixture should help nourish and weed suppress.

Last job was a do it yourself birdfeeder, we have the hanging feeders but this was birds who literally like their meal on a plate or at least a flat surface. It is now positioned in front of the wildlife camera so we will see if it attracts the attention of the birds and meets with their approval.

And then there was light

The bed is finally covered ready for next years potatoes

Bird feeder, pond, what more would the wildlife like?

Onion shoots, now free to breathe and little nourishment.