Greenhouse greenery

Ok so its not strictly plot62 as the greenhouse is in my back garden but heres some progress of

my other growing exploits. The tomatoes are now at their maximum size and I've pinched out the growing tips to concentrate the plants efforts on the fruit. I must have 5 or 6 trusses on each plant and nine plants in total to keep me going! I love growing tomatoes they are definitly my favourite. I love the fact that you get such a huge plant from such a tiny seed and the smell of the leaves is fantastic. Its never a chore picking out the growing shoots and I copuld grow enough to fill a polytunnel! Anyway hopefully if the weather warms we'll get some of the toms starting to ripen. They still look quite a way off but I'm feeding them with special feed far more frequently this year and I'm sure its helping to build a bigger crop.

The cucumbers have finally kicking into gear. They spent ages doing nothing but at last the mini cucumbers have started to develop. Like the tomatoes I pinched out every growing tip and I think that encorgaes the plant to form fruits. The closest to ready is about half size so maybe next week I'll get a small one soon. They appear to be loving the trellis I installed this year. Its certainly worth the effort as it reduces the starin on the greenhouse frame - another good bit of recycling!

Finally, although I don't have any pictures, a quick mention to the sunflowers. These were sown very early in the greenhouse and planted out a couple of months ago. A few sucumbed to the slugs and snails but the lucky ones are now true giants. I'd say the tallest is coming on for 8 feet high and definitly peeping over the neighbour fence! I'll get some pics when the flowers finally bloom.

Weeeeeeeeeds

Its been a while since my last post so its about time for an update. Well lots has been going on so I'll post a few entries with more specifics. In general though we've had LOADS of rain. It seems never ending and the current five day forecast is nothing but! I've certainly not had to fill the water butts so it just goes to show theres a postive in every negative!

Well it gets better than that as the rain water is certainly having a postive effect on the plants and almost everything is now growing at a fair rate. The photo above was taken about a week ago when you could still see space between the pumpkins. They grow so fast I'm sure you could watch them growing if you had the patience. Also although you can't see in this picture the first fruits are now starting to form. They look like mini gooseberries sitting behind a huge flower! The courgettes are coming on too. I think it will be another week then we can start cropping - yahooo!! My neighbours have all been picking courgettes so it can't be long now. The best fruits are currently the size of a sausage and although its tempting I'm waiting for a proper two-person size portion for the first crop.

As you can see the plot is covered in weeds. Confession time - I think the rotovator did have a bigger impact than I first thought. The weeds, in particular horsetail, are all over the plot and growing round every crop. Its so bad I spent three hours weeding and it still looked untouched in places. Its got to the point where I've had to get the weedkiller out to do the job. I was hoping to stay 100% chemical free but I've got to kill the root of this weed and I can't see any other way. Still glyphosate isn't so bad and if thats all I resort to I can live with it!

More posts to come but thats it for general catch up. Oh yes we're now over two months old. It still amazes me how far we've come in such a short time....

Catch cropping

I've had the plot for 7 weeks now and despite lots of steady progress I'm still nowhere close to reaping the fruits of my labours. With that in mind last night I planted some quick growing "catch crops" of radish and little gem lettuce. The hope is that both will be ready in only six weeks, maybe less. I've planted them in the rows between onions and gave them a bit of compost to help them along. I'll try sowing a row every couple of weeks from now on to ensure a continuous supply throughout summer.

I also used my hose pipe for the second time ever to fill my three water butts. It worked really well and 2400 pumps later (yes I was counting!) they were all done. Just as I'd completed them Helen arrived which meant I could use the pipe to water all the squash and pumpkins near the entrance of the plot. It pumps so much water its amazing and as I've always been the one cranking the handle I've never seen the far end. All plants got at least a buckets-worth each which should really help them along.

Sadly as I was leaving I noticed one of the water butt taps had a small leak. I decided to stop it by tweaking the tap and after I'd "fixed" it it had a big leak....oops :) So emergency measures called into place and the butt got emptied straight away to saving losing the water to the weeds. By the end of it I must have watered nearly all the plot. Its hard work but so satisfying and all from natural well resources. Great stuff

Water water everywhere

Watering the alloment was always going to be a big job. Fortunately at the Westend site we have access to wells dug all over the site. All these are fully brick built and have semi rotary hand pumps for getting the water. The nearest deep well to my site is approximately 50m away which is quite a distance and certainly very difficult to carry much water to and from. With the depth of the plot an extra 30m it all adds up. Early on my neighbour discovered an unused well very close to our plots but after further inspection its too shallow and not worth the effort to restore it.

There was only one option left - water butts. I was really lucky to find a local independent garden centre selling water butts for £10 each. Normally you can expect to pay at least twice that from DIY stores. The slight downside is that they are ex olive barrels so have a certain aroma shall we say! despite this they were quite clean so didn't atke much effort with the hose pipe to become fit for use. I got three in the end with a total capacity of 660 litres. The plinth they stand on was made from salvaged concrete at the allotment site. A big thanks to Dave for helping me carry these lumps because there was no way I could move them on my own.

So the final bit of getting the water from the pump to the barrels because we couldn't bucket it. I bought a 1" pipe from ebay for £60 which has been my most expensive item by a long way. Its probably meant any savings we were going to make are well and truly gone but I like to see it as an investment instead.....ahem!! Its 60m long so has plenty of slack and by using a foam insulation sleeve and jubilee clip it clamp securely to the well pipe.

All in all the sytem works really well. Theres no water loss and it takes somewhere in the region of 800 pumps to fill a single barrel. Three barrels later and thats a decent workout! All the barrels have taps fitted but I've found its much quicker to stick a bucket in the top so they've had little use. Who knows maybe I'll get round to fitting a gravity fed dripper to water the pumpkins and squash but for now I'll use the manual method. All I need now is an eaiser way of cranking the pump!!

Too hot to handle

Well the big plans for the wekend went right out of the window due to the weather. It was far too hot to be down on the unshaded allotment so the compost bins will have to wait! Having said that I did get chance for a couple of hours split over Saturday and Sunday when I managed to dig a new triple row for leeks and then transplant them in. Fingers crossed for a bumper crop.

Other than that I did a bit of watering and hoeing to clear the weeds that have been growing in abundance. The pumpkins are really coming along now as are the onions both shown below (please look past the weeds!). The potatoes are slowly doing their thing but they always look a poor relation to my neighbours plots who got theirs in a few weeks earlier.

Sunshine, sunshine, sunshine...

Well after the rain comes the sun and the last few days has seen nothing else. Its done wonders for some of the plants with the pumpkin and courgette now at 6-7 leaf stage. Its also meant the weeds are growing as well so a fair amount of regular hoeing is needed to keep them at bay. At the edges of the plot the weeds that didn't get rotovated reached nearly 2' high in places but they were all literally cut down to size with the mower last night! Its looking really good (if I do say so myself) and its amazing how a bit of cut grass smartens things up. Another thing I've noticed is the lack of damaged done by pests. The plot appears to be covered in slugs and snails hiding under everything possible yet no visible damage on the plants? Maybe this is tempting fate or maybe I'm growing plants these pests don't like but either way I can't believe it. Maybe I'm not such a bad gardener after all!!

Hopefully this weekend should see some real progress once more. I've plans to build compost bins and dig the last bits of the plot for some late planted crops so watch this space. More pictures to come too...