Shelf elves

We had a visit from the shelf elves. This lovely pair of shelves are sitting in the greenhouse, just waiting to be filled with trays and pots. Well actually a couple of hours work and a mug of tea later we had finished building the long shelves.

Jean planted the extra garlic in a little corner near the asparagus. It wasn't on our plan, and it is already looking like the plan is broken. We have winter onions which we didn't originally expect. We have extra blackcurrant bushes as cuttings. Our broad bean patch is going to be smaller than first planned and the dwarf beans are off the list altogether. I still think the plan was a good idea because it made us think about what we want to grow.

Leaky roof

The roof is fixed. When I fitted the panels originally it was a a bit windy so I concentrated on fixing them quickly and firmly to stop the wind lifting them. Unfortunately I overlapped two panels the wrong way round and the rain sneeked in under one of them. Pull some screws, a quick shimmy with the panels, pop the screws back in and it's fixed.

Digging and shelves

Jean likes digging. She is never happier than when she's doing something energetic and useful, so digging fits the bill nicely. I don't mind digging you understand, but since she likes it so much I leave it to her.

So while she was digging over the now-empty parsnip and leek plots, I started to build the shelves in the newly-extended greenhouse. I built the wooden frames for the smallest set of shelves. As in the old greenhouse, I will cover the frames with wire mesh to make the surface to stand trays on. This worked really well before, it lets light and water through.

A few more garlic plants have come up, so the extra garlic we bought yesterday is probably not really needed, but we realised that there is a spot for the extras near the asparagus so some will go in there.

Claggy

We added the plastic panels to the green house and it is now a splendid thing. It is warm as toast on a coolish day and the space inside is drying out. I'm very pleased with it.

We have been trying to stay off the plot to avoid making the muddy morass that we created while we made the green house. After we finished Jean dug the ground over to bury the clag. Today we walked on it for the first time in over a week and it just sank underfoot. I still have the shelves to add, but to help preserve the ground I'll wait for a few weeks, we're not in a hurry to use it yet.

We dug some more leeks and parsnips. The parsnips are beginning to look a bit rough, with chunks out of them and blemishes on the surface. One of them was rotten. There are about a dozen left so in a couple of weeks we'll dig them all up, give away what we can and freeze the rest. The leeks have just got better and better, but sadly there are only a few left, some of which were the spare ones that we planted rather late and so are a bit small.

Greenhouse weather

Over the past few days we've popped up to the allotment a few times to rebuild the greenhouse. I wanted to make it bigger so I took down the existing, rather successful one and set about making a new one in the same style. I reused the front side panels and the door and made new, bigger sides. The frame above the door is a little higher now so the slope of the roof will be preserved. The water will run off into the gutter on the shed to add to the water in the tanks behind the shed. The floor area will be about the same as the shed and should give us enough room to grow all we want. The frame is pressure treated one-by-two, which is thin to be light weight and allow lots of light in. We will cover the side and roof with plastic sheets which are easy to cut to size and add a huge amount of strength to the whole structure.

There has been a bit of snow over the past couple of days, with a bit more forecast. There has been much less of the usual guff on the TV about arctic weather and yet actually this winter is earlier and colder than for many years. I've been slightly worried about the plumbing for the water system, but the lagging seems to be working. When I get the plastic sheets on the greenhouse that will restore the heating of the pipes to make that much safer again.

The parsnips and leeks are still going strong - some say frost sweetens parsnips, so we'll see next time we take some. The leeks are standing up to a bit of snow, but the main problem with the parsnips is that their tops have withered so finding where some of them are is getting harder, snow or not. They are also frozen in so digging them up without breaking the root is tricky too.

Bricks, digging and slabs

The bricks have been laid on the concrete footing. The line is fairly level, but if the front of the new greenhouse follows the line of the bricks we will have a bow-window front.

Over the last few days all of the empty parts of the plot have been weeded and dug over. I cut down the asparagus to the ground, then turned my attention to laying paving stones into the new extension of the greenhouse. I had to cut a paver, which smashed into many pieces, but two of them fit the space so that will do.

The winter onions are doing well, the rhubarb has all died back so everything looks good for the start of the winter. No sign of the garlic yet, but that's not an issue.

Concrete results

We took advantage of a fine, bright day, albeit a bit cold and breezy, to fill our foundation trench with a concrete mix. We used spare gravel from home mixed with a sand and cement mix left from some bricklaying at home to make up a concrete mix. It was a bit quick to go off so I think I got the mix wrong, but as long as it will hold a course of bricks it'll do me. It is fairly level, so a reasonable bed of mortar for the bricks will give a great base for the woodwork.

We took a cabbage and the last of the beetroot along with some tomatoes. The colder weather seems to be arriving, so the toms will need to be taken home on the vine to ripen. As soon as we do that we can start to extend the greenhouse.

There's a catch

I got some doors from freecycle. I took off the hinges and handles and I've fitted a handle and catch to the greenhouse door. It was a long time coming, but the door feels complete now. We have used the greenhouse so much and it has worked so well that I think I'll extend it this autumn. If I make it twice as big it will be just about right. It should be easy to do, much of the frame can still be used, it will need a bit more plastic covering and an extension to the base. We'll see how easy it turns out to be. I'll be using the doors for cold frames, compost bins and storage bins, but first we need to continue clearing up the legacy of the awful weed bed near the hedge.

We had a general tidy up, hoeing and the like. I topped up the water tanks since the rain was not much and there is none forecast for days. Everything is doing well, with more beans growing in the greenhouse. Jean

Easter snows

It's been a quiet week. The shelves and windowsills are full of seed trays with seedlings growing on. The greenhouse on our allotment has its shelves full of seed trays too. Even the cold frame at home has some beans in it. I've added another shelf into the greenhouse and there's room for two more. They can be removed later so we can grow some bigger plants that do better in the greenhouse all year. Jean got some free seeds with Gardeners' World, including some peppers, which we should grow well in that warm space.

Easter is early this year - almost as early as it could possibly be. Unlike previous recent years, this year we have had a taste of winter with some frosts and a few storms. This Easter the cold north winds have blown in snow squalls. So far the snow has not really settled but the ground is quite cold, so really we're waiting for things to settle down and warm up.

Wandering garlic

The garlic has moved. Not by itself you understand, it has been moved. It was happily growing scattered across many of the beds, planted without a plan. But now there is a plan and the garlic is in the way, so it has moved. I hope it's happy in its new home.

The shelves are in the greenhouse. They are removable wooden frames, to keep the space flexible, covered with wire mesh left from the fencing to stand the trays and pots on. The mesh will let light through and keeps the shelves lightweight.

The broad beans planted at home are romping away. Each pot had two beans in it just in case, and every bean has germinated. They were in pots that now seem too small - roots were bursting out of the bottom - so the strongest bean in each pot got potted on into bigger pots.

The leeks are sprouting, so the growing season really is under way. Bring it on!

The next few nights are forecast to have hard frosts, maybe -8˚C, so I have moved a pot with holly seeds in it into a very exposed spot. I want to frost them to help them to germinate, a process known as stratifying. A couple of holly bushes in the hedge would be very welcome, even if they will take many years to grow.

One door closes ...

The rain cleared up today, so I thought I'd fix the door onto the greenhouse. It went well - it fits well and once we had screwed the corrugated plastic over it it is very rigid and strong. The greenhouse will need some gaps filling to work well, especially where the corrugated plastic meets an edge - all of the corrugations need filling. Maybe a carefully cut plywood panel, maybe expanding foam, I'm not sure.

The water tank in the greenhouse that catches the rainwater at that side of the shed is full. There was condensation on the greenhouse roof above it, so even with no door fitted there must be enough temperature difference to lift some water. The tank should help to keep the air moist in the greenhouse and could provide a supply for some watering system, maybe capillary matting, we'll see what is needed.

The tank at the greenhouse side is small - it's a header tank for central heating. It is connected with plastic pipes to the two main water butts at the back of the shed. I put them as high as I could under the eaves of the shed so they catch the water yet the height gives a little pressure from a connected hose. When the tanks are full it works, but as the level of water falls, so does the pressure. Fetching water is tedious; we are about as far from both water sources as we could be.

I surveyed the burrow we found yesterday. It is much bigger than I thought, with more than one entrance and each hole quite big. There is a heap of spoil in the field behind the next allotment. It really does look like rabbits, so it's a good thing we took the advice to enclose our plot with a wire fence. The field behind was a hay field last year and looks like it will be again, so maybe the rabbits will be fairly happy in there and leave us alone.