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.

Plan for the year

We've been looking again at what did well last year and what we want to plant this year. Last year we had rectangular beds, but this year we are going to try the annual veg in rows like most people do. The fruit bushes, strawberries and asparagus remain in place and the greenhouse is a bit bigger. We already have the garlic and winter onions in the ground and they're growing on, though only some of the garlic has come up.

We had sent off for a free set of seeds from Gardens' World which include some vegetable seeds but we will also buy some that we were happy with last year. This is the list of seeds or plants we have and ones we want to buy with their variety that we have or would like.

What we have
Garlic
Beetroot, Cylindra
Carrots, Tendersnax
Cabbage, Tundra
Lettuce, Lotto Rossa
Broad beans, Saved seeds
Winter Onions (sets), Gift from Rob

What we want
Beetroot, Boltardy
Runner beans, Scarlet Emperor
Spring Onions, White Lisbon
Carrots, Nantes
Mange Tout, Delikata
Parsnips, Patriot
Leeks, Musselburgh
White Onions (sets), Sturon
Red Onions (sets), Red Baron
French beans, Kenyan
Sweet Peas, Old Fashioned mix
Spinach, Perpetual

Leeks and plans

We took down the runner beans today. They've given us a great crop, we've eaten them, put loads in the freezer and given loads away. As well as our last runner beans, we took a couple of cabbages, a few tomatoes and three leeks. The leeks are short but very fat and they smell wonderful, we'll see what they taste like later.

We have begun to plan our plot for next year. We need to know where to put the manure, some plants don't like extra nutrients. We also need to make space for garlic which needs to be planted in a few weeks.

We listed what we grew this year and realised that we sowed or planted out a few things too early. There was a longish winter this year with some snow at Easter, but the things that were planted later generally caught up. I want to sort out the fruit soon too. We need to pot up strawberry runners and I want to organise their beds a bit better. I want to be able to put a simple, removable wire frame over them to make harvesting and weeding easier. I also want to plant some cuttings of black currants to increase our stock.

Harvest

We've been up a few times over the past week, mostly to harvest vegetables and water the tomatoes in the greenhouse. We have had great beetroot, lots of runner beans, huge savoy cabbages, crunchy spring onions and crisp fennel. Norman on the next plot lifted a parsnip to see what it was like. It was fat but short; we'll see what ours are like in a few weeks. We dug up the stray raspberry canes that had self-seeded outside of the rows. I put some chlorate weed-killer down around the grass edges to stop the couch grass spreading onto the plot.

We have started to think about next year's layout. We will remove the beds and go for longer rows across the width of the plot for most vegetables. We want some more gooseberry bushes and we'll take blackcurrant cuttings to grow more of them. We're going to use the plot we cleared last to grow small amounts of things like spring onions and maybe some other salad stuff.

We need some more horse manure, so we''l be heading off to the local riding stables to get some. It's very handy and free. It made a big difference to the soil texture last year, so I'll keep adding it when we can.

I think I'll extract a summary for the year from this blog, so we know what worked well and for timings of sowing and planting out. This will help to create a plan for next year. Keeping the plan and results seems to be useful, Gary has records for twenty years, but every year is different.

Seeds

Today we laid out a plan of what we want to grow and where to put it. It didn't take very long and the plan just fell into place. I think it's mostly because we had discussed it on and off over the last few weeks. I drew a plan to check it out, which is below. We then went to the Kenilworth road allotment society to renew our membership and see if they had any seeds.

Renewing our membership for the year was the sting. I had to pay the full adult price of 50p. We then looked at the seeds they had. We got every kind of vegetable we wanted, except the asparagus which I expect to buy as one-year-old plants. The seeds all had prices marked as usual, but they knocked off 25% for members, so my 50p membership saved me over £4 on the seeds.

Now we need to work out the schedule to plant them and the excitement of seeing them sprout can begin.

Doors, Burrows and Drawings

Today's visit was to drop off some stuff.

Firstly, I took the frame I've made as the door for the greenhouse I've built. I checked that it fitted as the rain started to fall and decided to leave it for final fixing until a dry day. The greenhouse is a simple affair, built on the south side of the shed, it's only small at about 600mm wide, so more of a tall cold frame than a real greenhouse. The sides and roof are covered with corrugated plastic over a treated wooden frame. When the door has been hung it will be covered with the last of the plastic. This should make a great place to bring on plants in pots or trays before they go out. I think I'll make a low cold frame for hardening off plants as well. The shed already gets a lot warmer than the outside air - even in a wet Yorkshire January, so the enclosed greenhouse will be even warmer much of the time.

One problem with greenhouses is that they lose their heat at night, but one built on the side of a dark brown shed will warm the shed by day and be kept warm by the shed by night.

Jean took a bag of garden cuttings for the compost heap and made a surprise discovery. When we cleared the site last year there was a burrow of some kind tucked away in the nettles under the hedge at the end next to field. It has reappeared, but not quite in the same place. The burrow looked as though it had collapsed in and when we stood next to it more of the ground gently collapsed into the burrow. It was big enough to be a rabbit hole, but there has been talk of stoats and feral ferrets, so I'll try to suss it out.

We quickly measured the plot to make a drawing of the layout as the rain drizzled down. I'll upload the drawing when it's ready. We needed to work out what to plant so I thought a drawing would help to firm up a real planting scheme. We have a few ideas, including creating an asparagus bed, and the drawing will help us understand what really will fit, as well as when things will be in the ground.

We need to get another couple of trailer-loads of horse manure to prepare the asparagus bed. There is a large riding school and stable in the village and they have a large excess of manure. They pile it into a huge heap, which makes it rot quickly and thoroughly into wonderful compost. Last October we collected many trailer-loads of this stuff and spread it on the newly cleared ground but now it has disappeared, dragged down by earth worms. I want to dig lots of this into a bed for asparagus which I'll buy as plants not seeds.

That's the plan anyway.