The great, good and not so good bits about growing your own dinner 2017

determined_new_ms

manure collected, taken to the lottie and spread out of an area 2 x 2.5 m. first layer of my no dig bed complete exhausted now. Crawling into bed. Oh and little one can fend for themselves tonight!

CAFCGirl

determined_new_ms wrote: »

I thought it related to gardening CAFCGirl. One track mind!

Oh no, thats 3 years of having my allotment and still not actually managed to get it cultivated. Somehow I've managed to charm my yearly inspection so they forgive me:rotfl:

determined_new_ms

CAFCGirl wrote: »

Oh no, thats 3 years of having my allotment and still not actually managed to get it cultivated. Somehow I've managed to charm my yearly inspection so they forgive me:rotfl:

I can see that about you

went to the lottie this morning for an hour before oh went to work and I needed to take over childcare duties. The aim was to try to make my allotment tidier as it's becoming a bit of a mess. While I've been concentrating on digging over beds I've not been tidying as I've been going so it looks a bit of an eyesore!

Did the titchiest bit of tidying as decided to investigate under the compost heap. Under the top layer there was loads and loads of lovely crumbly compost :T shovelled up 3 wheelbarrow loads and spread over about 1/2 of my no dig bed :T Hoping to go back this afternoon and do another hour.

There were millions of worms in the manure I picked up yesterday! I have to ask myself had I of known would I have gone up there last week and dug around the manure to pick them out and save £31.50? In honesty I probably would have

felt so good to be at the lottie this morning and get an hours exercise while the air was crisp and quiet. Sad that I won't get a chance to go there after today until the weekend.

Think I might go and build the small raised bed I'm making for lo while the sun is shinning. Need to also do some potting on

Such a great time of year!

tibawo

Earlier in this thread I had concluded that no more plots would be available on the nearby allotment and had decided to try my hand at growing a few things in pots rather than flowers this year. Today I get letter to say there is a free one and to 'express an interest' if i think it is suitable. After missing out on the last one the manager did say that i would get the next one that came up so fingers crossed.


DD1 and myself went to look and if we do get it then it will need a lot of work. It is on a slight incline and we were discussing that do you start working on the bottom, middle or top of the plot first? it does have a bench, composter and water butt on it which I am hoping would come with it if successful!


Trying my best not to get my hopes up but hard not to!

zafiro1984

determined_new_ms wrote: »

went to the lottie this morning for an hour before oh went to work and I needed to take over childcare duties. The aim was to try to make my allotment tidier as it's becoming a bit of a mess. While I've been concentrating on digging over beds I've not been tidying as I've been going so it looks a bit of an eyesore!

I am exactly the same about tiding up, the difference being my lottie is at home but if we have visitors they pass the veggie plot on the way to the office and I'm getting to the stage where I'm embarrassed about it. I really need to spend a lot of time making it more presentable. I don't have a compost area so I need to find a way of being able to get rid of all the waste/weeds/etc without it playing havoc with my back as well as finding a way to get rid of all the broken plastic.

Tibawo - good luck with getting the lottie.

determined_new_ms

tibawo wrote: »

Earlier in this thread I had concluded that no more plots would be available on the nearby allotment and had decided to try my hand at growing a few things in pots rather than flowers this year. Today I get letter to say there is a free one and to 'express an interest' if i think it is suitable. After missing out on the last one the manager did say that i would get the next one that came up so fingers crossed.


DD1 and myself went to look and if we do get it then it will need a lot of work. It is on a slight incline and we were discussing that do you start working on the bottom, middle or top of the plot first? it does have a bench, composter and water butt on it which I am hoping would come with it if successful!


Trying my best not to get my hopes up but hard not to!

yay :j fantastic news for you! I got my allotment last year and I covered a huge part of it with membrane and dug over 1/4. I've gone back to it this year and I can't tell you the difference it made having it covered! Honestly water to wine! So easy it's like slicing through butter. I have managed to dig over almost the rest of it but am trying out a no dig bed surface area 2.5m x 2m. I would wholeheartedly recommend it. I spent the whole 3 months of the summer I had trying to get the weeds under control and dug over the rest (almost 3/4s of a full plot) over a 3 week period and as I have a toddler I can only ever get there an hour here and an hour there

sorry I have no idea about your question, just thought i'd offer some unsolicited advice!

Kantankrus_Mare

Fingers crossed for you with the possible aquisition of the allotment
tibawo.

I need some help off you clever lot.

Despite numerous attempts at growing cauliflowers, I have never had any success.

I can get the seeds to germinate and all goes ok till I try to do the next stage. Then they die on me.

I have quite a few seedlings looking really healthy on my room table but not sure what my next step should be?

I have a bed that gets about half a days sun and wondering if this would be better than full sun? Maybe my reason for failure in the past?

smeeinnit

Hi all

Just a quick update, all my toms apart from a 10 year old packet of seeds my dad gave me have come up, and have been potted on :j

Lettuces outside doing well and spring onions outside just starting to come up finally.

Indoor lettuce and spinach went leggy so I will write them off/put down to experience, lack of light I think, but I have plenty of seeds so sowed some more spinach outside.

The 3 potatoes I grew indoors have been planted in their buckets, they shot up so much they still poke above the compost!

Sweet peppers also failed to germinate, might have been a lack of warmth so I have taken the advice I found on the net and placed some fresh seed in compost, in a plastic bag, on top of the fridge, hope these come up as I just realised there were only 20 seeds in the packet :eek:

Kantankrus I won't say for one moment I am in any way an expert, but can you explain what your next stage is? It might help throw up some suggestions (ahem...from someone with more knowledge than me probably) :rotfl:

determined_new_ms

morning guys I've been up way before the larks this morning everything coming along nicely. Need to start potting on things. I went with the approach of sowing double the amount of seeds I was hoping for to allow for non germination. I now have 23 tomato plants!

Only 1 of the marigolds I sowed has germinated at the beginning of the week but not the 23 other seeds. Hoping they are just late. Broadbeans are now coming along - I planted 18 at the beginning of the month and some of them are only just coming through! I sowed another 18 after they didn't germinate so no doubt will be inundated sweetcorn minipops are germinating as are carrots also. Random seed potatoes found in the sack from last year that I took a chance and sowed have started to peek through the soil too. Can't wait until we start getting lots of lovely veg

Also received email from T&M that my raspberry plants are on their way :j

Last frost date for my area is the last week in April so now thinking I can start sowing some of the more delicate seeds

Looking forward to getting back to the lottie tomorrow morning. Planning on taking a load of things I have found/been given - cardboard to mulch some paths between beds, some paving slabs, finish the raised bed I'm making for madam and install, will use lovely compost in my compost bin (thank you previous owner!) and dig over a 1 x 2.5 m bed - will only have 1 more to do after this :T

CAFCGirl

tibawo wrote: »

DD1 and myself went to look and if we do get it then it will need a lot of work. It is on a slight incline and we were discussing that do you start working on the bottom, middle or top of the plot first? it does have a bench, composter and water butt on it which I am hoping would come with it if successful!


Trying my best not to get my hopes up but hard not to!

I would potentially argue that having an incline aid you somewhat in terms of drainage (I could be completely wrong mind you). I would look at things like:

Group 1
Direction the sun travels
Shaded areas
Sheltered areas

Followed by

Group 2
Any crops already there (i.e rhubarb bed, fruit bushes etc).

An easy job to get you started would be to clear/weed areas around any crops already growing, makes it look like something is being cultivated and once youve done that, you feel all jolly about getting something out of it soon.

Then, I'd probably look at:

Group 3
Season
Crops I want to grow

I'd then think Group 3 in relation to Group 1.

You don't necessarily have to split the plot into 3rds as in top of slope, middle of slope, bottom of slope. You could go in the opposite direction so you work with 3rd of each section in a strip?

This is basically a long winded way of saying theres quite a few ways you could approach it :rotfl: