24 Dec - Christmas Eve & Poultry Problems

This is my last quick post before I finish with my final review of the year. December has had some very varied weather so far; we've had very cold mornings with ice and heavy frosts then, as today, very mild days with temperatures reaching a 13 degrees.

Unfortunately the temperature forecast for tomorrow is warm too, which is a bit of a shame. It was warm last year on Christmas Day too. Somehow it's better to have a nice heavy frost like we had a few years a go. There's nothing like throwing back the curtains to a chilly morning that requires the lighting of the wood burner. (Pic - one of December's morning frosts - alas not over Christmas).

As to the 'poultry problems' in the title, these are quite serious. Like all poultry keepers both backyard and industrial, we were informed on Dec 6th that all birds must be caged up, kept inside or, at least separated from the wild bird population because of the risk of a virulent form of 'bird flu' that is sweeping across northern Europe. To date there have been two reports of birds with the disease, one in east Anglia and the other in west Wales - opposite ends of the country. 

The next DEFRA review date is January 6th 2017, however, because of the two cases so far, I have a horrible feeling that the caging of hens will continue. All the birds at the allotment seem pretty unhappy about things as they are all used to a decent amount of free-ranging. Being locked up is making them miserable I've no doubt. Still, it could be worse, this could have occurred in the middle of summer rather than the wet and cold Winter with limited daylight.

Finally for this post a word about the Christmas provisions. I've just been to the allotment to pick some kale, Brussels sprouts, dig a parsnip and retrieve a large Winter squash. Still in store I have Crown Prince, Butternut and Turks Turban squashes, onions and two large sacks of Sarpo Mira main crop potatoes. In the freezer is a massive bag of sweet corn along with some broad beans and runner beans. Still growing on the plot alongside the kale, sprouts and parsnips are leeks and Winter cabbage. Needless to say, back at the house are bottles of rhubarb, gooseberry and plum wines. So, it's not quite a 'bleak mid-Winter' after all.

Here's wishing you all a very Merry Christmas.

01 Dec - Council Cuts For Allotment Sites

In many ways I suppose it was inevitable that my local council, Torfaen, would begin to reduce its financial support for allotment gardening. The major surprise however, was that it has decided to reduce its grant to ZERO. Furthermore, I attended a meeting this year with a senior council officer who said that he had been informed that allotment sites were 'cash rich', which, when you read on, is laughable. Nevertheless, if council officers are beginning to consider allotment sites as cash cows, it might not be long before there is a reversal in monetary flow; i.e grants to sites might become charges for use instead; charges above and beyond those to maintain the sites and pay associated costs.

I need to backtrack a bit here. Like many councils, Torfaen County Borough Council (TCBC) decided to hand over responsibility for all the sites in Torfaen to two allotment associations covering the north and south of the county. My southern association is therefore responsible for around 16 sites around the Cwmbran area. I believe, from the meeting minutes I've seen, that TCBC gives the southern association a paltry £4800 and also pay £2000 towards water rates (it has been suggested that TCBC might still pay costs toward the water though this doesn't meet the current bill as it stands anyway).

It's been pretty clear for a while that the north & south county associations are already hard pressed to provide support to all the sites they are supposed to be responsible for. Some sites have received a lot of attention such as tree work, boundary fences, communal areas, water catchment systems and even solar panels. My site though has received, in the ten years I have been there, nothing. Not a thing. No help from the association whatsoever. Not even a trowel.

We pay our rents to the TCBC approved association and, until recently, were left with less than £10 in the kitty annually. Yep, ten quid if we were lucky. About three years ago we formed our own site association and started to apply to the local community council for a small grant. Thankfully they have been very kind and we now actually have a enough money to repair and replace tools for the first time.

I don't want to be too critical of the TCBC sanctioned associations as they have a lot of sites to support with very little budget. However, the rents have gone up by a third this year already and there's very little prospect of there being a fair spread of resources across dependant sites. It begs the question, why are we paying our rents to this TCBC association at all? What are were getting apart from community insurance? 

Now, added to this pot, let me stir in the withdrawal of all grant support from TCBC to these two council sponsored associations from 2018. Immediately there is talk about higher rental fees to make up the difference in the overarching association coffers. So, as a site, we will have to pay far higher fees than we are now with little prospect of return and, as I've mentioned, it wouldn't surprise me that allotment members will be viewed as a 'revenue stream' in the future.

Councils always offer the same arguments, 'we need to maintain services for education and care for the elderly' knowing that we all sigh and say 'yeah, I suppose'. Yet these arguments are beginning to leave a sour taste in the mouth when my local council now wants to close the highly rated local school 6th form and hand responsibility over to a local college with poorer academic results and, the elderly are cared for by profit making care companies whose workers are on minimum wage and have no time to do a good job however willing they might be.

Allotments are a small thing in the great scheme of things but they are an example of a very simple but effective way of ticking so many positive boxes: healthy eating, environment, cross generational cooperation, helping with loneliness, preserving green spaces in urban areas, etc. Then there other cuts too: adult education classes, libraries, community centres, bin collections, and so it goes on. The cuts keep coming, services are being trimmed to such an extent that the bed quilt has become a face flannel - it has lost it's original purpose and function. 

19 Nov - First Seasonal Heavy Frost

Just a quick update to say that the first heavy frost of the Winter season has arrived this morning. It was a bit of a surprise as the weather forecast said things were turning a bit cooler this weekend but predicted night temperatures of around 4 degrees and not the -2 I found at the allotment at dawn.

It was a real struggle to do anything; firstly I had to melt the frozen padlock on the site gate with my hands to gain access. Similarly, it took a fair few minutes to get into the shed as the padlock was totally iced up.

Not sure what the hens made of it all. Their water was frozen so I had to break the ice and get it flowing from the container. All the taps were locked solid so I turned the water off to the site, hopefully we won't have any burst pipes.

The brassicas were covered in frost and the leaves had frozen water droplets on them from yesterday's rain showers.

The kale, cabbages and Brussels sprouts all looked attractive covered in a white rime but the leeks and parsnips just looked a bit sorry for themselves.

The water barrels on the plots close to the gate were frozen down to an inch or so though the barrels at the north end nearer the hedge seemed less so. That's it for this quick update, Winter seems to have arrived on the plot. Bye for now.

11 Nov - First Sign Of Cold Weather

It's coming up to the end of the second week of November and we've had the first mild frost of the Winter season. There's been a succession of cold mornings with a very light dusting of frost across the grass though the ground has not frozen.

It's been really Autumnal with leaves everywhere. For the first time I've actually been collecting them and sticking them in the compost bins because there seems to be so many. I had to rake them up from the chicken pen so the grass could get some light.

As you would expect, there's not a massive amount going on at this time of year. There's still plenty of crops being used though. I've been having eggs from the hens, we've been making a very small dent in the Wiinter squash store, there's still two and a half large sacks of potatoes, racks of onions, kale, sprouts, leeks, garlic, and I've not dug up a parsnip yet nor picked any Winter cabbage which are beginning to heart up a little now. There's still broad and runner beans along with a large bag of sweet corn in the freezer. Best of all I have shelves of wine in storage including plum, blackberry and rhubarb. 

There's still a few jobs on my list, the biggest is the sorting out of the fruit beds as they need a good weed. The strawberries are in a terrible condition and they really need thinning out as they have spread everywhere. I've pruned out the old raspberry canes but I need to start tying in this years new ones.

One job I have started is my plan for a new method of large carrot growing. I've had some success in barring in my Sweet Candle carrots but, the carrot fly does seem to be able to cause issues even when they are protected. Covering them up is getting to be an annual chore. So, I've decided to plant a few carrots in a barrel next season as the height is supposed to help protect against carrot fly as they fly close to the ground. 

I started to prepare the barrel by drilling some holes in the tbottom and by putting in a layer of small stones and gravel for drainage; next I added a mixture of compost and sand without too many stones. I'm not going for exhibition carrots, just trying to get a handful of decent specimens.

Lastly today, I've been sorting out my compost bins. Two of the three are well on they way to rotting down, they were full in September but have settled so I've combined them into one. Turning them and getting some air into the mix helps the compost decompose. I did notice that most of the worms were in the bottom and centre of the bin, probably because of the recent cold temperatures. The last bin has a lot of leaves in it so I'm adding the usual organic waste as I go along to help it all rot down.

I'm lucky, I visit the allotment at last twice a day because of my hens so I see the seasons pass on the site and get to enjoy the sunrises and sunsets. I'll leave you with a picture of this morning's sunrise. That's it for this quick update.

31 Oct - All Hallows Eve

It's the end of October and Halloween. Before I get to pumpkin carving for this year, a quick catch up since the last post.

I grew sweet peas for the first time this year and they provided a lovely display at the allotment. I've decided to have them in the garden in 2017 and will try to over-Winter them in a cold greenhouse. I've germinated a few in a heated propagator and, according to the packet, they should survive until Spring when they will be set to grow away. If they don't, well, I've got plenty and will re-sow if required.

I've taken the enviromesh off the leeks and they look a little ropy. Nevertheless, some of the leeks are already well developed and have thick stems. I've weeded around them and have given them a feed of fertiliser, hopefully this will give them a boost over the next few weeks.

I've tidied up the Bosworth F1 Brussels sprouts by taking off the bottom yellow leaves and have weeded around them. Up until a few weeks ago they looked rather underwhelming but they have really developed well since. I was surprised to see how large a lot of them are and we've already had them for Sunday lunch the past fortnight.

It's pumpkin carving time! This year I grew 'Big Max' and what I thought was 'Jack O'Lantern' from saved seed but which turned out to be a marrow/courgette hybrid. So, Big Max it is ...

(Pic below - pumpkin end of August still on the vine)

(Pics below - my wife has decided to go for another 'Green Man' version)

 

Well, that's it for October. See you in November. Bye for now.

16 Oct - Autumn's Here

I can't believe it's already the middle of October and Autumn has truly arrived. All of a sudden there are golden leaves everywhere and the days have shortened so much that I'm locking the hens up at just gone 6 pm as darkness is falling so quickly.

I've dug all the Sarpo Mira main crop potatoes now. They've had a quick rinse, been dried and bagged up into three large hessian sacks. I'm really pleased with the potato crop this year, they are large and well formed. There's a bit of my usual scab on the outside but overall they're great.

Potatoes are a useful crop on the allotment as they really help to turn over the ground. Trenches are dug to plant them, they are ridged up and then they whole area is deeply dug when harvesting them. This last bed was simply cleaned of old plant stalks and any obvious weeds then I just ran the petrol tiller over it - job done for the Winter. I've dragged my usual covers over the top which I find helps protect the area from weeds and rain compaction.

The last job this week was the grassy path that used to divide the two half plots. This grassy path was really quite wide and was a bit of a pain to maintain in terms of strimming the grass. When I took over both plots either side of the path it seemed logical to remove the path and make the allotment whole again. In March this year, I took a load of turf off either side and covered the rest with black plastic which has been kept on for eight months. (Pic below - picture from March 2016 - the grass path was edged then covered in black plastic).

The plastic did its job and all the grass was dead. It was a pretty simple job to roughly fork over the area. In Spring I'll till it properly and level it up with the beds either side. 

The greenhouse has been looking sorry for itself for the past few weeks so it was time to clear the old tomato and sweet pepper plants. I quick tidy up and a sweep, the greenhouse was looking a bit neater. I'll be popping some wood in there over the next few days as I use it over the Winter for chopping kindling for the wood burner; it's an ideal place to keep out of the Winter weather.

I've actually sown seeds too this week. I'm trying to over Winter some sweet peas this year so I've put the seeds into pots and placed them in the propagator to germinate. I'll transfer them to the cold greenhouse when (if) they come up.

That's it, bye for now.

08 Oct - Main Crop Spuds & Plum Wine

The first week of October has seen mild days and cooler nights along with a bit if wet weather too. I've been digging up a bucket of main crop potatoes most evenings in an attempt to get them all in before the weather gets bad. 

My Sarpo Mira main crop have been terrific this year, probably the best sized potatoes I've had in years. The weather has been good for spuds this season; we had just enough rain to keep them watered without the humid, damp air that causes blight. In fact, most of the potato plants are still green, a bit ragged yes but still growing. (Pic - Sarpo Mira potatoes still growing in October).

I've already got two hessian sacks full of large potatoes and I've still got a third of the crop to dig up, not counting the potatoes we've already eaten. I dig up a large bucket full, give them a quick wash then leave them on a rack to dry before sacking them up. (Pic - main crop spuds an excellent size this year).

I've cleaned up the Sturon onions too, pulling off the straggly roots and removing the dried off leaves. As usual, a decent crop which should last me a full season; we've not bought onions for years. They are still stored in the shed but I'll move them to a frost free place before Winter.

It's been a busy few weeks on the wine making front too. I've been clearing and bottling a lovely red blackberry wine plus the golden plum wine from the fruit I picked a month a go (see Sept 06 post). I've racked off a dozen bottles of plum for maturing and I'll keep a gallon in a demi-john for drinking over the next month or two.

That;s it for now. Bye.

25 Sep - Harvesting Butternut Squashes

We've had a few days of sunshine & showers during a week that saw the Autumn equinox. It feels cooler and fresher in the early mornings now though the daytime temperatures are still around 18C. I've continued to tidy up the allotment and prepare it for the long Winter that's just around the corner. (Pic - a fleeting rain shower causing puddles in my plastic sheeting).

After clearing the sweet corn (see post 20th Sep) I got around to clearing the weeds and any remaining stalks from the area and gave it a quick dig over. I also picked the butternut squashes which have provided a decent harvest this season; much better than last year. I got a very heavy crate full and I'm very pleased indeed. (Pic - Butternut variety Hunter F1).

Overall the Winter squashes have done well. I'll continue to plant butternuts, especially the varieties that have been bred for the short British Summer such has Hunter F1. I'll be nosing through the seed catalogues for any new improved butternuts too, time doesn't stand still. I've a few Turks Turban this year as well, I planted these as 'gap fillers' from last season's seed and they have grown larger this year than last. 

I always try and grow something new and this season it was Crown Prince, another Winter squash to add to my collection. We've been very impressed by these as they are both tasty (though they smell like watermelon before roasting) and grow to a good size. One of my middle sized Crown Prince contributed to three meals. Winter squashes are one of the real joys of the Autumn Harvest. (Pic - Turks Turban and, in the background, a silver-grey Crown Prince Winter squash - photo taken just before harvesting this month).

Since the all the Winter squash have now been gathered in, I have finally cleared the bed of withered vines and weeds. I've run the tiller over the area and have covered the beds with plastic covers. Any weeds that germinate now will be choked due to lack of light and I find that covering helps to stop my clay soils compacting over the Winter. 

The plot is beginning to look a bit sad now. The north (shed) end has two out of three beds covered with the remaining bed containing the Winter veg: sprouts, Winter cabbage, kale, leeks and parsnips. The south end has two beds covered with the remaining main crop potatoes being slowly cleared from the last area. The south end also contains the fruit bed which needs a real sorting out! (Pic - the allotment is rapidly being put to bed for the Winter months).

That's it for this update. Bye for now.

20 Sep - A Busy Weekend

We had some lovely warm weather on the weekend (17th-18th) and I spent most of it at the allotment. I suppose I had the urge to start to get things tidied up as Autumn seems to be well underway and Winter is just around the corner.

The first job was to continue to harvest some of the squashes, mainly the Turks Turban and Crown Prince as the vines on these two varieties have withered and there seems little point leaving them on the ground. Likewise I brought my sole pumpkin indoors with the hope that there are no nicks or cracks on the outside so it stores nicely until the end of October. The only squash left in the plot now are the Hunter Butternut. (Pic - Turks Turban & Crown Prince Winter Squash).

On that side of the allotment I also cleared the sweet corn plants. It's been a great year for sweet corn on our site as everyone who has grown it this season have had great results. I literally ended up with a wheelbarrow full which took a few hours to prepare for the freezer. (Pic - just a small sample of this season's sweet corn crop).

On a less positive note, my carrots weren't particularly great. I had some half decent Sweet Candle carrots but nowhere as large as they were last year. Also, most had some evidence of carrot root fly so my method of protection proved to be inadequate. Between the Sweet Candle and the Nantes I did end up with around a carrier bag full so things aren't too bad. (Pic - Sweet Candle carrots).

Having had enough of runner beans and with a few bags in the freezer, the bean poles have been taken down and the area in front of the shed cleared and dug over. There's only the brassicas, leeks and parsnips on that side now.

Talking of the brassicas, I needed to weed around the cabbages and Brussels sprouts so decided to bite the bullet and take the frame and nets down. There are still cabbage white butterflies around but the temperature is cooling; I'll keep an eye out for caterpillars but I'm hoping there shouldn't be too much of a problem. I gave the Winter cabbages and the Brussels sprouts a light top dressing of fertiliser to give them a bit of a boost as they start to develop lovely green marbles.

The weather forecast was rain for Monday, which proved correct, so I was glad I put a few hours in over the weekend. I decided to put the covers on the newly dug over area as the sycamore tree near the shed is absolutely laden with helicopter seeds which I don't really want all over my plot - the plastic stops them rooting.

That's it for now, bye.

06 Sep - First Of The Squash

It's the start of September and there's already a definite feeling of the season winding down. The onions and garlic are drying in the shed; the last of the early potatoes are dwindling; there are yellow leaves on the runner beans; the lettuce have been eaten or have gone to seed; the Summer cabbages look worse for wear and, there are big gaps on the plot that have been cleared and dug over.

There are a few things still to look forward to though. The sweet corn looks pretty good and I think I'll pick a few cobs this week. Also, the Winter squash look wonderful, multi-coloured and bright in the sunlight as their vines quickly wither. We tried our first Crown Prince squash on the weekend and it was rather tasty too. We were a bit worried as it had a water-melon smell when raw but this disappeared into a a lovely buttery squash taste when roasted. (Pic - Crown Prince squash).

I finally picked the plums that had been slowly been dropping off the tree to provide the chickens with an unintentional tasty treat. I took 12lb of good plums and have turned them into three gallons of plum wine which is currently bubbling away in demi-johns.This will ferment out over the next week and will be racked off and cleared. I'll be bottling this lot and keeping it for a few months. I've also been out picking blackberries and elderberries to make a few bottles of red - the fruit is in the freezer at the moment until I've collected enough for a gallon or two. (Pic - plums being prepared for fermentation).

Autumn is a great time to make some wine, traditionally I use it to stock up on a few bottles for the new year. You can make a decent little wine just by using supermarket raisins though plums, apples, blackberries and elderberries and plentiful this time of year. I've written more about making wine here.

That's it for a quick update. I'm off up the plot to have a bit of a tidy-up now as the season is swiftly marching on. Bye for now.

16 Aug - Onions & Early Potatoes Dug

We've had some lovely weather over the past fortnight with very little rain. The Winter squashes are doing well in the dry heat, better than last year as the Summer of 2015 was relatively cool. I've got a decent pumpkin for Halloween, a fair number of Butternuts and Crown Prince plus some nice sized Turks Turban which appear to be bigger than last season. (Pic - Turks Turban Winter squash).

(Pic- three silver skinned Crown Prince enjoying the hot sunshine).

The courgette Summer squash meanwhile have gone a bit silly. I knew I was asking for trouble when I put in five plants when three are usually ample. There have just been too many courgettes to eat and I ended up not picking them and before I knew it I had lovely marrows - oops! (Pic - yellow Atena and green Defender courgettes which have turned into monsters).

Last week I took the nets off the leeks and was appalled at the amount of weeds choking the crop. While enviromesh does a good job of protecting the plants it does obscure problems too. Anyway, the leeks were cleared of weeds and I noticed that one are two have a yellow tinge. This could be because they have been shaded by the high weeds or are lacking a bit of nutrition; the weeds are gone and I'll give them a dressing of Growmore to give them a boost.

Two days a go the Sturon onions were taken up as they had rapidly 'gone over' in the past week or so. The forecast has promised three days of hot weather so I'll leave them outside to dry a little in the sunshine then will store them in the shed for a month or two until the green leaves wither. I usually clean them up a little then place them in a large net sack and bring them indoors before the frosts.

The last of the Rocket early potatoes have also been taken up now; they are a large size at this point and are filling a bucket in the shed. The ground they occupied has been weeded and dug over. This area suffers from seeding by a near-by sycamore in the early Autumn so I'll be covering the bed before the end of the Summer.

That's it for now. Catch you next time.

02 Aug - Almost A Chicken Takeaway

What a start to August! It was pouring down with rain last night when I went to the allotment to shut up the chickens for the night. As I approached the coop I thought one of my Crested Legbars was sitting in the coop doorway looking very bedraggled. A double-take later and I saw it was a buzzard looking very unhappy with life. There was clearly something wrong here and where were my chickens?

I donned some thick gardening gloves and managed to get the clearly injured bird into a sack where it played possum while I went in search of my chickens. My two Legbars were nervously huddled up inside the coop but my Light Sussex was lying shocked in a heap down the other end of the run. I grabbed her without too much trouble and a brief once over told me that she had lost virtually all her tail feathers and had a deep bloody gash down her rear. (Pic - buzzard behind bars; doing 'stir' for GBH to poultry).

By now it was getting dark and the rain was still hammering down so, happy that the Light Sussex looked alive and 'with it' despite some wounds, I settled her down with the Legbars in a warm, straw-filled nest box to see if she would recover overnight. Meanwhile, the soaking wet buzzard was taken home and unceremoniously dumped in pet carrier where it glared malevolently at everyone. It didn't take long to see that the raptor was limping badly and had probably been struggling to hunt for a while which drove it to take on a full-sized chicken.

Today the chicken, 'Mrs Clucky', (yes I know), looked a little roughed up with a lot of feathers missing and some nasty scabs but she seemed perky enough and was eating and drinking which is always a good sign. The buzzard was dropped off at the local vet to pass on to a licensed raptor handler. Phew! What a saga all that was.

Back to the more (thankfully mundane) allotment stuff now. The end of July saw the broad beans picked and the ground cleared. A great crop this year weighing in at nearly 6 lb when removed from the pods; they have been blanched and added to the freezer to be used in vegetable pasta sauces when needed.

I'm still digging early spuds and there's plenty remaining which will last me into September when the main crop potatoes will be ready. The brassicas and carrots aren't looking particularly brilliant this year but there will be a crop to harvest. The warmer weather has really got the Winter squashes going and all four varieties; Big Max pumpkin, Hunter butternut, Turks Turban and Crown Prince are producing fruits - fingers crossed for a decent crop in the Autumn. The onions are just 'going over' now and have swollen nicely - these will be taken up in the next week or two when the leaves have turned a little more brown.

The salad crops are going to seed with the lettuces turning into conical towers. I'm pulling these up and feeding them to the poultry. There are few White Lisbon onions left and the greenhouse is producing pounds of tomatoes as well as sweet peppers - all is well in there. When I open the shed door the garlic smell blows my socks off as I've got a bunch hanging up drying off nicely.

That's it for this update, see you soon. Bye.