Hospital and rain.

Well so much for a productive 6 days off work not a lot done!

We have had terrible weather in Bristol and to round it off on Sunday I went shopping with the wife and got chest pains. Presented myself to local A&E and before I knew it I was being wheeled off to cardiac care unit having all sorts of drugs and needles stuck in me. I had to spend the night there and finnaly got released yesterday after doing a treadmill test all wired up.
The good news is my ticker is fine just really bad reflux acid may need an endoscopy to see if I have hiata hernia but I can cope with that.

I did manage to get the final 2 beds dug on Saturday but the couch grass was so bad I ended up using glysulphate to try and kill all the roots. Re-potted my toms again today as due to bad weather light has not been too good, they are all looking very healthy pics in a few days.

Oh and almost forgot my celeriac looks like it is making an appearance will have to get all my seeds out in next few days to see what I will be starting off next.

6 Days off and rain, rain, rain!!!!!!!!

The start of my 6 days off and it's raining, the forecast does not look promising for the rest of the period either!

I have been to the allotment for a couple of hours and managed to sow direct dobbies imperial long pod broad beans and 50 onion red baron( Taylors). The flower seeds Anna has sown in the polytunnel are coming on fine.

I have added some photo's of strawberry bed which I planted out last weekend also some photos of my beanpoles with garlic to the left which is coming on nice. I also covered the onion and broad bean bed with netting as you can see in the photo to stop mice and birds. Here's hoping the weathermen have got the forecast wrong and the sun will shine over the next few day's.

Parsnip F1 countess!

I don't think the kitchen towel germination is going to work as I keep forgetting they are there and they keep drying out. I planted some last night in loo rolls and put in heated propagtor so fingers crossed they will come good. Really not much done today as working same tomorrow before I have 6 days off, did manage to get a couple of old water cooler bottles as they make excellent cloches just cut the bottom off. When you go to local garden centre's you pay upwards of £10.00 for something a lot less flimsy. Since I have taken up gardening I find myself looking through skips and seeing what the neighbours are chucking out to see if I can make a use for it on the allotment, roll on 10pm tomorrow so I can relax with the wife and hopefully weather permitting get down lottie!

Lidl strawberries and more digging!

A very productive weekend managed to buy 12 strawberry plants for £7.00 in Lidl and planted them yesterday. I also dug up old strawberries and re-planted, dug over the whole bed and put weed supressent matting down then cut out holes with bulb palnter added some compost and popped in strawberries. I got a bit wet in the process as we had continous sticky rain yesterday, not sure if that makes sense to anyone reading this but the kind of rain that is light but seems to stick to you almost misty!

Today the weather has been glorious light clouds and sunshine and pleasantly warm for this time of the year. I managed to dig out three more beds and put timber frame around two of them. This is has been time consuming due to the amount of couch grass I am having to pull out but will hopefully be worth it in the end. I will be back to work tomorrow on late shifts 2pm till 10pm up until wednesday then six days off from Thursday so hopefully weather will be good and I will finally get the beds dug (3 to go) and timber surrounds complete. More photos to follow this week time for a nice hot bath and relax time now.

Quick update I have just started parsnip F1 countess off on wet kitchen towel and placed in airing cupboard!

Planted mange tous sugar snap pea seed today in guttering within polytunnel, dug out another two beds and removed bloody couch grass. Anna planted oriental poppy, sunflowers, pansies and french marigolds. I'm in charge of the stuff we eat and Anna(wife) looks after flowers for colour and companion planting and of course attracting those lovely pollinators the bee's. The plan was to stay down plot all day but as it's my first proper full day off in over a week it started pouring down around lunchtime now 6pm and still raining. We have been out for a bite to eat this afternoon and I have picked up a bargain in Tesco 20 metres of garden wire with a little cutter thing on,was £1.00 now 10p so bought 6 of them for a bargain 60p.

Here are my leggy toms which I have now put in 9cm pots, stiil waiting for celeriac to germinate I know it takes quite a while but not sure how long? Day off tommorow so hoping the weather holds out as plan to spend a day on plot. There is still much to do beds to be dug and dreaded couch grass to be removed, I find it all very therapeautical though so no complaints.

Planted first early spuds today pentland javelin and aaron pilot one bed for each as you can see in photo to the right!

Also put some water pipes over another bed to support netting ready for when I plant sprouts and cabbage. I have evesham sprouts and F1 Atlas growing in pots in polytunnel they have just started to sprout.

My garlic bed is coming along nice this picture was taken today!

This is what lottie is looking like today, I have managed to dig out two more beds and hope to plant spuds tommorow! Planted some beetroot last night in modules detroit 2. Re-planted leggy toms in to 9cm pots and have put in windowsill, I am growing tumbler, alisa Craig, fantasio f1 and inca f1.

After a few months!

As you can see the polytunnel is up and spuds were growing nicely, they were sarpo mira and I am still eating them now I can not believe how well they stored.

After 22 days!

The beds are starting to take shape and my back was starting to hurt.

Day four on alllotment!

Day four as you can see lots of digging done and progress being made!

Photo of first day!

This is what my allotment looked like on first day back in June 2009, as you can see lots of hard work ahead!

Working nights at the moment so spent only a couple of hours on lottie today. I have dug out another bed and put timber frame around it, using feather edge timber as I do not paln to raise beds on bottom half just want the beds to be defined so i can put paths down. I will be using carboard and chip bark for paths. The digging out is hard as I am removing alot of couch grass, the last person who had plo used to have it ploughed by local farmer and manured once a year and little else as he was old and was trying to cope with five 300 sq yard plots.

I am hoping to plant spuds this week, so far I have planted jeruselem artichokes, fruit bushes and overwintered a bed of garlic. I will post some photos this week of what the plot was like last June when I took it on and the progress I have made.

This is my first post, I will use this blog to let anyone know who is interested about my allotment. I will also use it as a personal diary to keep records and photos of what I have planted and when also my success and faliures in the wonderful world of grow your own. Once I work out how to upload photos and how to blog I will try and post as often as I can.