Random Pictures From 2007

2007 - The Half Arsed Year

The title of this thread says it all really: "the half arsed year"... Half a year in 5th gear and the other half in reverse... Stupid really after all the work we'd put in up to the middle of June, but we let the bad weather, the blight and biblical rain get the better of us. We were still getting spuds and tomatoes, carrots and onions, beetroots and courgettes but we weren't doing any real weeding and our visits up to the allotment got fewer and fewer... we never thinned out the leeks and the brassies lost the battle against the weeds we didn't get rid of... A shameful performance all told. By the time of bonfire night i was just glad it was going dark early to save our blushes; no one could really see the state of the plot... and after the wine had kicked in no one really cared. The greenhouse did double up as a good DJ booth though!

Last year i gave myself 4 out of 10... this year it's got to be 3 out of 10, it would have been lower if it wasn't for the greenhouse.



One of the plum trees snapped more or less in half with the weight of the fruit (due, i presume, to the amount of rain we had and the fact we hadn't picked any) but we'll see how the trimmed version gets on this year.




The rest of nature hadn't follwed our lead and was getting on with things, as beautifully as ever.




And we had a mutant sunflower that i loved... but getting pleasure from nature wasn't good enough to replace the feeling of satisfaction gained from reaping the rewards of hard work on the allotment.

Take me back to dear old Blighty...

Did I mention that the spuds were doing really well?! Well, they were... The first and second earlies were both providing a good crop but I knew that the bad weather was ideal for blight... I kept looking out for it but everything seemed fine before the flood... Lisa even banned me from saying the word...


But as you can see it ravaged the whole crop in no time at all... we just didn't have the time (let alone the weather) to dig them all up... the blight struck like a wave along the potatoes. The outside tomatoes suffered too... really badly... It's even managed to get into the greenhouse to some extent, but i'm trying to control it by removing the leaves and sacrificing some of the weaker plants, just to provide more room for the circulation of air...


This is why... the tomato plants in the greenhouse are laden with fruit... I just hope it ripens off before the blight destroys it all... Yet another dodgy year, as far as the tomato family goes...


But there are some plusses... The courgettes don't seem to mind the wet weather so much, in fact they're doing quite well... same goes for the cucumbers... they're looking really good, unfortunately, i haven't got any photo's because the light's just been too poor to take pictures on my phone... They say August might be better... we'll see...

And Then The Rain Came

So the 25th of June, the day that mother nature tried washing Sheffield and Hull off the map and the day she tried bursting Ulley Res's banks... We're right on the top of a hill so there was no way that we were going to get properly flooded but the volume of water that fell in such a short space of time managed to overwhelm the drainage capacity of out humble allotment... The weather had been pretty grim for a while so there wasn't much tidying or maintainance going on to be fair but the floods put the boot in...


The path was a flowing stream for a while, the brassica bed filled up like a pond and finished off more or less everything apart from the salad stuff and the swedes (i hope)...


No, that's not a paddy field, that's the red onions and shallots, sat in at least an inch of water, they were looking so good too...


...and this is what it looked like the next day... most of the red onions ended up rotting, we pulled them all up, and the shallots, but they weren't really ready and they were pretty small once we'd peeled off what i thing was white rot... ah well... maybe next year, we might have some normal weather.

Things Start Off Well

So, one bed gets a border to see how it works... and it seems to work pretty well, a nice plank balanced over the top allows access for weeding and thinning, as ably demonstrated by Lisa! At this stage in the proceedings (mid May) we were well on top of our game and the weather was making it easy for us... plenty of time to do little (and large) jobs here and there... the hard work was paying off.


The brassies were doing really well, not much slug action... spuds all in at the right time (over 50 plants) and coming on strong... no problemo... or so we thought.


The alpine strawberries also got a nice edging round them (all from the old shed we took down). We gave them a good mulch and started to see much better results than last year.


As always, Bruce was hard at work avioding the sun...

Green(ish) House

So, you take one very cold coldframe and wait for a sunny day... then you get a couple of mates, some beers and some screws....


...and then you add a funky pair of shades and some elbow grease...


et voila!! A greenhouse of sorts... ready for the tomatoes...


...then you add some tlc, some water, sunlight and a bit of feed. You keep your eye out for the return of the mosaic virus that wiped out last year's crop and you keep your fingers crossed... and lo and behold you end up with tomatoes!!! The first toms we've managed to grow, let's just hope disaster doen't befall them before they're ripe enough to eat!!

The Bench

I'm loving the DIY from recyled stuff at the moment, I'm sat on a bench I knocked up the other weekend from wood I'd been saving that i'd had donated or that i'd scrounged... Yet again I let the bench design itself, depending on the wood that was available and I'm really pleased with it... sturdy, symmetrical and minimalist(ish) in it's form...


On the day I was knocking it up (with the asistance of Ron) we had a visit from Paul and Linz, who both stayed for the whole day, adding a splash of glamour to the proceedings and chipping in with the bench... It's just good to see people having a laugh up on the allotment, it's almost like being able to be a kid again... trying things out, being inventive... posing!! ;.)


Last year we had 2 families of bluetit living with us... the birdhouse above was stuck to the old shed that we took down (so we could put a newer one up that we'd removed from our backyard, another sterling days work by Ronnie, Lisa and my good self in November last year) so I'm hoping that they will still use it this year even though we've had to relocate it a couple of metres away... fingers crossed!


It's starting again... as the seedings break the baked surface of the earth the feelings of joy return, I still find it unbelievable that things actually do grow like 'they' say they do... The shallots (above) are looking really healthy and are really encouraging... So too are the red onions and the emergance of all of the potatoes; first, second and maincrop... tonnes of spuds for all soon (preferably not hexagonally peeled though)!!!

Infamy!!

Well, wouldn't you know it?! You start a blog to keep a record (mainly for yourself) of the progress you are making on an allotment and all of a sudden your words are in print! Clare Foster, who's new book: 'Your Allotment' recently went on sale, emailed me sometime late last year asking if she could use a quote from my blog in the book she was writing; I said: 'Yes', of course, thinking that by the time she'd written the book my quote would have found it's way onto her compost heap! But a couple of weeks ago the publishers sent me a copy and if you turn to page 16 then you'll find said quote... I'm really chuffed and grateful to Clare for allowing me to be part of what is a fine book on allotmenteering... As you would expect from an experienced author (check her back catalogue out on Amazon) the writing is on the mark, informative and conveys a real love for her subject. One of the things i found particulary helpfull, and not something i've seen in other allotment books, is a good section on weeds, complete with photographs... so now i'm certain that the stuff I've been pulling out for over a year is couchgrass and that stuff that was trying to grow between last year's potatoes was horsetail... thanks for that, Clare!! ;.) (ps: If Clare's in the picture on the inside back sleeve of the book then it's bom chicka wah wah time!! ) The photography in the book is really good too (Francesca Yorke), but I reckon that if i actually got round to buying a decent camera instead of just using my phone then I'd be taking stuff just as good!! (Dream on Rich!) It's amazing how many good photo's there are to be had on an allotment... so much structure and colour to take advantge of, so many things that add motion to pictures... on a sweltering sunny day even simple raddish leaves take on a whole new level of beauty...


We've started preparations a whole month earlier this year, instead of our 4 little beds we've gone for 3 long ones, 2 were relatively easy to sort as we just joined the beds up from last year but we had to dig the last long bed (for now) from fresh. You can really tell the difference in a bed that's been dug the year before and it has really made me start paying real attention to the soil itself, which should really be the first thing you address... We've also edged the brassica bed with the remains of the shed we took down this winter... should help when we get to netting up time.


Me with my bedhead still on (i really do need to start looking in a mirror in the mornings!)getting ready to sow some beetroot... See I told you I did do some work!!


The coldframe didn't last long... It's now going to be a makeshift greenhouse thing, I'm using the windowframe and the remains of the plastic sheeting from last year's green-tent thing. The wind got a hold of it late last year and mangled the poles so we can't put it up again, but waste not want not, eh?! So far we've got the frame up and this weekend we'll hopefully finish the job... We need to, the tomatoes are really going for it on the bedroom window and I'm sure i saw a flower on one this morning!!

Getting Started Again

This year we decided that we'd try growing some more things, widen out repatoire, so to speak... i've got an ambition to make a proper bolognaise sauce with ingredients grown soley on the allotment, so that means celery needed to be added to the list amongst other things. We're going to try sweetcorn (3 sister method), courgettes, pumpkin, spinach, turnip and even things like shallots and red onion sets... Hardly the most extravagant you may be thinking, but it's a lot more glamourous than last years offerings!!



Another new addition is the new cold frame, (you can see Bruce checking it for size above!). It's made with a big bookcase that we had at home that was just too dark for the room it was in, a couple of mates said they'd have it, but i'd got my heart set on turning it into a decent cold frame, compared to last years effort. The top is a window i found next to a skip at the bottom of the road one day... I picked it up when i was (drunkenly) walking past it... it was that heavy it nearly did my sholuder in! Fortunately, they both fitted each other perfectly so i just rested the windowframe on top, no nails or anything. I filled the last gap in with a big piece of wood i'd got lying around, waiting to become useful, that just so happened to fit perfectly too!


Bruce checks our efforts to clean the glass...


Signs that spring is on the way start to appear in the bottom of the fence... It's good to see some ladybirds around all ready... ready to get to work for me as pest controllers

The New Year (Year 2)

As the days get to their shortest the days start getting colder and frosts set in... an absolutely beautiful time of the year if the low sun is shining bright... a tennis ball, used for fun in the summer provides a moment for reflection and anticipation of things to come as the sun highlights the ice crystals...


Little feathers, frozen where they lay by the frost... a reminder that nature carries on regardless of the weather...


Looing at the water butts, frozen and snowed over... at least there's nothing to water yet.


One of the apple trees, dusted in snow, sleeping, waiting for the new year, waiting for the days to get longer and waiting for someone to take good care of them for the first time in a long time... and that's what this year, Year 2, will be all about. The tree zone will hopefully be completely tamed and in a position to be taken full advantage of. Year 2 is time for taking good care all year round, doing jobs when they need doing, looking after things when they need it and eating things when they're ready. The first year was a practice, this year is for real...