As an urban allotmenter, with the dream of one day running my own smallholding, follow my successes, trials and tribulations on the allotment as I strive to become self sufficient. I hope you enjoy.
I said there was something magical going on today...
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...as I collected my potato sacks to head up and lift my potatoes, one stray leftover had turned into a Christmas Bauble!
I've had 9 months (almost) since I took over my new garden and I thought it was time to look at a before and after picture. The first image is once we took down the large trees. Unfortunately, I haven't got any of before we started any work which is a shame. The second is this morning in the glorious sunshine looking magnificent. We're currently self sufficient in cabbage, lettuce, cauliflower, spring onions, broad beans, herbs and, of course, eggs. Garlic will be harvested in a couple of weeks and I've already pulled up the last of the spinach that was sown last year - it bolted but went to the chickens so not a waste. Currently in the ground are onions, peas, French beans, soya beans, parsnip, carrot, beetroot, lettuce, sweet corn, tomatoes, courgette, several squashes, cucumber, and an array of brassicas. I'm growing potatoes in bags and hope to do the same with my sweet potatoes. Ive never grown sweet potatoes so its a first for me. In the greenh
At the back of our new garden we have 6 apple trees. We're unsure what they all are. Some could be eating apples and some are definitely cookers. Given that we've already eaten several crumbles and pies, we thought we'd turn our hand to cider. Several years ago we got a lot of beer and wine making kit from Freecycle. One item we'd never used was a fruit 'crusher' which attaches to a drill. After a couple of goes with the battery operated drill, I upped it to the mains drill and had much greater success. We'd brought the press online just after w moved in as a present to ourselves, hoping that we'd get round to cider this year and now we were ready to use it. In all we got two demijohns (2 gallons) of juice. Dutifully following the recipe in the book I'd got with all the free kit, we then sterilised the juice with a couple of Campden tablets in each. Unfortunately, I then read a few blogs which advocated using the
Well, I call it a spring update but it's still feeling like winter to me. What a dismal Easter break we've had? As such, things are a little later on the plot than I would have liked. I have three long polythene cloches to protect my plants. They were over my broad beans and spinach and I've just pulled them off and put them over my first pea (Kelvedon Wonder) seed sowings. After that, I will put them over my sweetcorn which I'll sow straight into the ground. Right hand side of the plot with broad beans in the foreground and peas and PSB to the right I've had a pretty poor germination rate over the winter - I can only assume it's due to the cold and the wet...or a combination of both. I have an unheated greenhouse and the water was freezing overnight in it at times this winter and early spring. However, as always, lets focus on the positives and look at the successes. The weeds haven't started coming through yet and
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