Potatoes 2 - Helen is good at digging

Today, Helen planted the B&Q potatoes. They hadn’t chitted a lot as we had bought them a bit late, and seen as they were earlies, we thought we had better get them in! I heard somewhere that you should “plant your lates in early and your earlies in late”, so at least we’re doing it right (even if it was an accident!!). I must say that Helen did a stirling job, digging a tough area, in much straighter lines than I could have. We’ll have to see which one’s come up first. The QD ones were chitted, but were a low price pack, however the B&Q ones are more expensive, but will also have to fight their way to the daylight, as well as the fact they haven’t been chitted!

Potatoes!

Today we planted our potatoes! We got the potatoes from QD, our local discount shop, they are maincrop Maris Bard (I think). Helen took charge of chitting the potatoes at her flat on the window sill and it worked really well. Each potato had quite a number of ‘chits’ on them – we placed them on eggboxes and loo rolls in Helen’s front room, so she could keep an eye on them!

We also have a plan for some B&Q seed potatoes we bought. I have no idea which type they were, all I know is that they were earlies! A colleague mentioned that potatoes are very good for digging up the earth for you. Therefore, you don’t necessarily need to double dig the area you are using. We have decided to use an area we haven’t even dug yet, dig a trench to plant them and let them do all the hard work! It’s an experiment, but we will let you know how it goes.

You don't need a picture...

My friend Trevor told me, the other week, that we don't need a picture in order to write a blog entry. Well of course, he is right! Our cable which transfers pictures from the camera to the laptop has gone missing, so I've been unable to post any pictures at all for ages! 'SINCE OCTOBER?!' I hear you cry. Well yes and no.

We decided not to visit the allotment during November, December and most of January as the weather wasn't great for digging and other commitments just got in the way. However my kind Dad did put some weedkiller down on the 'bad' side of the allotment in an attempt to help us along with the weeds. My mum (who has the next door half-plot to ours) sought advice from the Parks and Gardens team at the Council who suggested some weed killer which won't harm any growing vegetables, but will calm down the weeds. So no, we won't be organic. This year.

In the first week of February I got absolutely obsessed over the allotment. So much so that I didn't do ANY knitting! I think I scared Helen a bit with my organisation! Don't worry guys, that organisation went just as quickly as it came! Anyway we spent our first Saturday of the year potting up some seeds.

My friend Laura gave me a Paper Potter (or Paper Plotter as I call it - why can't I say it right?) which enables you to create small seed pots out of newspaper. Very green! As the weather was awful we didn't actually venture down to the allotment, we just made tons of these pots and started some strawberry seeds, peas, onions and a few herbs (which died). The herbs died because I didn't use the Paper Plotter for those, I used mini terracotta pots. These terracotta thingies just dry everything out if you don't water them a million times a day! Because newspaper doesn't dry out as quickly, it keeps the compost nice and moist, so I'm definitely blaming the pots, not me, for the herbs dying. I now have a little seed factory in my front room and I have also recently purchased a mini greenhouse so I can harden them off.

By far our best day at the allotment was two weeks ago. We managed to begin chitting our first early potatoes in Helen's front room. We used egg boxes and loo roll to stand them up and put them in a nice sunny window. Actually at the allotment, we planted our Jerusalem Artichokes, created a Pea and Bean net and planted red and blackcurrant bushes. The allotment is really taking shape now, with exactly half of the plot ready to go. I have created a new allotment plan using an online planner called Growveg.com. which is quite detailed and enables us enough time to get the other half dug as we need more space.

The next couple of weeks will not be very eventful as Terracotta Armies and Council works will prevent me from going down to the plot. However I will carry on with my seed factory so that we shall have some nice 'plug plants' for later in the month.

Plot Layout

Click on image to enlarge!

Mizuna, Magpies and cheap Underlay......

Today was our most productive day yet! It all started with Helen arriving at my house at 10:30 this morning armed with handfuls of donated seeds. I'd also recieved some donated French Dwarf bean seeds yesterday at work and spent the whole day trying to remember not to eat them as they looked remarkably like peanuts..... We found that we could plant the Winter Cabbage and Mizuna and some winter spring onions at the front end of the plot right away. We decided to save the peas for next week. We started by digging and raking the area which had sprung a few little weeds in the last two weeks. We very amaturishly sowed the seeds according to the packets (which didn't seem to help that much as we are we weren't sure how many seeds we should be planting in each row). We marked them with copper signs we found at the Hardware store.

After we had finished the sowing, we decided to go over to Codicote to see if they had the wonderful, the magical, plastic greenhouse I'd seen a few months ago. We have long since decided that we just can't afford a shed or proper greenhouse, however this plastic one would do the job of storing our tools, keeping us dry and a place to start off some of the seeds in spring. On the way to the tills I spotted the onion sets and garlic which had been alluding me all month! With squeals of excitement we bought some 'Garlic Marco' and 'Onion Electric'. After storing all this in the car, and as our expedition had been such a triumph, we treated ourselves to lunch at the Garden Centre Cafe!

Ernie, an experienced and double allotment holder at Eliot Road had scared the living daylights out of Helen in the week, by mentioning that weeds start to grow back within two weeks of digging them up! This led to discussions about the methods we could use to keep down the horrendous weeds that we hadn't tackled yet and to stop any re-growing from the parts we had worked bloomin' hard on! Either carpet, black plastic sheeting or some old curtains would do. We had no success at the Charity shop, however on the way home we stopped at a Nearly New sale at our local church. It was there that Helen spotted two rolls of underlay, which we then managed to procure for the princely sum of £2!!!!

We immediately rushed this down to the allotment and layed it out to protect our precious patch of digging. It was while we were there that I noticed that the copper signs we had used to mark our sowed seeds were utterly crap because the Magpies just love them! That's Helen on lolly-stick duty this week then....

All in all it was a very successful day ! We have also made a few decisions this week:

1) Dani is in charge of 'organisation', as she has, a) too much time on her hands and b) Helen admitted organising wasn't her forte and anyway she is rehearsing for Oliver! until November, so there. P.s Organising isn't Dani's forte either, but as she just sits on her bum watching TV or knitting all week, she really didn't have much choice...

2) Dani has been put in charge of the 'crop rotation plan'. Let's just hope it doesn't turn into the 'crap rotation plan'.....

3) Helen will borrow her dad's scythe for cutting down the evil stinging nettles which have grown all over the back of our plot.

4) The erection of the plastic greenhouse will take place at approx. 1pm next Saturday.

4) The onions, peas and garlic will also be sown next Saturday. An approx time cannot be given as Dani's cack-handedness may thwart the completion of point 3 above.

Countdown to the skip arrival

Hi. We have to dig all the weeds out by the weekend 21st Sept.
All of them.
If you would like to help dig up weeds and feel destructive, please let us know.
We need lots of help right now!

Sat 1st Sept: Dani&Helen finding bad stuff

We are still digging up plants.
But also BAD stuff that shouldn't be on an allotment, like a bed frame, bits of computer... let's hope we don't find a body next...