The Trouble With Blackcurrants

The reason I've not posted about our allotment in a while was normally we'd go on the weekend but one week my partner was very sick, then I was away and he was still not very well, then my son and I fell very sick, then after we were nearly fully back to health we had a huge down pour of rain on the weekend making it just near impossible for us to go. This weekend we had the Olympic Torch coming through our town so I invited a friend with her 15 month old daughter to come round and to see the torch here as well as enjoy some snacks and play time. This left us with yesterday (Sunday) and we were amazed how much had changed! The raspberries had come back to life at the bottom of the plot, the other raspberries were growing this season's fruit, the gooseberries were starting to drop, the currant bush was now confirmed to be a blackcurrant bush and our spring onions were growing very quickly! Sadly our runner beans had been nibbled on and one of our tomato plants was screaming for water, even though we had loads of rain over the last two weeks.

Anyway I'm writing about the blackcurrants. Now I love blackcurrant juice and my son does too and he also loves jam so with the amount of currants coming off this single blackcurrant bush I've decided to make jam and squash. Because we were totally not ready to be picking I only had a bag with me so tried to pick as many blackcurrants as I could. The moment I pulled up a branch to look for any fruit I'd not find five of six currants... I'd find the whole damn branch was filled with them! Most of them were still not fully black but still made me think "how on earth are we going to pick all of these?" so I googled around. Sadly there doesn't seem to be much I could find that was useful, however the idea of cutting some of the branches off with currants ready to be harvested sounded the best option as it would allow the currants that were further inside the bush to grow and also mean I am pruning the bush which is starting to grow a little out of control for our liking.

I also learnt that gooseberry bushes have nasty spikes. I didn't realise this until I tried to sit down by our blackcurrant bush to put some of the fruit at the bottom. Yes I got stung near my bottom... ouch.

I'm hoping to go back up during the week. I need to palm our son off to someone for a few hours because there's too much to be done and I can't watch him and use sharp things. Not a good mix. Oh well, wish us some luck, please!

Hurray it's Raining!

It was nice to get some lovely sunshine, but the allotment committee have been very strict on using the water for the taps and as we don't have any sort of way of collecting rain water so been careful not to over water. But finally we have some rain and now... I want it to stop so I can go to the plot and not have mud all over me!

So here's a photograph of my son checking out the flowers just before it rained. We got in the car just in time!

Expert Help Means New Plan!

We are lucky to know a few friends who also own an allotment plot and offered their strength and knowledge  of what was worth keeping and what was actually a weed. It was brilliant to have them around as we found out we had mint, lemon balm, more raspberries and also I found strawberries growing on one of the paths which was overgrown with grass and weeds. So here's what I've very roughly drawn. Patch 1 and 2 are complete, patch 3 has not been sown yet and the rest is still in the works.

Okay I'm going to start from top-left and end at the bottom-right, or at least try. So here we go!

So you can see in a circle is "apples tree" which is our little apple tree that was already planted on the plot when we got it. Our worry about this is  it affecting sunlight as at the bottom-left a fellow half plot owner has three large apple trees which in the early morning until about 1pm a fair amount of our plot is in shade, which was great for us when we were there in hot weather as the shade was cool and relaxing for us to setup a picnic blanket with our son. We may move it in the future to the top-right which is currently three compost heap boxes of which two of them have just been left to grow weeds for a long time and we don't really think we'll use them so it is a possible site for the apple tree, we shall see. Next to the young tree is currant bush which says "red" in brackets. This is because we believe it is red currant but aren't 100% sure so going to wait for the fruit to arrive for us to find out exactly what it is. Next is a lovely drawing of a flower which is to symbolise a flower area, but I think we'll not bother too much there, infact we may consider moving the herbs (see on the left side next to "raspberries" for lemon balm and mint) into plant plots so they don't spread like crazy and place them there instead, we shall see. After that is a good area for rhubarb. I hate rhubarb but my partner loves dipping it in sugar and eating it, which to me is just disgusting but for some reason the idea of him growing his own makes it less gross to me. Due to the size rhubarb can grow it is likely we'll have probably only two rhubarb plants at the most. Next is our compost heap which needs sorting out but for now we'll continue using the old heap boxes, I will talk about the compost issue another time.

Okay so back to the left under the apple tree you can see a long tin area that says "raspberries". Again we found raspberries all in a row here which we thought were our neighbours but turned out they are actually ours. We were happy about this as we can make raspberry jams, eat fresh raspberries and make all sorts of tasty fruity stuff for our family and friends. Next is a patch which has been numbered as patch number one. We were given by my fiancé's dad a lot of celery plants, three runner bean plants and three tomato plants. With our friends' help we got these in to the patch and organised very nicely. Patch two is our roots and this year we are working on carrots and parsnips as all three of us enjoy carrots and at Christmas time we love making home-cooked roasted parsnips so having them grown by us will make it even more home-made. Next to patch two is currently our gooseberries which are growing very nicely, however we don't like gooseberries so once they are ready to be harvested we are going to give them out and then offer the bushes to anyone who'd like them. Currently where Rhubarb is going to be is where there's some secret raspberries, that's right we have found more raspberries hiding in all the overgrown weeds. Well we shall move those over to the fruit patch once the gooseberries are gone and prune them ready for next year.

At the bottom-left is to be flowers, although our friend inspected what is currently here and some of it seems to look like more herbs, but couldn't figure out exactly what the large plant could be exactly, but if it is a herb it'll be cut down to a smaller size and potted. The blank patch with three flowers will be for our son to enjoy and also for us to relax on, a flower bed area just for some colour and give that area a garden look to it. Patch three is currently blank but we will get the broccoli and caulflower in hopefully next time we are up and the weather isn't nasty. And then on the right side are the rest of our fruit. The strawberries were found growing on the path on the left side, god knows how they were growing but they are looking strong and have fruit so we shall be moving the rest of them next time we're up there. Behind the strawberries is another currant bush which again we think is red currant but not sure yet. Due to the insane amount of currant bushes we have we may get rid of one or even two of them, we shall see. Below the strawberries are our big currant bushes, one is red currant and the other is a blackcurrant-gooseberry hybrid. The blackcurrant bush is way too big and needs pruning, however it's currently at the point where it's best to leave it be and harvest it later on and then begin to prune it back to a size more suitable.

So that is our plan for this year. Lettuce, cucumber, Brussels sprouts, potatoes and onions will be on our crop cycle next year, if we can find a place to put lettuce then we'll put it in, however we were given so much celery that we realised we couldn't fit anymore on the first patch.

Up next is to get some wood chippings to make the paths and consider putting borders around the patches so our son knows what not to walk on. Wish us luck!

Working Hard

I uncovered one of the patches before we arrived to begin some work. We learnt so much in that one afternoon. For one we didn't buy enough compost, another is pulling weeds is bloody hard work!

That's me with the pink hair and pink gloves. Can you tell I like pink? Anyway I'm actually breaking up lumps of soil because it's actually damp even though we've had no rain for a long time, however when we did have rain it was buckets loads. We also learnt that we needed a few more tools for the job and my fiancé's boss kindly gave us some basics but we forgot to ask if he had a rake. That would have been of much use to us, but we'll use it tomorrow when we're back up there again.

We did however get to sow the seeds of parsnips and carrots. We have put some wood into the middle of the patch you can see me working on in the photograph as it was way too big for us to get into the middle to water and tend to so did what others have done and made a walkway in the middle to allow us to go over to look after them without doing any harm. The wood we're using at the moment is rotting away though so we'll need to get some better stuff soon enough.

Also I've learnt another thing to always have with you.

I look like a roast chicken, as my fiancé kindly put it. Been having cool showers and putting Sudocrem on the red skin to help soothe the pain as well as help with the healing. So yes I recommend you have some sun lotion with you during these summery days.

In other news remember in my last post how I roughly drew our a plan? Well that's scrapped. We found healthy raspberries where we were going to put the flowers and they need something to keep them upright. I'm rather excited about this find and only realised it was ours when our friendly neighbour stated they were ours and sure enough they are on our land, all over the place they may be but they are rooted on our side. He is also kindly making a bit of space in his shed for us to put our stuff in until we get given our own shed and has given us a key. He also warned us to cover the large hole at the bottom of the door as wasps enjoy coming in and nesting. Oh boy, I cannot wait(!)

Tomorrow will be tricky. Well for one I still in a fair bit of pain from the sunburn, but it's going to be mostly tricky as it'll be the first time we'll be there as a family with our two your old boy in tow. I think we're going to have to swap jobs as one of us looks after him whilst the other does some gardening, hopefully things will work out ok. We have shade from some apple trees so we can go under there when we want to cool off. Perhaps bring a picnic with us. Who knows.

Wish us luck!

My VERY Rough Plan

I couldn't sleep lastnight so grabbed my notebook and roughly drew out a plan for our plot. It's very rough and very basic but it gets the idea across.

Only a small bit there requires us digging up some grass as we want to join the two veg patches to make one long patch. Please ignore the fact the sizes are all wrong, I know that but again it was dark and fairly late and I didn't exactly have a ruler on hand (nor a pencil which is why I used a pen).

You can see some blank areas. Well one of the patches is blank as not exactly sure what we will do with it yet, the top area has stuff growing there already but need to figure out what is what and if any of it is still alive. We will also get a bin to collect any rainfall by the compost area until we are given our new shed and then we'll probably move it to the side of the shed.

The patch that says "Alex's Area" is a place for our son to play on our plot. I'm not totally sure what we will do there as of yet but perhaps we can build a small sand pit, we shall see what we are allowed to do first as I have several ideas but rather not put them into place without knowing if any of them are okay to do or not.

You will also see two small lists. This was just me trying to think of produce we want to grow. I actually cannot eat sweetcorn as it makes me sick but I am happy to grow it for my partner to enjoy eating. We also love to make home-made chips so potatoes are certainly a must-have in our household and will probably be in our veg patch as often as possible. About the only fruit on that list which isn't on the plot already is strawberries. Again a must-have for our family as our growing boy just loves these, he can eat a packet of strawberries from the supermarket in one day and this is a bit too expensive for us to keep up, I mean it's great he loves fruit but it's not cheap!

I've not got any ideas for flowers yet, I'm fan of Spring flowers but now it's almost Summer time and ask me what flowers are in bloom in Summer I'd have a blank look on my face as I reply with "errrr..." so I need to do a bit of research in the flower department of gardening. I can tell you what my favourite flowers look like but that's about it. I'm sure I'll learn soon enough!

Starting Out With Our Allotment

We have been waiting for an allotment plot for just over a year now and amazed to have gotten a half plot in that time space. Admittedly we were the first to be called once two half plots were available and we had the options between a bedded plot and a fruit plot. I picked the fruit plot as I knew that the ones already one the plot were what we'd like and would have taken years to have grown to the size they were now so already we have black and red currants growing on our plot.

Our allotment is in a newly independent area with very friendly and helpful committee who have done a fantastic job in having everything a gardener needs as well as helping local charities (if we have any spare fruit or veg they collect them and take them to a children's hospice for them to make fresh food for the kid's to enjoy) but due to the high demand for allotments all plots are becoming half plots. This is fine for us as we are new to it all and a half plot is more than enough for us to work on.

I don't know the full story of the previous owner but from the way the Chairman spoke it sounded as if he was very ill or passed away. The gentleman's wife also has a plot next to ours and has done her best to care for his land as well and as you can see she has tried to stop growth in some areas. The big busy patch at the front of the photograph is the flower bed which is mostly daffodil's that no longer have any flower heads, shame because I love spring flowers but their time has past now. At the back are a bunch of fruit bushes. Two of these are gooseberries. Neither myself or my partner like gooseberries so sadly these are going to go. I shall probably ask the chairman when I next pop round if he could ask around see if anyone is willing to take them from us as seems a shame to rip them out and compost the whole two bushes.

You probably can't see very well but at the back on the left is our compost heap. It's made of wooden fencing and one thing wood will do is decompose over time as well and that's exactly what has happened, plus rain and such has damaged it badly. We will probably get a compost bin instead to replace these.

Also you may notice we have no shed or greenhouse. We are getting our own shed in a few months time (as is our new neighbour) but we are sharing with the gentleman behind our plot who has kindly been making space for us and organised a brand new lock to be put on the shed as the old one has rusted badly. As for a greenhouse we aren't fussed at the moment and any greenhouse has to be discussed by the committee first beforehand and right now we're just content with what we have.

Our plans? Well we have inspected it so far and lots of weeding and removing dead plants is required. We will be sowing carrots at first and organising a little flower area where the current raspberries have been and passed on. It will give us a sort of fencing between our plot and the one behind ours as currently they look like part of the same plot. But right now we need to get rid of all the weeds and then we can move on to organising the fruit and veg patches. Wish us luck!