Digging the bean trench.

The only reason I am triple digging the climbing French bean bed is because I have some brushwood from the hedge alongside my allotment.  I have cut the hedge right back beyond the fence so that more light can get onto the allotment.  There is also a 30ft x Cupressocyparis leylandii  beginning to grow through the fence.  I will be cutting this back as far as I can.

The woody branches are being put on top of some pernicious weeds given to me by one of the top allotments. The weeds were put at the bottom of the trench.  Leaves and turfs are being put atop that.  The subsoil and the top soil are being sieved back into the trench with additions of pigeon and horse manure.

This process produces some really good looking soil.

I decided to take the Takesumi bamboo charcoal to the allotment so that I could marinade it in comfrey liquid.   I am wondering if I can apply this to the ground using the watering can.  It is very fine dust and will easily pass through the rose holes.  It can mash a bit in the tubs for a while until I need to use it.  

Took up six of the Brussel sprouts plants to take home.  Then I gave two to Chris, one to Mike and Mr Singh took some off one or two plants.  Even with all of this I have four plants still left in the ground.  

I think that I may  water the winter cauliflowers, leeks, strawberries, blackcurrants, raspberries, rhubarb and gooseberries with comfrey liquid.  This will give them a good start at the beginning of the season.  

Partial successes

I have to admit that I am not a very good Florence fennel grower.  I have never been successful with it.  At the moment I have six plants growing - or should I say surviving? I would really like to know what I am doing wrong.  It shows you that, regardless of how long you have been growing vegetables, you still have things to learn.

I am really pleased with them but I would have liked to have more.

Together with the climbing French beans, which have been devastated by the slugs, I am not doing as well as I would like.

Still, without some partial successes it would not be gardening.

I still can't get the climbing French beans to start to grow well.  I think that it is the coolish June weather that is holding them back.  I might put cloches over the cucumbers to help them over this cold weather.  However, they are doing remarkably well and may not need them.

A big success has been the oca.  I now have five plants which I am very proud of.  I hope they taste good after all the effort I have put into them.  Five out of six is great but I am still looking to see if the sixth one is going to poke its head through.

The onions are growing well but I think I may have taken the barriers off too soon.  Some of them are showing definite onion fly damage.  I am watering with rainwater and diluted comfrey liquid so they are fairly big plants.  I hope that the bulbs swell towards the end of the month.

Peas are beginning to flower and fruit now.  There are not as many pea pods as I would like, which shows that it does not matter how big the plants grow if they do not produce the crop then it is only a partial success.
There are no failures on my allotment.  :-))

I spend far too much time on the allotment.

I went down today with the  intention to plant the okra and just do some weeding.  I thought that I would be home by 12 o'clock for a good cup of tea.  However, I arrived home at 7 pm - but I still had my cup of tea.

It has rained after a month's drought and this means that all the weed seeds have started to germinate.  It is the month when a lot of weeds germinate so I should not be surprised.  If you leave them they grow incredibly quickly and it is well worth while trying to remove them while they are very small.

I put the okra in where I had planned next to the mange tout peas.  After that I went along the French bean row to weed.  There is some slug damage along this row of beans which shows that I really need the nematode worms to arrive soon.  I hoed the French bean area and then went on to the Onward peas.  I am weeding in between the rows with an onion hoe.  I cannot  get all the weeds out but I am hoping that the peas will shade out the weeds.

The third try of French beans still has not germinated.  If these do not work then I will be annoyed.

The squashes are standing up well and they have not been discovered by the slugs yet.

I continued the hoeing into the brassicae bed and then decided to thin the swedes and the kohlrabi.  I thinned both to about six inches apart.  I may take out some more to give them 1 foot apart but not at the moment.  I fed both the swedes and the kohlrabi with comfrey and then went on to weed and feed the cabbages.

The Brussel sprouts had some horse tail growing in them so I took some time to dig this out with a trowel.  I doubt very much whether I got all the root but I dug down for about 1 foot.  I put the mares tail in the weed bucket because I was going to put the weeds into the worm bin.  I am hoping that the worms will deal with the mares tail as they do with the rest of the plant material I put into the bin.

There is some evidence that if you hoe the soil,  it will retain more water just under the surface.  I don't know if this is true but I have to hoe anyway to get rid of the weeds.  If there is an additional benefit then great.

Always hoe where there are no weeds and you get no weeds.

After completing the hoeing on the brassicae bed I went to plant the three Galaxy runner beans that germinated.  I was surprised that three did germinate because the seed was very old.  I pinched out the growing tip of the Galaxy to encourage side shoots to develop.  You get more beans if you do this.   Under the beans I have planted some courgettes.  I doubt if they will do very well here but I have no where else to put them.  As the runner bean row is running south to north this year there will be time during the day when sunlight will be able to penetrate between the beans. I may get some courgettes towards the south end of the row.

I took off all the side shoots and tendrils of the sweet peas.  Sounds simple and quick doesn't it?  Well it must have taken me about 2 hours.  Still when you think about the flowers I am going to get it nearly makes it worth while.  I hoed around them with the onion hoe and the swoe.

Although it seems that I have only just done it, I needed to weed along the onion rows.  I took the cloche off one of the rows and started weeding.  Then I realised the time and decided that that was enough and it was time to go home.  I will have to finish off tomorrow.  I have just enough room in this area to have a line of celeriac and a couple more lines of leeks.

I will plant the pumpkins into large pots at the moment because I do not have the room to put them into the allotment.  They are serious plants that like to take over the world so I will have to give them lots of room to grow into .  I had planned to put them into the onion bed but I do not want them to shade out the onions.  If I put them into pots then I can transplant them into the onion bed when the onions go over.

I will plant some squashes under the maize.

I am going to put a line of Swiss chard on one side of the carrots and some Wodan beetroot on the other side and then I don't think that I will fit anything else into this area of the allotment.  The Hamburg parsley has germinated well and there are a lot of seedlings coming up.  I will have to thin these out a little.  I may thin out the carrots and the parsnips when I get round to weeding them.

As things go over, I will replant with roots in different areas so that I am not sowing the same root in the same place.

Well this is how I do it.