Sunshine is coming
Yearly Archives: 2015
Dorset Naga, Trying again 2015
I wandered around the stands at he edible garden show and was lucky enough to bump into the lovely lady proprietress of seaspringseeds.co,uk Since I haven’t sown the dorset naga from seed, and have run out time to do so, I picked up a plug Not strictly cheating, as it’s now up to me to look after this young plant. This and another chilli variety, purple haze, were wrapped up delicately and placed into my rucksack to bring back to Birmingham. I had visions of them being half dead when I got back home, but they were okay.
I had no plans to have the Dorset naga amongst the vast collection of chilli babies that I have currently have. But seeing it, i couldn’t resist.
There have been valuable lessons learned from the experience of last year. This year, the Dorset naga and the other chillies will be in pots. I am not sinking them into the ground, to have lots of leafy luscious plants. This year, we become a bit precious about the plants. The hope is that the pot root constriction method will help plants be productive.
Looks tiny, but hopefully the plants of both varieties will grow stronger and robust.
Oh, and it will need a name. How else will it know it is being spoken to? 😉
Horticultural ‘Obbit at the Edible Garden Show 2015
Well, I went!
I booked my ticket a fortnight ago, having established that I would be away from work. I would have a few days off, and why not revisit The Edible Garden Show at Alexandra Palace in London. The ticket was reasonably priced, you would pay a lot more than the £16 to visit a tourist attraction in the Capital and especially on the first day.I queued, post full English breakfast, as did a few hundred others, having arrived before the 11 am opening. No one told me, about the steep hill from the Alexandra Palace train station. I huffed and puffed up the hill, to see the view over the city in the very crisp weather. It wasn’t sunny, as the world and his wife had just viewed an eclipse. The other event, that was happening that day.
The plan, was to not spend any money. This was an exercise in window shopping. Perhaps learn something too.
And that partly went by the way side. I made chilli based purchases, more on this later, but I didn’t come back to Brum laden with goodies. I didn’t fancy carting them all back, for one.
It was a nice day out, and having arrived early, I had a lot of time to walk around. Window shop, at first, what was around, work out what I wanted to see in the Expert’s theatre. As I got there, James Wong was running late and there were people already waiting. I kept walking around. There were a few schools there, kids and teachers, waiting for winners of Lunch growing scheme. I had empathy towards my slightly harassed looking colleagues, and the excitable kids.
I did spend a fair bit of time sitting in the Expert’s theatre, watching and listening. I heard Pippa Greenwood, talk about veg, another chap talk about the factors that influence the vegetable patch. Last but not least, there was a question and answer session with the contestants of the Big allotment challenge. Was lovely to meet and speak with both Rob and Rekha. No, I didn’t swoon over Rob, and there were no screaming hoards that I had fight off to have a chat with him. Yes, I was surprised by that too.
This is not my first visit to an Edible Garden show. I made a visit to the show when it was at Stoneleigh. The show at Alexandra Palace felt different. It felt smaller for one, as though there was less there. I think I saw two seed companies. As well as a couple of equipment people. There was the experts theatre, and make/eat demos. Had I not left for the train, I would have stayed for the jam making bit.
It did feel very different to Stoneleigh, though I did go on the saturday that year. A lot less to look at, less hustle and bustle. Didn’t see alot on preserving fruit and veg, I think that would have been useful. There wasn’t anything there for me, that would have made me want to spend my money on goodies. Other than the two baby chillies. I feel that the show has lost a certain something. It just didn’t feel like a show, about edible gardens. There were poly tunnel people, greenhouse and shed people. Even furniture people. But something was lacking. A spark of something,
But I went, and even spent a fiver.
Loving the Liebster March 2015
My thanks to the Wellie Blog for their nomination. I am always grateful for people reading the blog and sharing their comments. It always surprises me who reads the blog, where and what they find on it.
- Who is your favourite person to garden with? I tend to go by myself, or my mum will join me fleetingly.
- If I wasn’t on the allotment I’d be … be sat in a corner reading with a cup of tea, or writing fan fiction for Sector G
- Monty Don or Alan Titchmarsh? Neither. I don’t tend to watch gardening shows.
- Which vegetable have you grown to like after growing your own? Chillies, as there are so many!
- To dig in the rain or not? No, hide in the poly tunnel and wait til it passes. with a thermomug of tea.
- Where is the best place you go to get allotment advice? Other gardeners!
- Which tool would you not be without? Er….transplanting trowel.
- Music or bird song whilst on the allotment? pod on shuffle! There is something about listening to James Bond Anthems and also maroon5
- What is your best and most successful recipe for allotment produce? Bramley and green tomato chutney, or chilli jam.
- Sprouts: love or hate? Pass.
My nominations are as follow:
1. Allotment adventures with jean
3. Silverbells
I’m not going to ask questions, but I am going to ask you to share the love!
#thisgirlcan : Allotmenteering
Me, and The Champion’s league Replica, I think it’s a replica…..
When I tell people, that I have an allotment. Other than almost killing the conversation, the response is usually a scoff and a spot of “what you? Thought that was all about old men.”
Newflash. Think again.
I’ve had the plot now for three years, I was container gardening two years prior to that. And I am certainly not an old man. I’m thirty years of age, and a woman. You do not get to call me old.
I’m not the only girl on our site, it’s actually fairly equal. But I do wonder how many there are across the country. Plus, like many other parts of the society around us. Maybe gardening is no longer a blokey bastion, with cloak and dagger shed conversations. Times are a changing.
It might historically have been a bloke’s playground, on the…
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Tree-ly Delightful
With the school term ended, I had a mission today. To not only sow sunflowers for the Psychology Sunflower challenge but to also sink two additional fruit trees. These were a doyenne du Comice pear tree, and a Moorpark Apricot tree. I am still expecting a Czar plum tree.
The Moor Park Apricot, is an experiment, the same way at the Rochester peach tree. But the pear and plum are to help support the two other pear and plum trees. The plum tree has flowered and fruited before, but not since. The Pear tree however, has flowered but never fruited. I am not sure of any of my plot neighbours having a pear tree, so that is important as having another pear tree helps pollination. There are huge great big plum trees-been there a good fifty years-further down the allotment site.
In all honesty, I have been wondering how far bumble bees can fly from one flower to another. Do they fly in feet, metres, miles? In time there will be flowers to help them fly around easily.
The full list of fruit trees on the plot is as follows:
- Worcester Pearmain
- Rochester peach
- Moor Park Apricot
- Falstaff apple
- Braeburn apple
- Victoria plum
- Doyenne du Comice pear
- Concord pear
- Sylvia Cherry
- Czar plum-still expected
#PsychologySunflowerChallenge 2015 is a go!
And we are off. Today I have sown sunflowers to kick off the Psychology Sunflower challenge 2015. I have sown two varieties, sunburst and Giant Sunflowers.
You can see the previous post here where I put it all into context.
The top two rows of the tray above are sunflowers seeds. The other three rows contain assorted flowers that will sunk along side. All of which, will contribute to entertaining bumble bees and help pollinate crops.
The key for this challenge is Sunflowers.
I am challenging my fellow teachers and school support staff, regardless of subject area and age range, to grow sunflowers. Something of a natural experiment, if you like. The details above, are taken from the latest article of The ATP Magazine. Later this year, I am hoping to carry out a workshop at The ATP conference that looks at gardening and well being.
These do tend to grow quickly, and get big quickly at that. So these will need to be potted up as and when. They will also need to be hardened off and exposed to the elements before being placed into their final positions.
Blueberry budding
There are three blueberries in pots on the plot. What you see above is the Darrow variety, the others are blue jay and bluecrop. The blue crop was the youngest, I think, as well as the smallest. I’m surprised that there are quite few buds on this already. My concern had been that the frost would nip at them, but they do seem to be fairly robust.
All three are in large pots, that have been filled with ericacaeous-how ever you spell it-compost. I did water them in with rain water when they were first potted in. Luckily we have had some rain since to keep them watered.
Raspberries getting a wriggle on
There are a number of different raspberry varieties that are on the plot. We have:
- tulameen
- glen cova
- malling jewel
- autumn bliss
- polka
- fall gold
Most are part of the all season collection that were planted last year. However, the autumn bliss, polka and fall gold are the varieties that specifically fruit as the autumn draws in. The all season collection was sunk last year, with the autumn bliss and polka varieties sunk last summer. The autumn bliss were the surprise quick croppers in autumn, having been rescued from a garden centre, and the polka were actually kindly donated by a friend and colleague. The autumn bliss canes were cut down as suggested, so we shall see how these develop.
Pottering around today, I was looking to see if there was any sign of life in the large number of raspberry canes. Lo and Behold, the fall gold are showing green buds. This is somewhat surprising as the canes were only sunk recently. In comparison, the earlier planted canes of the all season collection are somewhat behind. They have rooted, there is resistance if you try and tug at the canes. However, the buds are only just forming at the knobbly bits of the canes.
Garlic update March 2015
It’s been a long time since I wrote about the garlic that was planted during the autumn last year. You can find that post here where I planted it.
The varieties are:
- Early Purple wight
- Lautrec Wight
- Elephant garlic
- Provence Wight
Generally, I will plug it in, and then pretty much leave it alone. Such is the beauty of planting garlic, other than feeding during the spring and weeding from time to time, I have observed that not much else is needed. In the past, I have grew it both in open ground and also in raised beds. In my experience, planting and growing in raised beds has produced a bigger and better crop compared to growing in the open ground.
So far so good, I will have to feed these in the coming weeks. At this moment, the need to weed isn’t too bad. There is nice green foliage that has some way to go before it is shows that the bulbs are mature. The full maturity is indicated when the foliage becomes raffia like and pale, it also keels over in some cases.
horticultural 'obbit 