Came across this the other day, and having participated in the November one last year, thought why not. Especially as the theme is ‘Grow’. That, I think, lends itself to the spirit of the blog. Since there is mostly growing, of fruit, vegetables and me as a person.
Slilghtly green Bruno
Welcome to Hobbitland
gladiolus
All being well, the usual allotment adventures will continue and there will be the usual blog posts about them. Last year, It was really nice to see how far away the blog was read. It gets read far and wide anyway, which is lovely to see!
The biggest difference was that the lovely folks on the other side of the pond were reading-remember, I write in England, Great Britain, about the plot. I’m not sure that allotmenteering is the quite the same thing over there. I am sure that there are people who grow fruit and veg, just not in the same way as allotments are organised here in Britain.
As always. I shall be sharing the highs, the lows, the slug stories and the weather damage. And if you want to head about anything in particular, then all you have do is ask.
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,
In that lull, where you want to sow stuff, and probably shouldn’t, let’s have another look at the chillies. So far so good, close attention is being paid to the chillies. The danger being, that they get cold, dry up and keel over. Whilst chillies benefit from a spot of meanness, being overly mean results in a lack of baby chillies.
Some of the chillies are growing rapidly. Most have got their first pair of true leaves, and are now getting onto their second true leaves. Some of the smaller ones, the slower growing ones, such as pettie belle, raindrop and pumpkin are only just getting their first proper leaves.
I have discovered that if you water with cold water, they all tend to go a bit ‘ouch’. Just like we do, when we step our toes into the cold sea. So water with warm stuff, and they go a but ‘ooh’ and it’s not all a bit of a shock. I have done this about once a week so far. The compost is kept moist, and they really shouldn’t dry out. To trap heat, both trays are still covered. I am taking no chances. The slightest cold breeze and the things start sulking.
Aji limo and hungarian hot wax are doing well, growing strongly. The others are still on the smaller side. Not dainty, necessarily, just comparatively smaller. The fruits are smaller, so that is not really a big surprise. I am going to try and keep them all in the current pots for a while. At least until the roots start to creep out the bottom in a threadlike fashion. If the move up pot is too big, i have observed that the plants relax and get too cosy. I haven’t fed the plants yet. This will be held off for a bit. This year, I want to make a reflective more informed decision. Traditionally, if you use tomato food this will give you lovely leafy plants. Like the triffids that we had in the poly tunnel last year. What I want to consider is, will planting in pots make a significant difference as well as the food. So we have two hypotheses to test. The constraint of pots and the feed. I was recommended this product last year, a specific chilli plant food. I am not going to be mean, and have one batch as an experimental group and another a control group. The experimental group would be the ones fed, pampered, hugged and loved. The control group would be getting just tomato food. I would like all the plants to do well.I think the premise is that first of all you get the plant leafy, and then once that has established, you tackle the fruit development. I don’t think I have ever got so technical over a chilli plant. Will reflect on that though, and do some more research.
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 ground as it were. And even on the box, all the gardeners, with the exception of Charlie Dimmock and Carol Klien, have been establishment gentlemen. I’m quite glad, that television personality Fern Briton has been involved with the Big Allotment Challenge, and the contestants have been fairly representative. Allotmenteering has had something of a renaissance. More and more women are getting allotment plots. Women, of all ages, from all walks of life. The allotment, is not longer the strong hold of aged men. It is no longer, a closed shop.
I like my allotment. I dislike going to the Gym. I’m not anti-Gym, it’s just not for me. I don’t dislike the idea of getting worked up and sweaty with kettle bells. The same happens when you trundle up and down a plot with a wheelbarrow. Pottering around, can give the same opportunity to be mobile and raise your heart rate for that recommended 30 minutes twice a week. The plot is hard work, it requires commitment and determination. There is exercise to be hand. Trust me, there is something of a calming effect to be experienced when walking up and down passed your roses and gladioli. It even involves braining slugs and snails, but one is not some weak willed maiden, going all knock kneed. If a slug or snail wishes to take me, then it is going to have a duel on it’s antennae.
Allotmenteering is an alternative learning experience. You become aware of success and of failure. You acquire alternative knowledge and understanding. You gain, an alternative perspective.
It is more definitely not for those who are likely to give up, or for the figuratively faint hearted maiden. It is however, for everyone. I know that some allotment sites can be cliquey, political mindfields of gerberas and gladioli. But that is not something to be focused on.
I am proud to be a young-ish woman, who has allotmenteering as a hobby. It is something that I enjoy, that I am passionate about and like to share with other like minded people. I do believe that it is for everyone, that gender, colour and creed, are of no consequence. A spade will not worry about who is using it. Allotmenteering doesn’t necessarily appeal to everyone, and it is a beyond the norm hobby. But I like it. And I plan to continue with it, for as long as I possibly can.
On the last day of 2014, that is what the plot looks like. A bit dreary, eh? Wasn’t always like that though.
Grapevines on the plot
gladiolus
william shakespeare 2000
william shakespeare 2000
down the middle
left hand side
project othello
looking pretty
Hot yellow sun Chutney
bruno weigh in
But the plot has been through a fair bit. Least of all the elements of Great Britain.
Seeds were sown, never at the right time, or in the right amounts. Seedlings germinated, some made it, some gave up the ghost and keeled over. There were slugs and snails, puddles and problem cabbages. The heavy clay was unrelenting. Arid and angry in the sun, it didn’t hold much water. Damp and rained upon, it was soggy and sulky. There were tomatos by the ton, three chillies, just three. Despite a whole poly tunnel of leafy plants. One whopper aubergine, the rest were all tiddly. Courgettes by the dozen. Marrows, that you cuddled to carry.
Summer 2014
Slilghtly green Bruno
Welcome to Hobbitland
and the batch has a name
Ripened Bruno
There was a Baby Bruno. His seeds have now dried, and all being well, will go to good home. This was the year of the Hobbit trug, and boy did it earn it’s keep. So much so, one was donated to Gardening Leave to give them a hand. A case of share the love with that trug. Was made by the fab Loldeantimber you can find them here and tell them I sent you.
2014 has not been an easy year. That’s not to say others have been. It has been different, and has presented it’s own challenges. After all, no one plot is the same. And mine, is the worst on the site according to the secretary, in terms of the soil and slope. I have been told several times to move down the site and have a better chance. In my mind though, I think I have a fighting chance. It has taken me this long to the plot this far.
I would like to thank everyone who had read the blog over the last year. Thank you, for all the comments. Than you, for just reading. I don’t call myself an expert, but I do like to share what I learn and experience. If that is of any use to any one, then than that is one happy bonus.
Thank you, and a very happy new year to you all ^_^
This year I intentionally grew yellow tomatoes. There were large yellow stuffer tomatoes, as well as smaller cherry tomatoes. There was a third plant with a citrus-y name, and the fruit were lemon shaped, but still tomatoes. I had also sown and grow orange habeneros, to join the tomatoes. Alas the habaneros didn’t come off. So we were stuck with the tomatoes, and one home grown chilli.
Compared to the red, white and green courgette and green tomato chutneys, this was a vibrant yellow chutney. The tomatoes held their form and flavour. It wasn’t quite as spiced as I would have liked, but quite sweet. I would definitely make this again, this was a highlight of the chutney and jam making experiments. I think I have the one jar left!
The chutney could definitely do with a bit more spice and flavour to it. I have found that with all of the chutney’s really. That whilst they are quite tart to begin with, on storage they do mellow. I need to figure out how to retain a burst of flavour. Plus, how to keep that flavour and not make it taste as though it was an indian dish and just curried veg.
It’s the first of December, advent arrives in the hobbit house!
Dad retrieves the tree and accoutrements from the shed. I get chastised for having stuffed things into the shed, so he couldn’t find the stuff so easily. He then spends time constructing the six foot synthetic spruce that we have had ten years this year. It’s predecessor has disappeared into Christmas tree heaven. If it was still around, it would be same age as me. And that ‘faerie’ is actually the same age as me, a nice round thirty years old.
All the colour coded limbs are attached, slowly and with precision. Having all been bundled together with metal ties last year. Then the family tradition occurs, with pops putting the lights on. And trying not to get dizzy, as we form a chain. One threads the lights out the box, the next person goes clockwise, the third anti clockwise. Lights are then switched on, and the decorations added. We have amassed so many, but we are now down the select few baubles. The red one’s remain, from years and years. Crocheted snow flakes, pine cones, tie bows. Lots of assorted ones. But only the one faerie.
Then comes the tinsel, and never on tree. That’s for decking the halls. Or krishna and Shiva as you see. The tree itself is sat next to the home mandir.
Britian at it’s multicultural best! The season for peace, goodwill, and sharing.
It has now been two year since the horticultural hobbit blog was born. You can see the introduction and about here https://horticulturalhobbit.com/about/ The blog is two years old, and I have been on the plot now for approximately three years. We are now going into the fourth year of plot growing. The blog has come a long long way since it first came on line.
I have been sowing seeds for just under five years, nearly as long as I have been a qualified teacher. I actually stared sowing during a May bank Holiday weekend in 2009. I actually remember sowing thirty cayenne chilli seeds and minibel tomatoes. They are somewhere in the recesses of the archives actually. Prior to that, I hadn’t really given gardening or growing your own much thought. At that time, I was feeling stressed and worried. I was coming to the end of the inital teaching training period and had not gainful employment for that Autumn. So sowing seeds seemed a good a distraction as any really.
At that point, I was container gardener. I hogged one side of Dad’s garden, and built up one by one, a line of pots from Poundland. We had three running bean plants, some lettuce in a green scrappy grow bag. I remember picking those running beans. And slightly wonky, question mark shaped dwarf french beans. Cheap compost too, as I wasn’t exactly flush. Then came a week tomato greenhouse, to cover a rather dismal aubergine. I had graduated to aubergine by then,by way of experiment. I had a lot to learn, onions and cabbages were sown and plugged in when they ought perhaos not be.
Being a geek, i needed a book to help me, and I found one. Dipped in and out of it, it is Alan Titchmarsh’s kitchen garden book. I still have it, and do refer to it from time to time. When summer ended, the autumn came and I felt rather sad that nothing would grow over the winter. I kept going, and the in the following spring, found out about the local allotments. Quite literally a stones throw away. I may have inadvertently ‘bribed’ the allotment secretary. I had too many onions and not enough space in Dad’s garden. Putting my name down, I paced up and down for five months. November came, and I had a plot. Half of one at that stage. Two weeks were required to clear it all. Luckily, the half plot had been sprayed with weedkiller so once everything was dried and dead it just need pulling up and away.
This feels a very long long time ago. During the time that has passed, I have learned a great deal. What turned out to be a small scale experimental study, has grown dramatically. I had not realised just how much I would learn, and how the experiment would develop.
When it came to starting the blog, I didn’t intend to just keep a record. I wanted to share, and I was and am, proud of what I grow. Especially, if it is edible. In sharing, if I had something that wasn’t working, or didn’t happen. The chances are, someone else was likely to have a similar issue. Plus why struggle, there is no shame in asking for help. I have found fellow allotmenteers, readers across the world, incredibly helpful. Always willing to share.
You do get the odd one or two who might tut and be harbingers of doom, but for the most part, people are really supportive. Sharing, is always good. Whilst I am not exactly writing a Psychological study,and this isn’t exactly a ground breaking bit of research. Oh there is a pun in there some where. I do like to share things, be it successful or not, In the vain hope that someone somewhere might get something from it. No matter how inane it might. I still treat it all as an experiment. I’m not sure how this would all work as a research project. Would there have to be an ethics proposal? I do have to exterminate pests. There are pitfalls and positives. How boring would it be, if we had all the answers, and I didn’t learn anything. In science, we get proof of something, and other things fail miserably.
I also blog as I enjoy what I do on the veggie plot. There are some instances, where I don’t enjoy it. I mean, pulling up weeds, I hate that with a passion. Especially when it is raining, and the ground is sodden. I also believe in what i do. That might sound like a sales pitch, it really isn’t. Some folks probably would’t grow a single seed as it doesn’t interest them. As mentioned previously, I wouldn’t have. I just didn’t.
It never ceases to surprise me where the blog gets read. Perhaps I mis-underestimated the reach of the world wide web. That or there are lots of spam bots, I don’t know.
Given how this year has been a fairly dismal year for chillies, I thought I should reflect on what went well in the past and see if there are lessons to be learned.
I’ve have not always had the polytunnel, and did rely heavily on the small wendy house. Before that, I had sown and planted chillies in pots in dad’s garden. These had little or no protection, except when they were cloaked with a transparent gardening bag.
The first success came in 2009, and it was more or less sheer fluke in my first year of growing. The variety that I grew was cayenne, I didn’t at that point give too much thought as to what variety. I even had a baby jalapeno plant from the local garden cafe. In that case, I had cheated, I really wanted a jalapeno plant. Seeds were planted very late, but we did have a very good summer that year. I bit into one, and legged it, pops had the rest and wondered why I was flapping.
The plants were pampered, watered regularly. Kept in pots, as I had no where at that time to plant them. They soon got leafy, very leafy. Most plants were about a metre high and about that wide. Plus, they were cramped. Four plants to a pot. Watered and fed from the top, I didn’t faff with the drainage. They were watered and fed with normal every day tomato feed. A fairly bountiful crop, and I didn’t even tickle the flowers. More or less left them to it. It was only as Septemeber turned to October, that they were brought inside.
The came the allotment, and the small wendy house. Now I was putting more thought into it, and I even had different varieties. Sown on time, and these were really pampered from the cradle. When it came to potting, there were bigger pots, before they had a final destination of morrisons flower buckets (get them, 99 pence of a batch of 6. You’ll never buy huge pots again, and they are good for tomatoes too) . Dad had kindly drilled holes in the bottom for drainage. So once in their final pots, they were left to their own devices. Again, I only tickled when I remembered. I did at this point get the poly tunnel, and the plants were in there just as winter arrived. It is when you get to September October, you start to think. These plants are either going to die of their own accord, or you might have to put them out of their misery. It is nearly half way through November, I still have the plants in the poly for now. They are under a fleece, but who knows what might happen to them.
I have even tried to sow seeds on the day after boxing day. Both in a heated propogator, and on the window sil. To this day, I am convinced I have more success with germination on the window sill. Seedlings don’t grow thin and wiry, only to keel over with a lack of light. Seeds are sown into damp compost in a yogurt pot. This yogurt pot is in then put into a foodbag, knotted the top and into a gravel tray. I did try and line the tray with foil, and then put a lid on the whole thing. Checking from time to time, to see if a baby chilli had germinated. I have since delayed, and staggered the timings. Starting to sow in late January, onto late feb. But when you want to sow chillies, you want to sow chillies. That or tomatoes.
Sadly, I have never been able to replicate the success of 2009. I had hoped that the poly tunnel would have increased the the chances of having a successful crop. There are lots of different chilli seeds in the seed stasher that I would like to try, and I might just put them in pots next year, rather than in the ground of the poly. Scale back the experiment a little, rather than risking it into the poly.
Don’t get me wrong, I love my roses. They are beautiful, and mine have been really productive. A real pleasure.
Except this one.
This bloom, the blue moon hybrid rose. This has to be the most miserable rose I have had the misfortune of cultivating. It grows rather spindly and slowly, throwing up only a handful of blooms. Compared to the rest of the plot, this is a fairly bottom set rose.
horticultural 'obbit 