2010 Updates
A new Year brings a new season of promise to all allotment goers and despite some of the early challenges of 2010, we return to the lottie undeterred.
Here you will see monthly updates, detailling our progress and activities on our allotment. We're hoping for a far more sucessful one than 2009 and have lots of things in the pipeline to make it the best ever (fingers crossed), so keep and eye out for our regular posts.
January & February
The year started very cold with some of the harshist snow and frosts that Northampton had seen for many years. As you can see from the image below the allotment looks almost invisible and quite inaccessible, when compared to high summer only 5 months previously. This inclemancy endured for weeks and weeks, thoroughly hindering our ability to do any work on the plot whatsoever. However, we were able still to pull great crops from the plot (when the frozen ground allowed), with leeks, parsnips, carrots and brussell sprouts supplying all of our families for many a month. We also busied ourselves by getting a head start on raising brassica seedlings indoors in heated propogators, so that we would have large, healthy specimines to plant out in the early summer.
The blanket of snow and ice allowed us to see clearly some things that are not usually visible on the plot, namely some of the wildlife that seems to visit regularly. We believe to have identified Foxes, Rabbits (of course), small Deer and hundreds upon hundreds of different birds - proving just how utterly vital such natural spaces are to local wildlife populations, and how quickly they can re-colonise when given the chance.
March
When the time came to begin our soil preparations in March, we turned our attention to the manure pile, which had been rotting quietly for 18 months and was ready for spreading. This we shovelled out from its compost bin home and dispersed accross the plot in a layer. This 'small' pile of horse poop filled a third of our allotment perfectly to compliment our crop rotation system. Afterwards, we cleared the remaining beds of lingering crops and gave the whole plot a general tidy-up, before a thorough rotorvate of the entire seed bed - just in time before the riggors of spring came upon us.
On a sad note however, our Rhubarb only broke the surface of the soil on 27/3/10- this is a good 5 weeks later than last year and shows that this winter truely has been an unusually cold. We hope that the weather can catch up so that the ever short growing season isnt made shorter. Crumbles should be only a fortnight away and we couldn't wait.
April
At last we saw a nice display of early spring flowers to brighten our mood and bring hope to a very unproductive few months. With the beds prepared for the forthcoming season, the allotment was truely ready for the first crops to enter our soil, albeit at least a month later than usual due to the persistent cold. So, we went ahead with sowing out various types of salad and brassica crops straight into the ground, hoping for a few warmer days to get them going. Another problem related to the weather was that we still had not been able to get the Garlic bulbs into the ground before the end of March - as the ground was still completely frozen. As they usually need a long period of cold before the growing season to turn into a decent head of garlic, we were very concerned that this lateness would mean little if anything to harvest.
The first major crops always to enter the soil at the start of the year are the broad beans and the potatoes. These were both started off at home and were well ready to go into the soil by the time the weather was ready for them to be planted out.
May
One of the biggest dissapointments of previous years has been our strawberries. What ever we did in 2008 and 2009 - it seemed to be wrong. So with this in mind we made a true monster, 3 meter sqaure section just for them. We also, relocated some of the Raspberry runners which had migrated across the plot in various directions into a temporary bed, before planting them on into the fruit cage proper. Plenty of muck and the early spring rain has meant that at present the strawberries and fruit bushes are looking better than ever before.
The first signs of life from your early spring sowings on a plot are always very exciting, regardless of how late on in the season they seem to appear. With Carrots, Beets and Radishes all poking through the soil, we thought the time was right to plant out our home reared seelings of Cabbage, Cauliflowers, Brussells and Broccoli's. These we protected by the use of cages, to deter the marauding attentions of local pigeons.
June
June this year was the month where everything truly "kicked off", with some wonderful summer sunshine warming the ground, everything seeemed to be going completely bonkers. The fruit bushes, Redcurrants, Goosegogs, Blackcurrants and Raspberries were beggining to produce bumper crops. We had also kitted out the poly tunnel with its compliment of Tomatoes and Cucumbers (well - we sucessfully managed to do so after several attemps and a number of freak frosts which seemed able to wipe out many of the you seedlings despite the protection of the tunnel itself). Pumpkins, squashes, beans, sweetcorn and courgettes finally made thier way outdoors into thier final planting positions. Whilst the onions and shallots were growing on a storm and benefitting hugely from the dry weather.
Due to the sunshine and heat however, it was a battle to keep many of these water-hungry crops healthy and moist - as the ground dried out very rapidly and no rain had fallen in over a month. Showing that even when things seem to improve, there is always another side of the coin that you must be prepared for when growing your own.
July
This month, initially seemed to continue the warmer period and started off with a few weeks of glorious sun. Yet gradually, the wetter days and damp air crept in leaving an almost chilly feel in its wake. This was worrying as it had been the trend for the last few years and did not bode well for a good fruit, tomato or onion harvest. Despite this, we had some pretty displays of flowers to enliven the front of the plot and many of the fruit bushes were well underway to providing thier summer glut ontime. Finally, after several years of trying; we got a half decent haul of strawberries and most of the seeldings on the plot were doing well. Jam, jam and more jam was the main focus of the month in order to preserve the wonderful flavours and fragrances of summer in liquid sugar form, for consuming in the colder months. There were decent (although not fantastic, due to the dry weather in May and June) harvests of potatoes to be had as well as an excellent haul of onions and shallots who seemed to thrive in the more arid times of spring. The Garlic, as we had predicted had not done so well and the few small, highly odorous bulbs we did harvest had to be immediately discarded.
With little other than watering and weeding to be done, we turned our attention to a small area at the side of the plot which had been neglected for some time. By clearing the soil and moving some of the plants into more apropriate positions, this rather bedraggled area, soon looked quite well kept. Although with all the rain and weed seelings about - how long this would endure was anyones guress.
August
In terms of harvests August was the most productive month of the year with bumper crops from many different quarters. Beans, sweetcorn, courgettes, Beets, Carrots, Salads, Radishes and Cucumbers all produced well and were either eaten incredibly fresh or squirrelled away into the freezer for use over the year.
All seemed well until one day we checked in the poly tunnel and discovered that we had succumed to a local infection of Tomato Blight. Happily, and unlike some of our unlucky neighbours - we had caught the disease early, and so were able to strip the plants of all healthy fruit and take them home to ripen up on large trays in our conservatory. Some fruits turned to blight as they ripened - but we are glad to report that the vast majority remained unaffected. We roasted them in batches and pulverised them to make a range of lovely tomato sauces to see us through the winter. Stored in bags in the freezer, we should not need to be popping to the shops for a lasagne sauce any time soon. So overall, a most satisfactory result, despite the dissapointment that once again blight may have caused the crop to fail after such a promising start.
The main challenge of the month was like nothing we had ever dealt with before, an insect infestation - WASPS!!!! Certainly not our favorite of creatures to begin with, but the little blighters presence was made all the more difficult by the fact that they had taken up residence in the shed and in our brazier bin by the fruit cage, but also because one of our regular party was quite severely allergic to thier stings. We deployed various methods to remove the horrid beasts, including covering the whole brazier in thick plastic so that nothing could get in or out, flying wasp killer spray and finnally some expanding foam killer which could be administered from a distance. Evetually, the colonies seemed to disperse and we felt it was safe enough to uncover the bin and remove the items from the top shelf of the shed, where we believed they had made thier nest. We were greeted with a large rugby ball sized nest in the shed and a squash ball sized one in the bin. The indoor nest seemed to have mostly died off, unlike the bin one, which was still very mcuh alive and full of angry workers. Both nests met a firey end in the brazier and returned from whence they came - an unfortunate but relieving end to a difficult period on the plot.
Reassuringly, many of our crops on the plot were getting along nicely, without such drama - including the Brassicas, Parsnips and Leeks, who were fleshing up fantastically in the late summer sun. We have high hopes for, good tasy crops to see us through the whole winter period if they carry on as they are. The only failures in this respect were the swedes and cauliflowers, the latter of which bolted to seed and the earlier died back into obscurity for some unkown reason. We dont think we will bother growign Cauli's again, as despite ficve sucessive years of trying, we have neve produced decent heads of this vegetable.
September
With the end of the year in sight comes the slowing down on the allotment, with thoughts already turning to next year ahead of us, we saw the need to replace some of the posts on our rabbit proof fencing, as such we went on a search for some tree posts which had out grown their need on their current tree's. Thus with approval we managed to source around ten new posts for replacing the broken ones on the allotment.
Another job in September comes another jam making mission, with a family friends yellow plum tree groaning with fruit, we managed to aquire a good 5 kilo of ripened fruits. These plums although delicious raw would not last so we made a rather large batch of yellow plum jame, which we will see us and family through until this time next year, thanks again Steve.
Other tasks of the month are the continued harvest of final summer crops, with very good beetroot, salads and carrots all growing well with the late summer sunshine.
October Through to December
With the Colder months fast approaching it is always nice to see the final summer flowers keep prodcuing large pretty flowers and this year the dahlias were no exception. These plants all grown from seed earlier in the year were still in full bloom, producing large abundant flowers.
The best autumn job of the year is always harvesting the pumpkin and squashes that have grown and covered the plot in the past few months and this year was no exception. Althought the numbers were down on last year (due to poor germinatrion earlier in the year) the crown prince were the true winners this year with some true whoppers being produced.
The butternut squash were not far behind producing a large number of good sized fruits, but as with anything we do on the allotment, the phrase always more next year comes to mind. :-)
As so concludes the allotment year for us, with ups and down as with any year but we hope you all enjoyed our allotment year and that yours was successfull too, and here is to 2011.