Hobbit Allotment!

[rustylady]

I'm glad you got some plums HH. My Victoria usually produces pounds and pounds of them but this year I have ONE plum. The weather was so bad when the blossom opened that there were no buzzies to pollinate. Looking forward to better next year.

[horticultural_hobbit]

I bought a raised bed from green fingers after reading your post - really pleased with it, can't wait to plant it up in the spring when the FYM has stopped cooking

They are a bit nifty aren't they! I shall point out that I am not endorsing here

Have just shared a falstaff apple with the family whilst visiting Ma. Rather juicy thing. Perhaps not as ripe as it should be. Devoured anyway. A bit salty, actually but all right. Went brown a bit quick as I cut it.

[Pinfold Plotter]

I bought a raised bed from green fingers after reading your post - really pleased with it, can't wait to plant it up in the spring when the FYM has stopped cooking

[horticultural_hobbit]

I don't think they are, RL. Going to stick them onto the window sill and see what happens. Tis all a learning experience. I'm overjoyed by the simple fact of getting some!

[rustylady]

Your plums don't look quite ripe Hobbit. Well done on the progress on the allotment.

[horticultural_hobbit]

I got fruit!

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?f...type=1&theater

No pears but this will do! From the hobbit orchard. Just bitten into one of the smaller victoria plums >_< sweet and sour....

Still happy, though.

In other news, four and half beds out of eight are newpaper mulched.

[horticultural_hobbit]

oh, I only use the fork and the shears. Even then, I try to be careful. Froggies tend to jump out of the grass at me, and as much I like them, and I do, I don't want to shish kebab the creatures. That would be my worst fear, and I wouldn't forgive myself.

[rustylady]

I know the feeling Hobbit. The weeds seem to grow faster than the plants that are supposed to be there. Took the strimmer to the plot yesterday and managed to cut down lots of grass and nettles. Also managed to strim my leg

[horticultural_hobbit]

Am trying, Aunt two_sheds, to not be demoralised. I am waiting for a dry window, to do some weedkilling. I went today, and pulled up some seeding docs. Need to borrow grandad mikes shears and chop stuff. The sheer volume of weeds, does my head in. You'd think I'd done nothing.

Have built all my raised beds and transplanted. So have eight down there now.

[Two_Sheds]

So much to chop down, pull up.

Crack on then

I'm chopping all my (non-seeding) weeds with secateurs and leaving the bits on the soil as a mulch. It soon disappears and is improving the soil no end

[horticultural_hobbit]

Everytime I see my messy newspaper mulch-I'm far too embarrassed to stick a photo up-I hear your'status quo'. At least, I think it was you! I apologise if not.

In my cogitations, was the garlic that has me befuddled. As it needs a frost for it to split.
My crop did indeed split; so would the mulch act as insulation and prevent that. That was my hypothesis. Any hypothesis is of course testable and falsifiable.

Went down to the plot between visiting Ma, and I grumbled. So much to chop down, pull up. There is no way, that it will look like it did last year. I don't really want to spread weed killer everywhere. Firstly, would need what feels like a small ocean liner in volume, and second I don't want to do more harm than good.

There are both good parts and not so good parts on the site. You get the beautifully kept ones, and then you get mine. Feels like I've taken a huge step backwards. Me being me, I'm half a job bob; I don't tend to do things properly per se, just do them my way.

Have also decided that I would like some roses when I have made sense of things. Not fancy Ferrari expensive things. But p***nl**d ones. Think grandad mike had some and Ma planted one in a pot. If I want anything planted, it needs clearing.

[snohare]

Well, I must confess to some envy here, Hobbit. Your beds are going to be a lot more decorative than my (disastrous-looking) brutally utilitarian ones. In point of fact, if anything, my beds - don't laugh at this admission from such a keen advocate of raised beds - are sunken. Not what I was aiming for, you can be sure !
Your attitude is spot-on. This is just a re-jig of logistics. I always think the first season is mainly building infrastructure; any crops you get are a bonus. In a dire growing year such as this, it's not surprising that you are struggling to get anything. I spoke to a local worthy at a glen near here yesterday, and he was saying that it was the worst year for fruit and vegetable growing in the Glen, that he had seen in fifty years.
The upside of all this of course is that you are being tested in extreme conditions (which by the way, you can expect to have replicated time and again), and this is the ideal chance to adapt to such conditions, in advance of them recurring. I would also say, in future years - greatly increased variability of weather conditions being now the norm - being at the bottom of the swale might be your ace in the hole. You might have moisture when everyone else's clay is baked and cracking...expect ferociously hot heatwaves as well as floods and frosts.
For all the dire words of your neighbours, you can be sure that be you right or wrong, they will respect you for your willingness to take on a challenge and stick with it. If there is one thing we all know here on the Vine, and on every serious allotment, it is how hard it can be to keep on keeping on - and that will bring kudos for your efforts. And the more you have to learn at the bottom of the learning curve, the better you will learn the basics.
As for planting through newspaper mulch, well mulch is mulch is mulch. (Not mulch more to be said really.) I've certainly heard of other Grapes doing that sort of thing, very successfully, when using cardboard as mulch in the first year. I was rather thinking of doing it myself, once (if !) I finally get seedlings established enough to plant out.
I am wondering what would happen if I plant some garlic bulbs now...it's been a crazy year temperature-wise, I have absolutely no idea whatsoever what is forecast for this winter, and I am rather thinking of throwing the rule book out of the window and planting as if the growing season will go on until the New Year, or even later...thinking Northern temperate tropical, in fact.
Thank you for the dedication, much appreciated ! I really must get around to posting some photos of my allotment - I inadvertently bounced my camera twice off some slabs yesterday so may not be snapping away as often as usual in future but maybe it will push me into actually showing the unholy mess that is my growing ground. I really need to post a photo of my garlic worms, see if anyone knows what they were...tiny, wriggly little things the colour of the rust that is left behind when you take nails out of a rain-filled container.
And so to bed, as my frozen shoulder seems to have returned with the advent of the warmer weather !

[horticultural_hobbit]

Dedicated to my uncle sno

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https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?f...type=1&theater

Summer of discontent - Horticulturalhobbit Wiki

One of the lotment old boys, told me today I was wasting my time with the plot; that i should move further up the site. He's all right, he means well. it was the "Now listen to your elders" said in a proper Dublin Brogue that it started with. I protested that I didn't fancy clearing another one, and I had already worked hard with plot 2a. And hopefully the raised bedding would help. I'd want to see this thing through!

[horticultural_hobbit]

Hello, summer holidays!

Smiled a bit today, to see that raised beds are on their way. With any luck, they will arrive this week and I can find dad's screwdriver and build them on his lawn and then take them to plot. Cumbersome and awkward, yes, but I don't fancy taking them to a boggy plot 2a and losing the screws amongst the weeds. Are 2m x 1m, with a height of 20cm. Not brilliant, but might do the trick.

Tempted, to put up a polite request on the 'lotment shed asking if folks have rocks and pebbles littering their plots that they don't mind getting rid of. They may well want them themselves, but there's no harm asking.

My mission over the holidays, other than school work and ma sitting, is to clear the weeds, newspaper mulch and possibly green manure the bits that don't get newspapered.

Could a kind grape aunt or uncle advise whether or not I can plant garlic and onions through newspaper mulch? Early, i know, but I'm thinking through my logistical re-jig.

[snohare]

Ah yes, dockens. Don't talk to me about dockens...I spent nigh on twenty minutes solid pulling up dockens at the lottie on Tuesday. I used to enjoy it when I did such things for a living - although mark you we did it as a two or even three man team, two forks intersecting deep beneath the taproot and loosening the soil as one person heaved the plant out of the crack - but I alone sadly, am much less able. I was forced to rest gasping and dizzy against the wall a couple of times, forcibly reminded that the previous day had been one of severe electrolyte loss.
But - great fun when you do get them out, because doing it that way you take out that vital top 4 inches of root, and that means they (almost) never return. Henceforth, only the wee seedling to contend with - a million of 'em, admittedly, but easily sorted when not embedded in grass or bricklike soil.
Some of the garlic was rotted, onions too; and as for my shallots...well, they don't seem to be shallots, more like small onions ?... I get the feeling that some of the lads at the allium-packing production line were having a laugh.
Don't get too hung up on getting wood for the edges of your raised beds. Treat that as the last thing you do with your raised beds; getting such materiels will always be the most difficult or most expensive part of the job. Keep your eyes peeled for what you need, but meantime think bulk biomass for filling. As long as they are neat, barrow-like mounds will do very nicely; better in fact in some ways, as the wee trench between edge and soil makes for good drainage, slows the rhizomes trying to go sideways, and can be a very nice flower border.
Yes, weighing down mulch sheets with weeds certainly comes naturally to me...I wish it were tidier, but hey, it works. Periodically I remove the weeds into bags for anaerobic composting, or into the heap, and if it is cardboard I am using, I generally find once soaked a couple of times it stays put, unless it dries out entirely.
Sitting here listening to Tangerine Dream's "London" on YouTube, patting my (very nice) labrador, it strikes me what a very great shame that I am not handy to dig your French drains for you. Ah, pick and shovel work was what I was born to do ! I don't have the stamina I used to, but I have gotten to that wonderful stage where I have become an "old hand". However, as I am not, and never likely to be, I will console you with one thought; once upon a time, I was as you are now, a mere stripling unversed in techniques of muscle and tendon. I learned by doing, and that which did not destroy me made me strong...
Wise words, Hobbit ? Oh, I may be terribly wrong in my judgement. Don't take anything I say as gospel. God knows, I am struggling enough in some fearful decisions I must currently make...but at least I can give you a different perspective, show a different way to think perhaps. Stupidity it seems to me, is only when you stop seeking these things. (HMG, take note.)