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  • Penellype
    replied
    A busy weekend, as usual.

    On Saturday I decided to check the hedges, intending to remove a few long bits of bramble and some nettles, but when I had a good look I found it was a bit more complicated than that. The hawthorn hedge was easy as there were just the brambles and a few long bits, but the west hedge has a lot of leylandii in it and it definitely needed a trim. There were also a lot of nettles at the road end hiding quite a bit of horsetail. I did the hawthorn first, then attacked the nettles and horsetail, and finally started on the leylandii. Anyone who has tried to cut a 20ft long hedge consisting of a mixture of laylndii, hawthorn, blackthorn, ash and elderberry with a pair of blunt secateurs that have a spring that keeps flying out will understand that it took quite a while to get not very far! By 2pm I had had enough for the moment and picked some currants and a few raspberries, noting that quite a few of the raspberries were damaged by birds. I decided I would have to make a net.

    The problem was that I didn't have much time. I couldn't get back to the plot until around 5pm and I was going out for dinner and had to collect some friends at 6.45, and there was watering to do. I flung some water about quickly then used 6 long poles that I had brought down with me that I often use to make covers for the potatoes in the spring, and some bits of butterfly net to construct a makeshift net fence about 4ft high. I then pinched the net off the onions (which was only there to stop the birds digging the onions up when they were small) and put it over the top. It is a decent length as it is an old fruit cage net (the same as the one over the blueberries), so most of the raspberry bushes were covered. I had to try to cobble the thing together with bits of string, and there were still gaps, but I had run out of time and had to dash home.

    Sunday was a bit less tight for time and I managed to fill in some of the gaps in the net, which does seem to have kept the birds off the fruit (they are now stealing the blackcurrants, but I am less bothered about that). I then attacked the remainder of the leylandii, with the aid of my loppers, which helped with the higher bits.

    Hedges done, I started on the grass edges, which had got quite long in places. I got about half of this done, as well as removing some dead rhubarb leaves, weeds and quite a bit of horsetail. Once my knees had had enough I removed the first lot of Meteor peas, harvesting the few that remained. A couple of these had pea moth grubs in - I hope this doesn't mean that the main crop of Hurst Greenshaft will be full of them.

    I also harvested a courgette and a few strawberries, watered everything and went home.

    Today was much less fraught and I had plenty of time to get on with things. I wanted to get the PSB planted out as they were starting to look miserable in their pots (brassicas do this sometimes, the leaves go brown and wilty and the plants just curl up and die). I cleared the bottom end of the tunnel of various bits of stuff (weed matting, bricks, bucket for catching water, spare shelf, gooseberry bush, weeds and slugs) and dug out the bits of horsetail I could see. I then forked in some bfb and mulched the area with some compost, planted the 2 best plants there and gave each a copper ring, a sprinkling of slug gone and some water. They also have some marigolds for company to hopefully ward off whitefly. If they want to curl up and die I can't stop them, but hopefully they have a good chance of survival.

    One of the other 2 plants looked beyond help, but the other might survive so I planted it in the middle of the tunnel. I then weeded all the planted areas of the tunnel, dug out some horsetail and trimmed dead leaves and finished fruiting stems off the strawberries. There are a lot of runners and I am rooting some in the soil so I arranged them where they will not get trodden on.

    I'd noticed during my weeding that the cucumbers have about doubled in size since I last looked and there are several that are big enough to eat. I harvested one and went home for lunch.

    After lunch I was back, and planted 3 french bean plants that I had taken down yesterday in the hotbed where the lettuces had been. I then set about trimming the rest of the grass edges and long bits, which were now dry enough to cut.

    Next job was to harvest the 2 buckets of Lady C potatoes in the tunnel, which had died down. There was a decent bagful of potatoes, which I weighed later - 3.25kg from a total of 4 seed potatoes. I took these home along with some strawberries and a few french beans for tea.

    Finally I went back to water and weeded the raised beds. There is still some horsetail to come out of them, but I had run out of time. I picked a few blackcurrants, ate the ripest raspberries and went home.
    Last edited by Penellype; 08-07-2019, 09:13 PM.

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  • Penellype
    replied
    I think it is getting to the point where I will have to dig up the grass path next to his allotment, but I'd rather wait until he has cleared his field of horsetail first. Hi did dig some more of it up on Thursday, its just a pain that he has started at the other end.

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  • Atta
    replied
    Originally posted by Penellype View Post
    [ATTACH=CONFIG]87766[/ATTACH]

    The next door plot. I wish he would dig up his field of horsetail - it really isn't helping my efforts to eradicate the stuff!
    I thought I have a problem .Thats so frustraiting there must be a incredible amount of roots undersurface.

    I love reading your thread all is so tidy and well organized.

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  • Penellype
    replied
    Nothing doing on Thursday except a quick trip to water everything and harvest the ripe strawberries and raspberries.

    More time yesterday and the most important job was to cut the grass. I went down in the morning and went round the whole grass path pulling out horsetail. I like to do this before I cut the grass so that the minimum amount of horsetail ends up in the compost, but the path between my allotment and the one next to it is now so full of horsetail that it is impossible to make any impression on it. I did my best, but the horsetail is pushing its way into the raised beds and raspberry bed (which I dug so carefully to remove every scrap before planting) and I found it hard not to feel that the whole thing was a hopeless waste of time.

    This feeling was not improved by finding that the birds had been at the raspberries again. There was less damage in the section that I had put cotton round so I found another long stake and tied cotton round the remainder. I also tied up the floppy branches so that they were nearer the cotton. Its not very secure and the whole thing will probably come down if ti gets windy, but I don't know what else to do at the moment.

    The grass was still too wet to cut after a heavy dew so I decided to take the trugs of horsetail, the cauliflower roots and the large cardboard tube that the fruit cage poles came in to the tip. On my way out I harvested a lettuce and a small cucumber for lunch.

    By the afternoon most of the grass was dry enough to cut, so I got that job done having mowed the lawns at home as well. Then I picked some raspberries, peas (the Meteor have now nearly finished) and a handful of french beans for tea as well as a huge beetroot from the hotbed for my friend. I watered all the pots and recent plantings - the water is going down really fast again, but we are due some rain mid week which should take the pressure off a bit so I am not taking any extra down with me yet.
    Last edited by Penellype; 06-07-2019, 07:51 AM.

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  • Penellype
    replied
    Yesterday I had planned to cut the grass while it was dry, but things didn't go to plan. It was still fairly early when I heard the sound of a hedge trimmer and realized that the neighbour at the back was cutting their side of the hedge. They also do the top (its their hedge) and inevitably this makes a mess on my side. I'd been thinking I could do with cutting the hedge anyway, and clearing up one lot of leylandii trimmings is vastly preferable to doing it twice, so I abandoned grass cutting in favour of hedge trimming.

    While I was waiting for the trimmer battery to charge I went to the plot and removed the last 2 cauliflowers which were starting to bolt. There were some edible bits on one of them and I cut these off and took them home. The black cotton seems to be keeping the birds off the raspberries (touch wood!).

    After I'd cut the hedge I went back with 3 tomato plants and planted them in the bed where the cauliflowers had been. I can't net them as they will soon be too tall, so I put a piece of netting and some bits of plastic path on the bed to keep the birds and cats off. I then pulled out some horsetail and bindweed from under the roadside hedge, but soon ran out of time. I watered everything and harvested a courgette, some peas and some raspberries and went home.

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