Category: Allotment

General Rambling

‘On Call’ at work can generally mean one of to things firstly it can be a lot of work for not enough pay or secondly it can be a lot of getting paid a bit for sitting around, drinking coffee and surfing the internet. Fortunately today falls into the latter category.

My time has been spent researching a new, bigger, brighter and altogether better bike light that will be similar to bolting the sun onto the front of my bike. I plan to take 6 ssc p4 LEDs and drive them with a maxflex (from www.taskled.com). The first challenge will be to find a suitable method of mounting and heatsinking the LEDs. Once the new bar light is made and mounted I will be looking at a way of putting my 2 ssc p4 LED light onto my helmet.

As spring is approaching and I have started to get the allotment in order I am now considering my position regarding a greenhouse. Currently I have got a lean-to greenhouse at the end of the garden. As this is made of standard glass it has to be removed before this coming summer as it will cause a massive hazard to my daughter, who by that time will be walking. So I plan to replace it with a greenhouse glazed with polycarbonate so that when she runs into it there is no risk of it shattering and cutting her. I would like to try to provide some heating for the greenhouse so have been looking into the idea of creating a heatsink to store some of the daytime heat to be released over night, which might hopefully extend the growing season a little bit. I have erected a stake in the garden that represents the corner of a 6’x4′ greenhouse and I think that I will be able to justify that space.

To start my chillies off this year I am considering sprouting the seeds inside or in a heated propagator and then growing them on in the shed until the conditions in the garden (or new greenhouse) are suitable. To grow the plants in the shed I will have to construct an artificially light grow box, probably with some strip lights out of a fish tank and possibly a heat mat to provide some warmth.

Baby led weaning is the current topic of conversation in our house as we start to introduce Amber to real food. As can be seen it is a rather messy experience. 11026

Allotment Plans

At last our thoughts have turned to the allotment.  Due to a distinct lack of effort in the allotment department over the last year the main things that are thriving there are weeds and grass.
So this year we plan to grow new potatoes, main crop potatoes (Carla), parsnips, carrots, beetroot, butternut squash, another random squash, courgette (and let a few grow larger into marrows), broad beans, runner beans, rhubarb, onions, garlic, cauliflowers, cabbages, broccoli, spinach, leeks, salad leaves, tomatoes and chillies. The new venture for this year is raspberries. I have on order 3 varieties (3 canes of each) which apparently will give us fruit for the whole season.

First Harvest

Saturday saw the first harvest form the allotment this year .. some new potatoes (rocket), broad beans (Bunyards Exhibition, and an onion (sutton)…. all very nice.

We also went strawberry picking, sorted out the front garden and made jam!

Broad Bean Flowers

I visited the allotment last night to find many weeds!! I did some weeding in an unused bed and arround the carrots. Currently the ‘Nantes’ type are doing very well but the ‘rainbow’ carrots aren’t doing so well. I also dug up some new potatoes, these grew from the ones my dad left in the ground when he dug some spuds last year. The broad beans are covered in flowers… looks liek we might get a good crop this year, however only one of the sowings seemed to do any good so the beans might all come at once and we’ll have a masssive pile of them.