Hosepipes or Watering Can?

I've been wondering about buying a hose for the watering. Until now we've been going back and forth to the tap at the communal water butt with a watering can. It's time consuming and hard work but that's alright, I mean, if we wanted the easy life we wouldn't bother with the allotment at all. But would it really be so bad to use a hose? It would save a fantastic amount of time and effort. More time and effort that could be re-invested into other allotment jobs.

Bonzo is against the idea. For a start he thinks it's antisocial as it prevents other plot holders from using the tap. Then there is the issue of water wastage. I bet using a hosepipe to water your garden directly wastes a lot of water, as you move from one bed to the next and you'll probably use more water anyway than if you had to carry it yourself.

Although our allotment doesn't appear to have any special rules relating to hosepipe use, our friend's allotment bans the use of hosepipes to water gardens directly but is happy for you to use them to fill up your water butt if you then use a watering can to do the watering. It seems like a good compromise to me. But maybe Bonzo has a point about it still being antisocial to other plotholders.

Hmm. Other plot holders: What do you think? Do you use a hose? Do you prefer not to use them? If so then why? I'd really like to know...

OOOOOeeeeeeeeeeeee

I'm so excited, my first ever broad beans have flowered. How long now then aye? Are we nearly there yet? Is it nearly ready huh? Is it is it is it?

New Shoots

The replacement peas (damn you evil weevils) and the sugar peas have started to appear now

and could that just be a teeny tiny tomato seedling? I thought I'd buggered the whole tray with my home-made greenhouse affair. I covered the tray in cling film to keep the moisture and warm in but didn't think to put breathing holes in for about a week. I was worried the seeds would just go mouldy in the soil.

In my brand spanking new window sill greenhouse I've sowed a few more tomatoes (gardeners delight), pumpkins, winter squash, chilli and sweet peppers, marigolds and sunflowers. Hmm, if the tomatoes I'd given up on in the tray all come up then I've really over done it. Still, I can hand out tomato seedlings at work. Everyone at work seems to be building new greenhouses at the moment. Everyone, sniff, except me, sniff.

Goodies

The bees are loving the rosemary.

What a good day. We arrived at the plot today and I immediately got frustrated with my crappy, way-too-big-for-me gloves so we left almost straight away again for the garden center. I remembered I had some birthday money to spend, and well, I went a little wild!

Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me!

The hoard:

• One rhubarb plant. Hey, I could have waited and waited for someone to give me a little bit of root, but I am just far too impatient for that.
  
• Nine, I repeat, NINE strawberry plants. I can't wait. Ah. We wont be getting many this year I suppose. Never mind, we'll be feasting next year. We got 3 plants each of 3 different varieties
  
• One small tray of red cabbage plants. I forgot to buy the seeds and well, it IS my birthday...
• A pot of sweet pea plants to brighten up the few eating peas that made it so far (damn you evil weevils)
• Window sill propagator. This is my brand new tomato plan.
  
• AND a pair of posh gardening gloves that fit perfectly and are all soft and lovely on the inside

The trowel was from a friend. And a very nice trowel it is too, sporting a cutting edge, and a ruler.

We weeded and weeded and weeded, and I rigged up the pea support. Does it look like overkill?

Potato sign already?

I just don't know if this is a good thing or not:

They've only been in the ground a week. I hope I buried them deep enough...

Evil Weevils

19/04/07 Edited to submit evidence of weevil attack:

My poor legumes bed. I had planted out the broad beans I started up inside and sowed a few more broad beans and all my peas (a few of the peas under cloches). But disaster! The bean/pea weevil (don't know if they are the same) have been nibbling round the edges of everything that wasn't protected under a cloche. Now everything has doily leaves! The broad beans I started up inside and the peas under cloches look like they will cope but everything else? I doubt it.

I was reading around and it seems a common problem this year. It seems the only things, well, the only organic things to do is to try and squish as many as we can while we're there and start some more off inside to plant out when they're big enough to cope.

At last: PURPLE SPROUTING!

Wow. Really, wow. It took so long so arrive but now it's here we'll be eating purple sprouting til we go purple.

This is only half of the purple sprouting collected from just one evening. I plan to give a load to a friend with a big car who has ferried pallets to the plot for us.

This is one of the things we planted in the corner of a friends allotment when we (Bonzo and I) were trying out the whole allotment thing. I think the arrangement worked well for both of us. They couldn't worth over the entire plot that year anyway so they offered a patch of it to us. I'm not sure it was very fair to sow 5 purple sprouting plants though, as it's monopolised alot of their space for over a year now. The flip side is that there's enough for all of us now, and then some.

Monthly Advice

I love getting a current gardening magazine with all its seasonally relevant advice but it can get a little costly. Especially when I get carried away like I did when we first got the plot and I bought 4 (2 from the shop and 2 for the current month from last year on eBay)! So I've been checking around on the Internet for similar BUT FREE seasonal kitchen garden or allotment advice and these are a few I liked:

River Cottage

Garden Action
Garden Organic

Of course, best of all I like nosing around other peoples allotment blogs to find out what other more experienced gardeners are doing right now.

Easter Plot Fest No 2: Pea Sign!

We have Pea Sign!

Ok, so these are best two, the other 4 or 5 look a little weak (I wanted to say weedy). We used cloches to grow the peas on one side of the bed but then ran out of cloches. Peas were sown on the other side of the bed but either have yet to appear or have been had by the slugs or pigeons. We'll see if they come up. I sowed a few extra peas on the empty side over Easter, trying not to disturb the soil too much in case anything was going to come up. We'll see what happens. I might grow a few plants inside to take out.

The broad bean plants are looking good. I was going to say healthy but several have been nibbled round the edges and they have some suspicious little back spots.

The extra few I sowed in the gaps (my just-in-case beans) are starting to come up too.

So legume bed No.1 is well and truly on it's way!

Easter Plot Fest No 1

So much progress! It feels great. We spent a couple of hours down the plot most days over Easter in a bid to catch up with our plans, and, I think we've made it.

First up: The Spuds (First Earlies)

We finished digging and weeding the potato beds (thank god for that) and used the plan we'd cobbled together from our books and chatter on The Grapevine. I had been reading that we should have manured the beds at the end of last year which was of course not possible as we didn't have our allotment then. I asked the folks on The Grapevine and with their advice we decided to dig our spud trench a bit deeper and add a layer of horse manure and lay the spuds on top.

I was also worried we'd left planting the spuds a bit late but our splendid little book recommended early April for the North. Phew.

While we're on it, I heartily recommend this book:

Ideal size for taking with you to the allotment, it's quicker to find the information you need without trying to find the original seed packet, there's more detail than the seed packet and it's cheap at £4.99 on Amazon, or free if you have nice friends weeding out their book shelf :).