-
Act on CO2
Plot update - May 2008
Thought I’d do an update of how we’re getting with our allotment patch.
We’ve now had our patch since January and so far kinda so good. I wish I had some before pics but generally the front half of it wasn’t in too bad a condition so the comparison wouldn’t be that stark. The compost area was very overgrown and we’ve now tackled one half of that area and in doing so have created a nice, rich mound for what we hope will be a pumpkin patch (currently propagating a few indoors). We’ve had to dig out a ton of evil bindweed though:
We’ve got two and a half rows of early potatoes (about which I fret constantly) that can’t be far off digging up. Once they do a significant amount of flowering I’ll dig a few up and report back. There’s certainly plenty of plant to them:
The slugs are a constant battle with anything tender and our cauliflower have really suffered. We went out today to find every one of them chomped to bits. A few might survive but although the slugs have won this round, we’ll fight back with a multi-trap approach (more to come on this).
Other stuff on the plot includes garlic (dead on its feet - planted too late), rhubarb (tons of it, despite extensive digging out), peas (doing well), runner beans (most doing fine), onions (growing nicely), carrots (we’re expected some stunted funny shaped ones to emerge), parsnips (still not emerged), lettuce (not emerged but might divert the slugs from the cauliflowers).
The back of the plot is covered in fruit bushes but is incredibly overgrown. I’ll report separately on this as we begin it tackle it. Without any intervention from us though it should produce all sorts of goodies. Actually fighting our way though to the goodies will be the issue. In the meantime we’re focusing in the slug-ridden front part.
How to dig up spuds
Am loving this site. Videos on how to sort my allotment out. My early potatoes keep me awake at night. Do I need to earth up again? Are any spuds actually growing? Is it all plant and no spud? None of the videos on this site stop me worrying but at least I’ll know how to dig things out of the ground when the time comes (late June probably):
How To Harvest New Potatoes
Rubbish CD scarecrow complete
Now that green things are beginning to come out of the ground on the allotment I thought I’d finish off the CD scarecrow. After much mulling over complex rotating mechanisms I settled for a cross shape with CDs dangling off it. Hardly innovative but it’ll do the job. Hung some CDs from the bean frame as well. Bottom pic shows the whole effect. Show this pic to your budgie - I bet it’d be terrified.
CD Scarecrow - stage one
[pic by cupra]
I need to make a scarecrow and judging by what I’ve seen elsewhere, the dangling of CDs seems to be a popular choice. So how do you make a CD scarecrow? Well the first stage would be selecting some CDs to dangle. Why waste money on blank CD-Roms when there’s a large collection of CDs in the house that we never play anymore (the ipod+dock has now replaced all that nonsense).
I’m tempted to pick off the bad CDs first (we’ve got a Travis CD somewhere I think and a couple of Coldplay albums) but maybe I should just dive straight in, admit that we’ll never put a disk in a CD player again and put my Beck CDs out to seed.
One thing that does occur to me is that I could try different artists in different sections of the allotment. Pulp by the runner beans and Sparklehorse by the carrots. Any views?
Allotment Lolcat
Pic taken whilst out digging today:
Wow - I can do techie stuff
Lots to sort here (design still at default - sorry) but having spent forever tonight trying to add an extra wordpress install to a sub-domain (I got there in the end with expert advice via Twitter) I’m now off to bed.
Things I plan to use this blog for include pulling in feeds from other places I blog (list to follow) and to rattle on about other interests such as growing veg and running.
Dave