Sunday 6th July 2008
I went up to the plot in the morning to see the state of play with the plastic roof. Tim had said on Saturday last week that he thought the plastic would rip from all the wind bombardment by Sunday. I was pleased to say that a week later it hadn't ripped, but it had grown very bulbous with the HUGE amount of water that had collected on top. It looked like three balloons. There were four sections of roof in all and despite the weight of the water and despite the plastic having stretched quite hideously, the plastic hadn't ripped. It was really, really strong. One of the batons had snapped under the weight of the water but the main wooden beams hadn't. The very end section was tight enough, however, that it didn't flap and hadn't collected water.

I punctured the bulbous plastic with a fork and had expected it to just tear with the shear weight of the water and explode everywhere. Instead, there were four very controlled spouts of water from where I had inserted and exited my fork. I thought I'd collect the water from the spouts in the wheelbarrow to see how much water there was. The wheelbarrow soon filled up and then overflowed.

  
                       
 
                                             
 
                                             
I felt heartened by the plastic because it meant that not all was lost. This plastic was really strong so something could be done. I just don't think that this plastic is suitable for roofing. It's going to collect water if there's a slight dip in it and I don't think we can avoid it at the shallow slope my roof has. It could be used for the sides and the ends but I don't think we'll be roofing with it again.
                                             
                                             
  Saturday 12th July 2008
Oh darn. I'd only gone and managed to get myself roped into a work party. It's a pain in the backside having Tim as your allotment partner because he's in charge of work parties on the committee, therefore I have to do everything he says. Bossy bugger! We went down to the area where we'd made a parking space nearly two years ago and it had all overgrown. We had to pull up all of the weeds, then smash the large bits of stone and concrete into as small bits as we could. We then covered the broken up stone with sharp sand.

I went to our plot while Tim dallied with some more work party stuff. I cleared the bindweed from the fruit tree patch. I was quite surprised to see the bindweed having wrapped itself around one of the trees so much that it just looked like a bamboo cane covered in bindweed. It didn't even resemble a tree. I cleared all of this and then Timothy and I got on with some proper work.

I had been up during the week on two occasions and it had been lovely.

                       
 
                                             
 
                                             
 

It was so quiet and Suey and I had managed to get some tomato plants into the ground, having dug the ground over in the polycorridor area. It was marvellous. Tim and I had a look around and saw that tomatoes were growing in the greenhouse and that some potatoes were growing where the bonfire has been. How a rogue potato had managed to survive the inferno that had been there only a few weeks ago and then managed to grow I do no know. This potato plant was actually doing better than the ones we had actually planted.

We shifted one of the big piles of manure from the top of the second plot and spread it all across the patch below the onions. We then covered it over with weed suppressant so that it could rot down over the course of this year before we did everything over again. There was an ulterior motive for moving the manure in that I wanted to plant out some sweetcorn finally. They were looking very sorry for themselves in the greenhouse, having resided in pots for too long.

                       
 
                                             
 
                                             
  Tim planted out some new bean plants because some of them had been eaten by rabbits. The end wigwam didn't have a CD hanging from it so there was nothing to scare off potential bean plant-munchers. The replacements will hopefully grow well and give us some lovely beans and avoid being nibbled by nasty wabbits!!

I dug the earth over where the manure had been and strung out a line so that I made sure that the sweetcorn was planted in a straight line. I had difficulty in remembering just how far apart I had to sow sweetcorn. I knew they were wind-pollinated so they had to be planted in a block but how far apart. I spaced them out and nothing looked quite right.

However, having read one of the books in the shed, it was 30cm apart. Hurrah! I planted them all out and it took a while because there were a total of 59. I sowed a couple of seeds in the space where the 60th plant should have been so that it doesn't look too odd.
                       
 
                                             
 
                                             
Tim planted out some celeriac, celery and kale in the space where the board beans had been. He dug it over and spaced everything out nicely. He dug a little trench for the celeriacs so that their stems could be covered over with earth when they had grown tall enough. This way it would blanch the stems. These were vegetables solely for Tim's consumption because I can't stand celery, let alone celeriac. Still, seeing as we are growing out own I'm prepared to try it... once.

A heavy dose of weeding will be needed at some stage because the carrots were absolutely covered in weeds again and the grass was just growing at an alarming rate again. Grrr! Blimmin heck! At least the wild flowers seeds that I'd sown were giving the weeds a run for their money (and looked nice too).

                                             
 
                                             
 
                                             
                                             
Saturday 19th July 2008

Suey and I went up to the allotment today with the chickens. We'd decided to take Buck Bucky and Shakira because they were the large birds out of our four and we also thought that they'd do the most damage to the ground we set them on. The first task of the day was to build a small little chicken coop for our birds and using a staple gun and some netting, this didn't take very long at all. I made it so that the netting would be attached to all four posts and we could just sledgehammer the posts into the ground and the chicks wouldn't be able to escape.

After we'd made the pen, we hammered it into the ground and put the girls in. The ladies seemed a little perplexed at first as to what they were doing with all this lush vegetation around them. Shakira soon figured out that the grass was for eating, however. The main problem was that the weather forecast had got it completely wrong and the “bright sushine” turned into heavy showers. I'd never seem the chicken's tails point downwards before and they fluffed themselves out everytime they got a little too wet.

 
                       
 
                                             
 
                                             
Suey and I, in the meantime, had pulled the large wire netting out and measured 7 metres in length to stretch across the polycorridor. This was to act as a strong “skin” underneath the plastic. I stapled the netting from the doorway and then we started to unravel it and soon realised that this wasn't going to work. The netting already had a big kink in it and was jutting out quite a bit. I thought the best thing to do was just stop and rethink the whole thing.

Suey and I got on with some digging within the polycorridor structure and mixed in some sand for drainage and we managed to plant out some tomato plants, which I was very happy about. However it was just getting too wet for the chickens so we packed them up and we decided to leave. It was just not a great day for gardening and definitely not for poultry in the great outdoors.

The growth indoors was much better, however, with cucumbers and tomato plants growing well in their grow bags within the greenhouse.

 
                       
 
                                             
The courgette plants were beginning to fruit.   The cabbage plants were in dire need of weeding.
                                             
 
                                             
 
                                             
Before we left, we constructed a walking stick system for the one apple tree that was bearing fruit and suffering from the sheer weight it's thin branches were having to cope with. We just cut a notch in the top of the bamboo canes, stuck them in the ground and rested the weighty branches on them. The apple tree, I'm sure, would appreciate not having to bear the weight of it's fruit and risk it's branches splitting and getting diseased.
                                             
                                             
Saturday 26th July 2008
I got up to the plot today and Tim was already there. I had been to the shops for our usual sandwiches and I'd also bought Tim a special something... a Disney Princess birthday cake. Yes, it as that time of year when we celebrate Tim's XXth birthday (classified for security reasons). The allotment sun has withered his once good looks and I helped him round the plot, pointing at things and saying their names slowly so he could understand.

Well, maybe he wasn't that bad. There were things that certainly needed to be done, like weeding the cabbages and the leeks. They were all beginning to look like a massive mess, especially when the cabbages had Jerusalem artichokes growing up between them, pushing the netting up further and also stealing the light that the cabbages would need for good growth. Tim started off with the strimmer, cutting back all of the overgrowing grass and nettles.

 
                       
 
                                             
 
                                             
I was on cabbage duties and Tim was on leek duty. We both watered our patches first so that the weeds would be more easily removed as the earth wouldn't be dry, withholding the roots that we wanted to yank up. Tim plucked the bits and pieces out of the leek patch and as he was doing so he started to bank the leek plants up so that their stems would be blanched, like a proper leek should be. He went on to the Kelsae onions after that and made sure that everything was totally weed-free.

I, in the mean time, got on with the cabbages after we'd removed the nylon netting from over the top of them. They just looked like a mess. They were all planted too close together so I had to be careful where I treaded to ensure I didn't crush a cabbage. I removed all of the weeds over the course of around two hours and used the growbag tray to collect all of the weeds. I managed to fill it up and over three times. Both the cabbage and the leek patches looked so much better once they had been de-weeded. Both of us hadn't been able to easily the vegetables that we were weeding prior to weeding but now it was as clear as day and looked fabulous.

  
                       
 
                                             
 
                                             
We made a netting tent for the calabrese so that they were covered over and protected but also had room to grow up because the netting had been fairly restrictive prior to this. We also constructed the most ridiculous cabbage cage ever made. It utilised my chicken pen (which means I can't bring my chickens up now), three pallets, and huge roll of wire mesh I'd bought. It was completely ridiculous and over the top for a bunch of cabbages but it worked. These cabbages better taste amazing or I will be furious! At least we can re-use all of the elements of the cage, because we didn't cut anything or finalise anything.

I also planted out the last of my tomatoes. I was really pleased to get it all done because they had been cooped up in the greenhouse for so long that it was just nice to see them in the ground finally, even if they weren't surrounded by plastic to keep them warm and encourage growth. I mixed some sand in with the clay soil and having put manure down and ash previously it was a very successful mix. We now had lots of varieties of tomato in the ground and as long as we don't get blight everything should be fine.

 
                       
 
                                             
We have San Marzano (plum cooking variety, vine), Rosada F1 (a small Pomodorino sweet and juicy variety, vine), Ferline F1 (a blight tolerant variety, vine) Legend F1 (in the greenhouse, blight tolerant, cordon) and some Moneymaker F1 (your standard tomato). I also managed to plant out some peppers between the tomatoes, which were standard peppers, large pointy peppers and tobasco chilli peppers. I just need to get Tim's sub-Arctic tomatoes out and the plethora of aubergines I'd sown as well.
                                             
 
                                             
We had also decided, during the course of the day, to actually crop some things from the plot. We firstly took the red onions out of the ground they were looking fantastic. We hadn't had much luck with red onions last year but they were looking like they were a good size and didn't look rotten liked last years crop. Tim also took the shallots out of the ground and they were looking good too.

One of the most spectacular failings of our plot that we had ever come across was the digging of the early potatoes. Tim dug the ground and found hardly any potatoes whatsoever in the ground. He found around six, no word of a lie, and he had dug a huge area. We didn't know whether they'd rotted, or whether it was because the bark chippings we'd put on top were acidic, or whether the ground was too heavy clay. We just didn't know. All we knew was that for all the early potatoes that we'd planted we got less than we'd put in the ground. That is really quite sad. We dug some Desirees and Marfonas to make up for it but they were still rather small for what we'd planted. What an absolute shame!