10/3/26 - Pond, Peas and Pricking Out

Hello there!  Welcome to my latest diary instalment.  It's a little later than usual because sometimes you just have too much fun and sitting at a computer is the last thing on your mind!  The last week to ten days have been really busy on the plot and at home.  But, I start this entry on a bit of a downer.

Some members of our allotment society, myself included, have added a small pond to our plots.  Some people for the wildlife, some for the aesthetics.  Some people have added it as a point of interest for the youngsters and some for all the reasons above.  Unfortunately though, with ponds come risks and this year our insurance company have decided to tighten up on the conditions under which they will cover claims involving accidents and incidents where ponds are involved.  They haven't outright banned ponds and insist that they be removed or filled in, but they have put in conditions.  So now, in order for insurance to be provided, any pond must either be surrounded by a fence, no less than 1 meter in height, with a closable entrance like a gate.  Or, a pond must be covered with a metal grid, fixed in place that would prevent a person from entering the water.  Unfortunately, my allotment pond was so small that a fence surrounding it would look a bit silly.  Likewise, a some sort of metal grid over the top of it would pretty much obscure most of the feature anyway.  Despite the pond only being in place for not much more that a year, I decided that I couldn't really come up with a solution to pacify the insurance company and that I had to remove it.

So, sadly, bye bye pond 😞.  But, all is not lost.  A healthy chunk of the weekend, I spent digging a nice pond shaped hole in our big flower bed at home and with liner and plastic laid, I made a bigger and better pond at home, filled it with rain water from a couple of water butts and I was able to transplant the pond plants and some little pond dwelling creatures into the pond at home.

Through last week and over the weekend, things have progressed at a great rate of knots.  Seeds that have been sown on a week or two before have been germinating.  I've been busy pricking out, watering and sowing even more.  I'm running out of space again and have had to make the decision to start moving things about.

Earlier in the week, I had the time to prick out the Sweet Pepper plants and get them moved into individual pots.  They are strong little seedlings and had developed several sets of true leaves.  Likewise, the cucumber seedlings were desperate for more room, so they also got moved on too.  It won't be long before the aubergine seedlings will also need a new home.

Tomato plant growth continues to go at great speed too.  They were pricked out and potted around 3 weeks ago and are now taking up about 1/3 to 1/2 of the space available in the grow house, under lights.  I may need to consider moving them out onto window sills soon, and potentially even potting them on once more, before the weather will allow them to be moved onto their final positions.

A great thing that has also happened this weekend has been the sowing of this years peas.  Once again we have gone with Hurst Greenshaft because they have never let us down.  We've also stuck with the gutter method for growing them.  I've written a full guide here.

On the plot, the last of the red cabbage has been harvested, freeing up the bed to be fed with digestate and left to settle for a month or so before the next crop goes in.

To round this diary entry off though, it's time to take a look at the Great Broad Bean Experiment.  This week has seen a little bit of change.  Where growth is happening, I noticed this week that there was an abundance of root growth sticking out the bottom of the pots.  The two pots containing only manure though are still yet to produce any growth.  The two control pots where 100% shop bought compost was used, continue to grow nicely, and both plants are of an equal size and generally very good condition.  Then we come to the two pots which comprise of a 50/50 mix of manure and compost.  While they were a little bit behind in germination, they have since got on somewhat.  One is showing steady growth, not quite to the size of the control plants, but then the second pot has really shot on and is now about twice as tall as the other plants.

I think another week or so of growing, and I will need to start to look at transplanting these into the beds outside as they would have outgrown their pots by then.