17/10/26 - Tip Runs and Winding Down for Winter
Hello fellow allotmenteer, grower, or person who is just 'lost' somewhere in the internet and randomly found themselves down a rabbit hole of finding out about the weird world of veg. Whoever you are or wherever you come from, welcome!
It's been a couple of weeks since the last allotment diary update, and it's been busy! It's all been about playing catchup following several months of reduced mobility and struggling to nurture the crops through the back end of Summer. But, I've made it! Not only that, but thanks to some time off work, I'm now fully up to speed with the allotment jobs and now somewhat in that weird space where I'm just waiting for things to die so I can finish off the last of the main autumnal jobs! So, what exactly has been going on?
This time of year, the allotment seems to produce a lot of green waste. Many people are very good, and they will chop and drop, or chop and add their waste to the compost pile. While I have two reasonably sized compost bays and I could compost much of the waste, I'm also very careful about what it is that I would feel comfortable in composting. Perhaps too careful. Disease doesn't visit our plot too often, but I'm always guarded against adding diseased materials to the compost bin. So to avoid that, it all goes off to the green waste skip in the local tip. Every now and then, the trailer gets hitched up to the car, we load up and off we go. And now I imagine you're asking why on earth are you telling me about taking waste to the tip? The answer is that over the last couple of weeks, I've generated two trailer loads of waste!
The specifics...
Some of the beds have already been mulched and manured down, ready for the winter period. The rest have been worked on except for one. Back in the summer, we had lettuces growing out of every crevice on the plot because I bought too many plug plants. We never got anywhere near eating them all, and the remaining plants all bolted in the end. They got pulled up, which then cleared the front bed, ready to be put down for the winter. Also gone are all the tomato plants. We had a box full of green tomatoes which have been bought home and starting to be used for green tomato chutney. Notice all the potato buckets in the adjacent bed full of green waste waiting to be loaded up into the trailer.
With that bed now being free, I wanted to add a layer of organic matter to it, and feed it ready for next season. While we still have some of the manure delivery left, I also had a bay of horse manure that had been rotting down at the back of the plot for around a year. Also on the job list for the last few weeks was to empty one bay, and then turn the rotting manure over into the other bay. When I uncovered it though, what I found wasn't half rotted manure in need of turning, but absolutely perfect crumbly composted manure ready to go. It just made absolute sense to start using it, so a couple of wheel barrows full went on the front bed, and more was added around the autumn raspberry bed.
A quick crop check now, and some observations and predictions. Firstly, the all year round cauli plants that I bought from the local garden centre. They've all been planted under cover, either in the mini tunnel or the main polytunnel. Around 6 weeks into them growing, and it's evident that we have sporadic clubroot. The two in the main tunnel are growing, but just really slowly, and while I haven't dig down to check the roots, their growth has been significantly stunted. There are 4 plants in the mini polytunnel. Oddly, the two on the left are stunted, but still growing. However, I'm almost certain that these have club root because while watering them, I can see where the roots have swollen to the extent that they have broken the surface of the soil and are showing the tell tale signs. But, a matter of 2 feet away, the other two plants are looking as healthy as anything. The whole bed had lime added, and a couple of handfuls of lime was added into the planting holes too. Alas though, it doesn't seem to have been enough.
Sticking with the clubroot theme, we also have (had) half a bed of calabrese plants. These have also suffered, to the extent where out of the 5 planted just didn't get to develop. If it wasn't clubroot attacking them from below, it was whitefly attacking from above. 3 out of 5 plants have been removed, but one has produced a reasonably sized head and has been harvested. While the second of the 2 remaining is a little behind, it too is developing a head, so we will wait and see if it gets to the point where it can also be harvested.
Onto the carrots, and around 4 to 6 weeks ago, just as a pure gamble, I sowed a single row of autumn carrots in the bath, but in the knowledge that in all likelihood, it was too late to really expect them to grow to any size before the colder weather sets in. Well, germination was pretty good, but I haven't had them covered over, and so I think some local wildlife has been doing some thinning out activity on my behalf, leaving only about half the row remaining. I'll leave them in place, because you just never know, but for next year, I'll remove much of the old compost and replace with fresh before starting again.
The carrots sown during the tail end of the summer inside the polytunnel are doing really well and are probably now ready to harvest. The shoulders are poking through the surface of the compost, and the green growth is strong. We'll start harvesting them once we've finished using what we have had to buy from the supermarket in the meantime. Growing carrots inside the polytunnel is still an utter revelation to me and one day, I will be looking for a way to increase the growing area. One day maybe even having a second polytunnel completely with raised beds for things like carrots and maybe brassicas.
While talking about the polytunnel, I've also been busy in here too. It was starting to look a bit bare, and having pulled up a load of lettuces which had bolted, I was in the market for some winter lettuce. Again, the local nursery came to the rescue with the last of their plug plants on sale before they close up for their winter break. I've planted them up in one of the beds in the polytunnel and put the solar powered irrigation system around them to keep them watered. These will take a long time to now grow to a useable size, not so much because of the temperature, but more because of the decreasing hours of daylight they receive at this time of year. The polytunnel will help keep the worst of the temperatures away for a couple more months yet, although some night time temperatures are now starting to drop down into the mid single figures.
And finally for this diary entry, with the polytunnel now pretty quiet, I decided that it was time to start flipping it into it's winter time configuration. I've had one set of staging in place for a couple of months, using it to dry off onions and allowing the squash to cure before bringing them home. Now I have lowered that staging down to it's lowest height, and also brought down the staging on the other side of the tunnel too. I need to have these set reasonably low because come November, or when the first proper frosts arrive, I'll be bringing in the strawberry hanging baskets and hanging them up in the tunnel while they sit there dormant for the winter. The final part of the winter configuration flip saw the return of the collapsible table being put back up at the end of the tunnel which is what I use as a workbench during the winter when it's raining outside, and I need a sowing and potting station tucked out the way of the wind and rain.
That about brings everything up to date. I have one more bed where there are 3 dahlia plants still pushing out their flowers and providing a food source for the bees. I'm not in a hurry to dig those up, although the first frosts will kill them off quickly. When that happens, they too will come out and the bed will be weeded and mulched with the horse manure from the back of the plot. That could be next weekend, it could be next month. It won't be long before attention turns to winter project work but at the same time, I will also be restricted to weekend visits due to losing too much daylight to be able to go up after work. The growing maybe coming to an end, but the work never does.