Rhubarb harvest / snippets of Spring

It has begun my friends - harvesting from the allotment has taken off already. The rhubarb wasn't forced this year or we would have been enjoying it earlier but the time has arrived and it was worth the wait. I have a couple of recipes I would like to try, fingers crossed this time I actually get further than getting the ingredients out and then having to dump them!

At the two half plots there are many signs of new life and tasty produce to come, it gives one the tingles :)

Left : Autumn Raspberries coming through and the Blackthorn hedge taking root and sprouting leaves

Middle : Just one of those amazing little 6 headed Daffodils I have been mentioning

Right : Beautiful fat buds on the Cherry tree, it's covered in them and the Garlic growing strong

******

Naturally we also have opened up the Gault seedling nursery and even after the incident with the mini greenhouse, our spirits are up and pretty much everything is doing well. They're all exciting to me so even if you log off now in boredom of my giddiness, I am going to show you  more seedling photos now.....well, loads of soil and maybe a few specks of green, hehe.

Top

 Left : One of 3 (so far!) Mangetout 'Oregon Sugarpod'

Right : The Dahlia 'Bora Bora' tubers are all doing good, this is just one

Bottom 

Left : 2 Kohl Rabi hiding in a corner of a big seed tray full of more waiting to burst through

 Right : One of many many Zinnia 'Jazz' babies (boy these grow fast!)

Love and Hugs
Your Carrie x

(pt2) Three day weekend - Thanks St. Patrick

Sunday 16th March ~

We've never done any of the twee and commercialised stuff to do with the St. Patrick's holiday and with an allotment now, we always have our own plans. Belfast has a crazy big St. Patrick's Day parade on today but, no thanks, it isn't even the big day. It amazes me how everyone else around the globe seems to make such a big deal of it, green everywhere (St. Patrick's colour is blue), four leaf clovers (lucky in Irish but he is identified by the three leafed, normal clover) etc. Plus where did this need, this urgent need to get drunk come from? Is it a diss on what it means to be Irish??

Ahh, sure.

We had FIRE! There was a lot of deeply rotten, moldy and diseased wood around our two plots, coming on 6 years that is bound to be the case. We really didn't want it near to the precious soil and new life we were cultivating. (Fear not, there are still piles of wood and slates etc for bugs, but this stuff was bad.) It needed to be eradicated and though it lots like a huge angry fire, that's just due to close ups and there wasn't any wind and Andrew was by it at all times and what I am trying to say is - this was needed and we were safe about it. It was also beautiful :) The middle picture shows all the dead stalks from the Jerusalem Artichokes too, so great too tidy that area up and it really bolstered the fire. (I contributed them)

Along with this going on, I was on 14b and having a very emotional reaction to the cherry tree bed. That's not a sentence I ever thought I would write, haha. Maybe it was due to the horrendous low I went into late on Saturday night, maybe it was because the cherry blossom is my moniker, but this bed needed my full attention and love.

Written in shed, in notebook ~ 'I can't quite explain it, it was therapy, there were too many emotions. But I suppose, chiefly amongst them was the need to get rid of that crap; clearing out, destroying it - it did something similar for my soul. I didn't want to give up'.

I have a sense that turning this mess around and making something productive and beautiful with it will do me no end of good. It's going to be an 'easy maintence' half plot with fruit trees, bushes, rhubarb and asparagus in it - things that like to be left alone. Plus it is where my cut flower border is going to be and I am serious about this time, really good dahlias, roses, echinacea, sunflowers, poppies etc, flowers that make my heart sing and will brighten the home too.

Just a little example of what I was talking about in the last post - getting those blasted weeds out by the root and all :) Squeeee - it makes me happy.

This is more the thing that gets Andrew to squeeee inside. A man's well rotten horse manure and compost bins are his Kingdom! Haha - Though, honestly this stuff has been fantastic and not a single whiff of anything nasty :) Is it wrong to love horse poo and kitchen scraps so much??

So this was the state of things at the end of day 2 around our plots

Maggie in a 'I've got a bit of biscuit suck in my cheek' pose ~ 14b coming on nicely, check out the path :) ~ dead gnomes

Plus we decided to take a dander before leaving - there wasn't anyone else there, we had the place to ourselves again! The council has put in a bridge and path to connect the local community to it's community centre, just above our plots. The path isn't great but the bridge is fab - cool idea!

The Conservation Volunteers know how to lay a hedge ~ catkins ~ hubby xxx ~ pretty flowers on a bush planted in the hedgerow ~ daffs in the hedgerow ~ me ~ the new bridge

And so endth the second day of the long weekend's gossip
love and hugs

Why don't the plants love me back??

Sunday afternoon was fabulous, a glorious day at the lottie and hardly a soul there so I wasn't even panicky = result! BUT as I was cutting the grass and moving along between plots the grass pollen attacked and I was vanquished, left as a sniffling, dripping, itchy mess; completely bowled over :( Why?? Oh Mother Nature, why!!

I cut all that my hand and let me tell you, you cannot think when doing work like that. It is fabulous; menial work yes - but you have no room to think negatively - the mind is clear :) Plus I met a gorgeous frog in amongst it all, sadly he was very camera shy.

Anywho, I got my medication from the Dr. today and by the weekend I shall ready to once again go to my plots. But it's so cruel, my anxiety and depression hasn't been that bad the past few days, yet I still couldn't/can't go and get in an hour of Allotmentherapy - life can be so nasty sometimes. Boo and indeed Hiss

However - I shall not let this get me down :) No dear reader I have photos from the weekend and the pollen therein can not affect me through the laptop screen. So here we go, let us bathe ourselves in the beauty.....

I am loving the flowers on 14b, both my Poppies are doing really well, the red one is flowering as you can see, even though it went through a big move in the winter from one plot to the other, the purple one has loads of buds and I can barely wait :) I left the chives and the big artichokes to flower, the bees adore them and I don't eat them so its a win win situation. And ohh! look at the all the blossom on the blackberry (or as I like to call it the brambleberry - which makes life awkward for me sometimes when I call my phone my brambleberry too hahaha) Then the 3 roses, well they are now 2 :( Remember the photo I put up of the white 'Polar Star' covered in green fly and aphids, well it was worse and we just had to get rid of it, it's never been the healthiest plant...aww well I have an excuse to buy more :)

Another bed we have left for the bees is the now bolted purple sprouting broccoli - oh isn't a mecca for insects over there :)

Here is that updated photo of the garlic - so proud of it! Yet here is a photo of one of the apples that has fallen victim to the 'June Drop' and I just heard a moment ago that loads of leaves have suddenly fallen off the cherry tree.

Ahh, Nature, she teaches us so much. We can worry ourselves stupid about things but truly we are not in control, never are, never will be. Gardening is a roller coaster and such a get metaphor for life.

A good boast at 24a; weeds out - plants in

Okay, okay, I was a bit ranty in the last post, sorry. Sometimes I think you just need to get some issues off your chest and I feel much better and much more positive now, so thank you for indulging me.

I am going to be much more cheerful this time as I have happy photos and good raves about 24a (don't talk to me about 14b, that is being tackled tomorrow!) After a bad start to the year things really do seem to have caught up and the plot is filling up rather nicely thank you :) I'll start off with the fruit arch (cause I am super duper proud of it) at the bottom of the plot. Oh my lordy! the trees are doing so well this year, I think they have finally established and we have apples, pears and for the very first time, plums all set and growing!!! I hope we actually get some of each, it's been an impatient wait so far. The arch is now covered and if we ever get a really sunny day ever again, this is where you'll find me, in the shade - pale and interesting is the look I'm going for (I simply do not tan!)

And up beside the fruit arch is the Summer Raspberry patch - oh my, they are so heavy with fruit, though not one is ripe yet... I'm tapping my toe waiting.. however they are incrediblly healthy and a metre away there are new plants growing in the main path which I had to rip out - they're like a weeds those plants! They and the Blueberries growing behind them are going to have to be made bird proof - I am not sharing them this year again, in fact I blasted well didn't get 1 blueberry the past 2 years, grrrr.

The Cherry tree  ('Stella') has loads of fruit this year too. It did last year though to be fair and then it all got a bit too warm one day and they all fell off, to say I was disappointed is an understatement, I remember just standing there staring at the ground with my heart in my throat (honestly, it's daft but I was tearing up). I am trying not to get too excited but it's really hard - for goodness sake I have a Cherry Blossom Tattoo, my photography bussiness is called Cherry Blossom Tattoo - I bloomin' love all things Cherry! (apart from Cherry Coke but that's just because I hate Coke)...

The Garlic!!! Happy??? Heck yeah! This time last year it was looking good but there was rust, this time, no rust!! They just keep getting better and better - 'Gault's Wight' I call them, but then I am a total geek :p (This photo is almost a month old now - they look so fabulous now, I can't believe I forgot to take a pic!)

We (and by that I mean Andrew) had a terrible time trying to get Sweetcorn to germinate this year but in the end we have enough and have planted them out 2 sister style ~ Sweetcorn and Squash (under plastic bottle cloches) together as is our way :) Fingers crossed, I do adore corn on the cob. There is going to be a huge squash bed over in 14b as usual but I'll talk about that some other time.

Spuds are still doing great - we had to keep the fleece at hand though but this weather is so messed up but if the earlies I dug up last weekend are anything to go by, we should have a great crop (I'm pretty sure they're 'Sharp's Express' here). We also have second earlies in too ('Estima') - looking healthy.

I thought this was interesting...on the left are leeks that were sown in March, on the right ones that were sown in April - can you see a difference?? If anything the newer ones are stronger and a richer, deeper green colour - just goes to show, you shouldn't worry about getting everything planted, nature will catch up, she has her own rules!

Well my lovelies apart from all that there are great hanging bunches of redcurrants on every plant, little healthy rows of turnips and parnsips and lovely looking lettuces and spring onions. Just don't mention carrots to us, it's a touchy subject......

I think I have waffled and boasted enough - I'm off for a nap :) xxxx

A happy explosion of growth at the lotties

Though I wasn't at the lottie too long on Tuesday (it's still blasted well cold here!), I did run around like a huge friendly burglar with my camera, capturing hope filled photos; bundling them up in my swag bag and running off home to enjoy and share :)

So here my lovely partners in hope pilfering (a new classification of crime, haha), I share.....

So many Blueberry flowers

Cherry Blossom and some tiny fruits

Garlic

potatoes doing well but we still need fleece on hand for frosty nights

peas being planted

baby broad bean



first green gooseberries

the mint plant that never dies :)

first red gooseberries

so many redcurrant flowers

just a little of the Jersualuem Artichoke plants

Honeysuckle

tiny alpine flowers - such joy

succulent and babies

Baby Scallions

Baby lettuce






Hope you like it - I am finding these photos and a few new ones of Andrew's potting shed seedlings quite uplifting - especially as there were many that Andrew feared weren't going to do anything and now they're flourishing. I'll post more photos but as for tonight - I am being looked at by a lovely bottle of Red Wine - yum ;)

And tomorrow we are off to the Garden Ireland Show - hurrah - first time for us :)

Manure and Fruit

I'm eating cherries - yum. One day, one day in the not too distant future maybe I'll write a blogette eating our own from the Lottie. Happy days..... Also, just took the dog for a walk, by myself, for the first time this week, so I feel momentarily invincible.

The title is blunt, I know but for me the weekend truly was all about Manure (Green and Animal) and fruit bushes. I'll explain...

Andrew was driving me mad with his Fruit Arch shenanigans and the vibe on the Lottie wasn't great. When something is perfect and done in an instant, he gets very crabby. Enough said. I (to save my precious sanity) went to the other end of the plot and started to dig, turning over the green manure so it can start to rot down. Ahh, digging, thrusting your spade into the ground with force and getting a sweat going - does you the world of good when peeved off at the Hubby.

I did 3 beds in the end and it just happened to work out that it was a half and half split between Green and Animal Manure that I was turning. I have to say, so far I much prefer the cow poo (never thought I'd write that sentence!), the ground just under it was more friable and full of worms - in the Green Manure beds, it was compacted, very compacted and a pain to work with. I still have an open mind about the whole sowing a living covering for over winter but I am still to be impressed with the results. We'll see...

Actually what are you're thoughts on this???? I'd love to know.

I am not going to post a picture of 3 beds of muck to illustrate my work here. That would be very boring for all of us; have a look at this instead, much better. My Valentine's Day dinner, made by the hubby - yum.



Then I had the terrible, and I mean heartbreaking, task of cutting back the Autumn Raspberries. My goodness they've only been in there for a little while and looked sad enough as it was, i.e. 6 twigs in the ground. But now it's as if there isn't anything there at all. They get cropped right down to ground level - so harsh. (Oh, and my cherries are finished too - not fair!!)



Let's move on from this story and go to the big moment (for me) - Planting the Blackcurrant Bushes on Sunday. We were lucky a good few months back to get hold of 2 bushes a 'Ben Lomond' and a 'Baldwin' for the great price of a £1 each. This past weekend was the first time the ground was okay to plant in. I DID IT, ALL ON MY OWN. It was exciting, I did a totally text book job of it and Andrew was extremely impressed. It was in doing that job that I had a 'life- is- okay-and-so-am-I' moment and believe me they are very few and far between. After I'd tidied up after myself, I took a wee walk and there was a tear. (Think what you may of me but I didn't feel terrible and that is huge).

The before and after pictures of that will have to wait, I got the before but then the camera battery died a very untimely death - so no after shot. :(


P.S. Finally put up that new number sign, eh viola!




Update on manure debate:

My friends at Grow your own - http://www.growfruitandveg.co.uk/grapevine/allotment-advice/green-vs-cow-manure_27946.html - have decided that both types are good ffor different areas, but over all they prefer animal poo.

Those friends at Grow Veg - http://www.growveg.info/viewtopic.php?f=861&t=13441 - also went with animal poo though again some felt green manure had it's place, especially as a weed suppressor.

The polls have only been going one night but this highly unscientific experiment seems to show (at present) that animal poo is the way to go.

Fruit

We have a lot of fruit bushes and trees on our wee plot - Gooseberries (two kinds), Raspberries (two kinds) Redcurrants, White currants, Blackberries, an Apple tree and a Cherry tree. I wish I could give names for them all but apart from the blackberry bush and the trees we bought everything cheap and cheerfully at Poundstretcher or whatever they call themselves these days.

Gooseberries
We have a green variety, which I know has to be cooked before eating if you don't want a sore tummy. There was one on it but a blasted bird got it, though why I would want to cook 1 berry and cut it up so Andrew and I could taste it is beyond me!
We also have a purple variety, very pretty and can be eaten straight from the bush. We got 3, Andrew knocked 2 off, so we ended up watching one single purple berry slowly mature. When it looked super purple we picked it, cut it in half and ate it. We like to share. It was lovely. Let's hope for a few more next year!

Raspberries
There's a Summer one and an Autumn one. We got the summer one at the start of May and fair play to it, it didn't do anything for us this year. In fact I thought it was going to die, but now it's perked up and there's hope for next year.
The Autumn one has berries starting. I haven't counted but I think there are about 4, maybe 5. We have a home made bird scarer over the plant, so fingers crossed.

Redcurrants and Whitecurrants
To be perfectly honest I had forgotten we had these until I started to write this wee blogette. They mustn't be doing much but equally I haven't heard Andrew moan about them dying or looking bedraggled, so infer from that that they're okay, wherever they are (note to self: pay more attention to fruit bushes).

Blackberry
Ah, the power of a sales display; makes you want something you already have, in abundance. For instance, our blackberry - the field we are in is surrounded by blackberries, or as I prefer to call them - Brambleberries. There were kids picking them, bags of them, with their mum a couple of days ago and I would have the odd one on the dander over to the loo. But we have one in our plot too. The more the merrier? I like to think that ours taste better, 'Oregon Thornless' ,and the 4 berries which we got off it (2 each) were particularly delicious. Waste of money? No!!

Apple Tree
This is rather cool. You need 2 apple trees to produce fruit, right? Well we have 2 trees on the one tree, if that makes sense. The bottom is 'Elstar' and grafted on top is 'James Grieves', both yellowy-red varieties. There are apples on it and they are plumping up well. I just hope they are nicer than the one Andrew ate last week. It was a James I think and it was horrible! Fair play to him though, as a matter of principle he ate the thing, I had a lick and felt that was enough.

Cherry Tree
It seems we are breaking new ground with our Cherry tree 'Stella'. We are attempting to fan train it! This caused excitement at the nursery (Sunnybank) as such a thing is ODD in the gardening world, fanning a cherry wasn't in any of the books or indeed in the brains of the people who work there. Espaliers and cordons galore - but fanning, well! We shall see how she does, she hasn't kicked the bucket yet.....

Okay, so I've learnt that that was all wrong. The excitement and concern came from the fact that the tree was established and it was a funny time of the year to be pruning, especially when that meant taking half the bloomin' tree off the top. Fanning a cherry is as common as muck - my world has deflated.

We hope to add to this nice array with a plum and and pear or so, in time.