James Grieve

Now I've no idea who James Grieve was but his name has been given to a mighty fine apple.
It's one of the varieties we put in our little mini orchard way back near the start of the year. We've been very good and have only kept one apple on each of the trees. When I was tying the trees into the cane and wire cordon supports I found this under the James Grieve.



We tasted a small sliver and found it good, firm and tart. We cooked it up in some tin foil at the end of a bbq and it tasted superb cooked with raisins, sugar and a drop of cider.

Hooray for the Volunteers

This weekend I managed to harvest 3Kg of potatoes.
A normal weekly task on any plot at this time of year. These though were all from potato plants that were growing from what we thought was land cleared of the potato crop last autumn. Hopefully I've not left any bits for them to start growing again next year.

Still growing

It's all still growing, unlike this blog.
Here are some recent pictures.

Parsnips


Leeks


Apple trees with leaves (and an apple)

Sow Seed, Grow Veg

Sometimes when you sow seeds you expect things to happen quite quickly. Other times you expect things not to happen at all.

Parsnips are one of those seeds where the latter certainly applies and use of old seed is not recommended. We had sown a tray with seed from old opened packets (one and two years old). Nothing was seen of them again. Another tray was sown with fresh seed from a new packet and three weeks later they're pretty much all up. That first tray was reused and had the fresh seed sown about a week after the first and they're now showing their heads above the soil level.



Now then I'd better get digging down the plot to get a couple of beds for roots to go in - these and the carrots will be ready to go out in no time I'm sure.

First Harvest

Somethings you've got to wait for - the apple trees reaching their peak will take some years, or the spuds will be months rather than days or weeks. Other things are much much quicker.
The first harvest from the plot in 2010 is in and a few radishes have been pulled from some very short rows - I think we got a bit sick of radish last year when we had lots and lots and lots of them. Still this year it's all new and fresh and exciting once again.

Not Dead Yet

Well the apple trees we put in are all in growth with some of them producing nice apple blossom. Not that we want to get any apples this year (that will be hard to pull them from the tree if any form) because we want to them to be busy growing a good root system and building up the framework of branches on the cordon.

All Go

Well it is that time of year again. There are windowsills full of pots, benches outside have things on them waiting to get big enough to plant out or pot on. There is never enough time to go to work, tend the garden and get work done on the plot. Hopefully all this activity now will bring forth a good harvest later in the year

Return to the plot

Well I did seem to rather drop out there for a while didn't I. I'll try and update this more often now that we're entering another growing season.

We have been busy with the allotment, over the worst winter for a long while (we had snow up to about 12in deep) in the village garlic, onions and broad beans have been trying to survive. It seems like most of them have survived and now are getting going again.
Before the winter weather happened we collected some fruit trees I ordered. 6 apples and 1 plum. The plum is now in the place cleared for it in the garden, it just needs a first pruning to enable us to train it as a fan. The apples took somewhat longer to get in the ground. We've had the idea of using trained apples as one of the boundaries to the plot. Training the apples as angled cordons along post and wire supports. This has been seen at places like the kitchen garden at Tatton and Ryton Organic Gardens and looks really good, so we nicked the idea.
Where the main pathway up through the site borders our plot we decided to put the 'fence' and over several weeks have worked at clearing the ground, then putting up the supports and finally planting of the first 6 apple trees this last weekend. There is enough space for 9 trees along the support but we've got 6 trees for now as that was all I could afford at the time. The trees are Dabinett, James Grieve, Charles Ross, Lord Lambourne, Spartan and Sunset.

Now for a couple of pictures to show off the handiwork.