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.

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.

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.

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.

What to do with radishes?

I think the post title says it all really. What to do with too many radishes?
Now when you sprinkle the packet of seed along the drill in the carefully prepared bed little do you expect that all the seeds will germinate, nor even most of the seeds. A few to come through here and there will do. After all there are only so many radishes you can eat. So now there here they're growing fast and something needs to be done.
I think that the answer will be composting. We're now at the point where we have to start making a heap for compost. The rough couch grass is growing very well on the uncultivated areas and needs to be cut back - an hour or two with the shears this evening I think. That will form the basis for the pile. We may get round to constructing some sort of bin system but first we would have to decide where it's going to go.Grass clippings and some stuff from the manure pile should be a good start.
That and some radishes.

Digging

Well there are now things planted.
The only problem with planting stuff on a virgin site is all the digging that goes along with it. We have three trenches of potatoes in and a bed with some onion sets. The trenches for the spuds are about 40-50cm wide by about 4m long and are down about a foot deep. The onion bed was dug over about 130cm wide by 4m long and then had the sets put in. I've also dug another similar sized bed but need to work it over again with a fork and rake before it can be used for planting.

For a gardener who is very much of the no dig school, this is quite a lot of digging!

We need to work out where to put the shed as we've had a word with a neighbor who is getting rid of a small shed and they've said we can have it. When we do get that up it will make life a bit easier as we won't be having to carry all the tools down through the village from the house to the plot.

The New Plot

So we've got a half plot on some very new allotments in the village. We did wonder if we'd left it too late to get anything, thankfully that was not the case. I only got the call confirming this earlier on in the week so now it's all to be done there.



This shows the full plot just over a week ago (we've got till somewhere after the metal pole) after several weeks of dry and warm weather. It was a field used as rough pasture that has been ploughed up so lots of weeding to be done to get those perennial roots out of the ground.

When I went up to have a look at the site after being told we'd got a plot it was much more lush. That's what a bit of water in this warm weather will do.



So now to get some stuff in. We've seed potatoes, onion sets to start with and a lot of seed to try out as and when we can get to clear areas for beds.
In the long term there are all sorts of ideas about fruit trees, edible hedges, sheds and so on but for now there are lots of jobs that need doing.