Clairesallotment's Blog

Now most things in the garden I can do on my own, but every now and then I need some help. Today was one of those days.

The day was cold, but sunny, so we all put on lots of layers and out wellies and went to shovel 5 tonnes of soil into the raised beds. It’s been nearly three years since they’ve been up and the soil has settled quite a bit so needs topping up.

Because we’d had lots and lots and lots of rain, as well as some snow since it was all delivered on Thursday, it was all very wet and soggy. This made it all very heavy to shovel out into a wheelbarrow and move. Plus the more we walked on the grass, the muddier it became. I’m not showing you what it looks like as I’m rather embarrassed, but it’ll recover very quickly, grass always does.

We started a little after 10.30am and we all had a job to do. Emily and I started to fill the smaller beds first, while Kai, Mark and George swapped round the raking, and moving soil into the large beds. We all found our jobs and got on with it.

We broke for a drink and a nibble about 11.30am once we’d done a couple of bags, then carried on and finished the other three bags before lunch. Everyone was happy to help, well a bit of exercise never hurt anyone did it. They were all happy to help, although Mark doesn’t look very happy in the photo, but he was, I promise you.

Before lunch we all had showers….not together I might add, that would be really weird. Some of us put our pj’s on, and others some clean clothes. Hey look it’s a Sunday, we weren’t going out anywhere, no one was coming round, and we’d been working very hard all morning.

Some of the family complained of a few aches the following day, but nothing too bad. I think it’s the most strenuous exercise most of them had done for a while. For me, just another day in the garden.

The beds aren’t quite full yet, so I’ll need to order another 5 tonnes in about a months time, (must get it in before the end of the financial year), but hopefully it’ll be drier then and will be much easier to shovel.

Here’s a time lapse for you to watch. KaiPie filmed this, none of us have never walked so fast.

I woke up to an email from D T Brown telling me my seed potatoes had been dispatched. Excellent I though, they’ll hopefully arrive by the end of this week, but most probably by early next week.

This means that the growing season for 2021 can begin. I was very excited and happy…..it’s the little things you know that make my day.

While I was hard at work in a clients garden I got a text message from Mark (hubby) to say that a parcel had arrived for me and it said Live Plants on the outside. No information to say where it had come from or anything. I was wondering if I’d ordered any plants from anywhere else late last year, but I was sure I hadn’t, any way I would have to wait until I got home to find out what was inside. Couldn’t be the potatoes as I’d only had an email that morning.

I finally arrived home and opened the box in great anticipation…..I held my breath, not because I’d let off a smelly toot toot, but because I was so excited. Getting excited can also make me toot toot as well.

It was my seed potatoes that I’d ordered from D T Brown!! Had they been so excited about coming to my house they’d run all the way from Suffolk to Kent? Or had the email arrived later than it should have done, maybe the email got lost on the way? Whatever the reason I don’t mind, I have my seed potatoes for this year and the growing season for 2021 can now officially begin. This year I’ve only got Sarpo Mira and King Edward, so hopefully they’ll grow well and produce some good size spuds for us, only time will tell.

Now they are chitting on a metal tray on a window sill in the house, and they’ll be quite happy there until I plant them in mid March. I don’t need to do anything to them, I’ll just leave them alone and soon they’ll produce some lovely short stumpy shoots.

The video below shows how I chitted my potatoes a couple of years ago which is why I’m saying February in the video. As soon as your seed potatoes arrive start chitting them, don’t leave them in the box for very long. You can either chit them in the greenhouse as I’m doing here, or you can put them on a sunny window sill in the house.

So off we go again, let’s make 2021 a fantastic growing season. What ever else is happening in the world you can always could on your garden to cheer you up.

Take care and stay safe and well.

Happy gardening!

Claire xxx

After I posted about sorting my seeds, lots of you are wondering what I’ve got in my January box, so here is what I have got planned later this month. The list is in the order I want to sow them in, and I’ve put links to the varieties I have got, just incase you wish to add to your collection of seeds:

Mustard – D T Brown

Cress – Moles Seeds

Dill – Johnsons

Exhibition Onions – D T Brown

Leeks Musselburgh – Moles Seeds

Sweet peas – That were sent to me from someone in Cornwall (Thank you x)

Pea Shoots – D T Brown

Chestnut button Mushroom spawn – Mr Fothergill’s – Sorry but I can’t find a link to these, they don’t seem to do them anymore. I have had the packet for a while, so maybe they won’t work at all. I’ve also searched on all the tabs I have open and nothing. Maybe later on in the year they’ll have something available.

I hope this helps. Never grown pea shoots before so that’s a new one for this year. And the mustard and cress I’ll sow little and often throughout the year.

If you find that any of them are unavailable on the links I have put in, you can most probably find them elsewhere.

Here’s to the start of a wonderful new growing season, let’s hope the weather is just what we need. Hope you have lots of fun.

Happy Gardening!

Claire xx

It’s that time of year when I sit down at my dining room table, spread all the packets of seeds I have out, and go through them all. Organisation is the key for me, life is very busy what with work, looking after the house, the family, and managing to cram all those other things into the weekend. When I go out into the garden for a little bit of me time I want to get as much done in the time I have as possible.

My life is full of writing lists and working my way through them. If I don’t write a list each day then I’ll forget something important and then I’ll get stressed and annoyed with myself. It’s not just big important things on my list, but little things like “Buy more long socks” which is next on my list after doing this.

So there I sat at the dining room table with a cup of tea and a biscuit and a mountain of seeds in front of me. Empty plastic ice cream and margarine tubs in front of me and I was off and ready to go. Some seed packet this year are new, some are a couple of years old, some are a little out of date and others are quite a bit out of date. I know that some seeds have a very short life, but others have quite a long life. I’m not one to throw away seeds just because they’re past their prime, they’ll still germinate, just not as many as previously.

So after about half an hour I was done. They are now in tubs that correspond to the month they need to be sown in and are up on top of one of my many bookcases waiting patiently for me to start sowing. I expect I’ll sow some next weekend and then some more the weekend after, this is all weather dependant of course. If we have 4 feet of snow I’m not trudging down the garden to the greenhouses I’d rather stay warm inside the house.

Now to order some more long socks…..

TTFN and Happy New Year everyone. I hope 2021 brings you joy, happiness and the vaccine (shame I can’t grow that) xxxx

It’s the middle of September and Autumn is nearly here. The days are still warm, but the temperature is due to drop substantially in the next couple of days. Time to start tidying the garden and get it ready for the shorter days.

It’s been a good year in the garden for me. I hope you have had a brilliant year as well.

https://youtu.be/O6YzZYFu7z4

It’s now September, where has the year gone. To say it’s been a rather strange year is a slight under estimation. But we’re still here, and taking each day as it goes. At the beginning of the year I said I would try and do garden/allotment updates at the beginning and the middle of each month. Everything was going fine until August began.

I did try very hard to film an early August update for you, but if you cast your mind back to then, you may remember the weather was a little on the warm side, it got up to 38 on a few days, and the greenhouses were in the mid to high 40’s.

There I was setting up in the garden, with the very hot sun beating down ready to record another episode of you. I began as usual, but it wasn’t long before the camera suddenly shut off and uttered the words “Camera overheating!” I let the camera cool down inside for a while, and tried a few more times but the same thing happened. By this time the heat was really building and the humidity wasn’t fun either. I tried to film something for you over the course of a few days, but the same thing happened, so I decided it was a non starter.

I then hoped that by the middle of August the heat would subside a little and then I would be able to film a mid August update. But the stormy winds came, and the thunder, lightning and torrential rains, plus a bit of hail mixed in for good measure. So that put pay to any filming as well.

During this time I was working 5 days a week, and the only time I had free to film was the weekends, so if Saturday and Sunday were unsuitable I was screwed.

But here we are in September and weather is much more sensible. It’s had it’s mad 5 minutes for the summer so it’s much easier to get back out in the garden now.

I’m sure you all understand that filming, even a short 15 minute episode for you, takes a good hour, to an hour and a half to film. Shots have to be set up, things have to be in frame, and sometimes I have to do a couple of takes, as well as all the other usual gardening bits of planting, harvesting, weeding etc.

Then there’s the editing, which takes another hour and a half. I love our barn, but during the summer months it gets stiflingly hot upstairs, even with the windows open all the way. We even end up sleeping downstairs at night. So sitting upstairs at my computer editing a video, is not something anyone would be happy to do.

We finally come to the upload speeds where we are. Now I’m sure that many of you wouldn’t even think about this, as you can download and upload what you want without any thought what so ever. But here in the middle of the countryside we aren’t that lucky. The only supplier down our road is BT and all we can get is copper, with upload speeds of 2 or 3! Yes it’s that slow. So we don’t have that, we have an aerial that points the an antenna (or is it the other way round?) some distance away, and we’re lucky if we get double figures. At 5am it goes up to about 20 (I’m still in dozy land at that time), but once everyone is up and about it drops dramatically. An episode of Claire’s Allotment can take about 2 hours to upload, and that’s on a good day.

So hopefully you can see how long it all takes and the difficulties I sometimes have.
I love doing these little updates for you, but sometimes the weather, or time just don’t work in my favour. My family is the most important thing to me, and I work all week and come home exhausted and filthy. Sometimes I just want to sit on the beach on a Sunday afternoon with my kids and husband having a picnic, and watch the waves wash in and out. It resets my mind and gives me time to calm down and just relax.

I know you all look forward to my latest videos, but I hope you appreciate how long they all take to produce and if the next episode is a little later than you expect, I hope you now understand why.
So my moan over, I hope it wasn’t too preachy, but when someone comments saying that it seems I’ve given up making my videos, just because I missed one or two out, that really hurts and gets me upset. I’ve been making these videos for 13 years now, and there are nearly 550 of them. So if you’re getting withdrawal symptoms because I’m a little late with the next episode, you can always watch a couple of old episodes to see you through.

But here’s my Early September video, all fresh and hot off the press.

https://youtu.be/XBsl8c3m93I

I can’t believe how time has flown this year. When you’re little days seem to go by so slowly, but the older you get months fly by without you realising. How are we in the middle of July already?

So much has happened this year what with one thing and another. I know I’ve entitled this one mid July, but I did film it in the middle of July, but just haven’t had the chance to sit down at the computer and edit it.

So here it is, a little later than normal, but here all the same….

It’s July already, this year is definitely whizzing past very fast. It’s time for another update, so here is my next instalment. The garden is growing well, and I’m picking produce left right and centre.

I can’t believe it’s the middle of June already, where did the last 2 weeks go? The weather here is still beautiful, and we’ve had very little rain, so I’m saving my bath and washing machine water and putting that on my plants, which they all love.

I have had to invest in some more water butts, and have attached them to each other. I have seven collecting and storing water for me, so I’m all set.

Here’s my latest update for you to see. My tomatoes have doubled in size since I last saw you, and I have baby melons.

It’s the beginning of June and all worries of frost have gone where I live in the south east of the UK. Yay summer is here!

This can only mean one thing……it’s time to plant out all my tender crops.