Coldframe Courtyard - Construction Phase 2

According to the forecast the weather is set fair for a few days and Wednesday was a lovely warm day with plenty of sunny spells.

Like all good construction projects our coldframe courtyard has more than one phase and I thought it was about time I got started on phase two. If you want to catch up on phase one Sue posted about our new coldframes here.

Phase two will involve moving our old aluminium cold frame down to the plot and after rearranging the layout of the path and a good tidy up the area will be covered with bark chippings. This will make way for our new Woodblocx raised bed.

Our new coldframes are already in full swing as plants are moved in a never ending procession out of the greenhouse into one of the cold frames before their final move to the allotment. This part of the coldframe courtyard is now looking neat and tidy but that’s only half the story.

This is the area in phase two. Our coldframe has been overrun by thuggish plants from our neighbours’ gardens. The coldframe was extracted from the vegetation with some difficulty before it was dismantled ready for its trip to the plot. It’s amazing how many more pot holes there seems to be in the roads once the car is loaded up with panes of glass. Fortunately they were transported the four miles without any breakages. 

Once the coldframe was out of the way all the vegetation was chopped up and loaded into the green waste recycling bin. 

There’s still allot of work to do cutting back more vegetation and clearing rubbish away. This little corner of the garden had become a bit of a waste collection area. At least I've made a start and with the weather set fair for a few days I'm hoping things will soon start to look much better.

Copyright: Original post from A Gardener's Weather Diary http://ossettweather.blogspot.co.uk/ author M Garrett

Late parsnips

Tuesday was another changeable day as far as the weather went. Early Tuesday afternoon on the plot was sunny, calm and warm but suddenly from nowhere came some dark clouds; a gale force wind sprung up and the temperature fell quickly by about 10°C.

Looking east it looked like a lovely summer afternoon but turn around and look west and it was a different story.

If you remember at the end of May I resowed some carrots due to lots of the first batch of seedlings being eaten by slugs. At the same time it became obvious that lots of our parsnips either hadn’t germinated or they had suffered the same fate as the carrot seedlings. As parsnip seeds are notoriously slow and difficult to germinate I thought we’d just cut our loses and settle for just the few parsnips that had survived. 

I've read and watched videos on Youtube of the various techniques people have tried to get round the difficult germination issues. I've never succeeded in germinating parsnips in seed trays or modules and then planting them out. The parsnip top has grown well enough but it has not produced a parsnip root only a mangle of tiny white roots. Sue found a video of parsnips been sown on damp kitchen paper and then transplanted.  We decided to give it a go as we’d have nothing much to loose.

The seeds were sown in a half sized seed tray on several layer of damp kitchen roll before being put in a polythene bag and placed in a warm dark room to germinate. Well the darkness was created by covering the tray with an old magazine.

The seeds have been examined each morning for any signs of germination taking place. I must be honest after a week of no signs of life at all I was beginning to think perhaps we had a duff batch of seed. I expected to see the seed swelling at the very least. Then after nine days there were the tiniest signs of life from some of the seeds.

By no means have all the seeds germinated but a decent number have. It looks like we're going to have to give some consideration to how we plant these very delicate little seedlings into the plot.

To transplant the sproutlings into the existing parsnip row I made a little hole in the compost, suitably spaced between already germinated seedlings and popped a seed in. I carefully covered it over with a little compost. The process wasn't as fiddly as I thought it was going to be. The seeds didn't stick to the kitchen paper although they did stick to my fingers a little. They were much tougher than I had expected them to be. I didn't have enough germinated seeds to do all our rows of parsnips but two rows are completed and the left over seeds are being left on the damp kitchen paper to see if any more germinate. They can then be added to some other rows to complement the existing parsnip seedlings.

It will be interesting to see if these pre germinated seeds grow and then if they do to see if they produce good useable roots. Now I have to be honest I haven’t got a method sorted out to tell the difference between parsnips planted traditionally and my pre-germinated experimental ones. I'm hoping we'll only have good roots and none of those funny stunted things I normally get when I transplant parsnips.

Copyright: Original post from A Gardener's Weather Diary http://ossettweather.blogspot.co.uk/ author M Garrett

The Forecast Is Better - But!

We had a lovely start to Monday morning and a beautiful end to the day. Morning, late afternoon and evening had plenty of sunshine and it was pleasantly mild. It was a shame about the thunderstorm and accompanying rain through the middle of the day. 

So Monday added another 4.4mm rainfall to the total which now stands at 33.6mm for the month and we are only into the second week. I’d like to think that the plot will start to dry out at sometime this summer.

At the moment the forecast beyond Wednesday looks far more promising. I’m hoping that the few fine days in the forecast aren’t followed by more wet weather over next weekend.

Copyright: Original post from A Gardener's Weather Diary http://ossettweather.blogspot.co.uk/ author M Garrett

Felled Before Its Prime

Sunday finished up becoming the  warmest day of the month as the temperature managed 24.5°C in the afternoon. 

It wasn’t wall to wall sunshine with plenty of clouds about and it tried to rain around teatime but that didn't amount to anything.

We had a busy day in the garden getting cucumbers and tomatoes planted into their final positions as well as sowing more French beans, sweet Williams and wallflowers.

The sunny one day and rainy the next scenario makes keeping the plants in the greenhouse watered correctly a bit tricky. They can easily finish up standing in water or ending up on the dry side depending upon the weather conditions after watering. Our aubergines in the greenhouse were a little on the dry side but it didn't stop one being felled by a snail eating through the stem of the plant. 

I had an inspection of all the slug and snail hiding places under pots and around the edges of the capillary matting but couldn't find the culprit. How did it know that this was by best aubergine plant. I’m on the lookout now.

Copyright: Original post from A Gardener's Weather Diary http://ossettweather.blogspot.co.uk/ author M Garrett

Some Wizardry Required

Early Saturday morning was bright and sunny but it wasn't long before the clouds rolled in and by mid morning the rain arrived. It rained on and off through until teatime when once again the sun made a bit of an appearance. After a couple of days without any rain had brought about a little bit of an improvement. another 11.2mm of rain won't do much to help the soil dry on the plot. A spell of dry weather would be much appreciated.

At least I didn't feel too guilty about a short trip out in the rain to photograph the Wizards Express hauled by steam locomotive 5972 Olton Hall, much better known as Hogwarts Castle from its appearance in Harry Potter films. This summer the locomotive is being used on a couple of charter trains “The Wizards Express” between Manchester and York. 

We were very lucky that it wasn't raining at the spot where I'd chosen to photograph the train as it headed for York. The train was also a little early at this point which was just as well because as we got back in the car to head for home it started to pour down.

In the late afternoon sun I decided it was time to transplant our sweetcorn into modules for it to grow on for a week or so before it is planted out on the plot. That’s provided it dries up enough for me to prepare a little bit of ground. The seeds had been spaced out in two A4 size seed trays and germination had been very good producing a total of 70 plants. 

Sweetcorn plants need to be treated quite carefully when transplanting. In general they are easy to handle but the growing stem can easily be broken from the root system. Teasing the seedlings from the compost by pulling with the leaves is not recommended. I usually separate the young seedlings at soil level carefully pulling the roots apart. Doing this I was quite surprised how cold the soil felt. Obviously it had been cool in the greenhouse as the day had been cloudy and the soil just hadn't warmed up.

Some better weather is needed so that the soil on the plot will have warmed and dried up by the time these sweetcorn plants are ready for the plot.

Copyright: Original post from A Gardener's Weather Diary http://ossettweather.blogspot.co.uk/ author M Garrett

A Window of Opportunity

Friday was a lovely sunny June day with the temperature reaching a very pleasant 20.9°C and more importantly it was dry for the second day in a row.

On Thursday afternoon I’d gambled on being able to cultivate one of our allotment beds ready to plant out our runner bean plants. It was only possible to cultivate the top few inches of soil which had dried out a bit but lower than that the soil was still very wet and claggy. The tiller dealt with the top few inches of soil pretty well but if the tines were allowed to go any deeper then they just became clogged up with extremely wet soil. 

Once tilled and edged the bed looked neat and tidy and the soil looked pretty good belying the fact that a few inches below the surface it was still saturated with water. The bed was covered with weed control fabric which was held down around the edges with wood chippings and four barrowfuls of manure were tipped on the bed to spread out around the runner beans when they were planted to stop the fabric from lifting or blowing about in the wind. This was how the bed looked when we left on Thursday night ready for planting up.

So Friday’s lovely weather allowed us to get our runner beans planted out although I'm not sure what they’ll make of the very wet ground. Normally we grow our runner beans up a wigwam of bamboo canes. This works well even though once the beans reach the top of the wigwam they continue to grow upwards before collapse back down the wigwam. I decided to try to avoid this by planting out our beans in rows this year as seen in the photo below.

I’m not particularly happy with the way this has turned out as the beans have taken up far too much space. Normally when we've grown our runner’s up wigwams we've had space in the centre of the bed for our sweet corn crop but that’s not the case with them planted like this. We did have space to plant a row of Inca berries across the middle of the bed. I think it might be back to wigwams next year.

In the plot greenhouse the tomatoes were provided with some supports in anticipation of the weight of tomatoes they are going to produce. So far they seem to be growing very well and have recovered from any minor set back when they were planted out into their grow bags.

Copyright: Original post from A Gardener's Weather Diary http://ossettweather.blogspot.co.uk/ author M Garrett

A Cold One for June

Thursday improved as the day went on, so after a dull start with drizzle in the air, it brightened up considerably by the afternoon. It was a little bit breezy but that should help to dry out the soil ready for planting out our runner beans.

Overnight into Friday the temperature fell to a low of 5.2°C the lowest June temperature I've recorded since 12 June 2011 when it fell to 4.7°C.

The clear skies overnight and into Friday morning have resulted a bright sunny start to Friday. Our osteospermums are putting on a stunning display in the greenhouse in their pots around our fig trees.

They should really be outside now but they fully deserve their spot in the greenhouse whilst they continue to put on a display like this.

Copyright: Original post from A Gardener's Weather Diary http://ossettweather.blogspot.co.uk/ author M Garrett

You've Guessed It - More Rain but a Fox

Wednesday was another wet day with mostly light rain all day. The total only came to 6.0mm but on top of all the other rainfall it just keeps the ground continually saturated.

In a way it didn't bother me too much as I was on a “Springwatch” mission making a visit to Leeds to photograph and video some urban foxes.

Well to be honest I went to Leeds to help a friend sort out a couple of computer problems and right on cue, as we'd finished sorting out the software, look who came looking for a meal.

Foxes are regular visitors to the garden and she was looking a bit worse for wear as she’s busy bringing up some cubs. I've added a video clip below of her crossing the garden for food. I wasn't using my camera so it’s a bit more juddery than I would have liked.

I might have to revisit just to check if the computer issues really have been resolved and take along my camera too, just in case.

Copyright: Original post from A Gardener's Weather Diary http://ossettweather.blogspot.co.uk/ author M Garrett