New Year preperations

After the excesses of Christmas my thoughts are turning to putting in a bit of hard labour down at the plots. Here's a brief summary of how it went for me since March.

My leeks weren't great, I fed them "fish, blood and bone" and they were planted in after the spuds so there was plenty of manure in there for them. I think that spot of ground was just too wet for the leeks and they ended up being a bit weak...weak leeks there's a good pun in there somewhere. I left them over wintering and they still look passable if small, but I haven't been down in the last few days and the snow might have done for them.

The celery turned out great but I grew WAY too much, I'll be reining myself in next year.

I tried to pack way too many pumpkins into too small a spot and what I ended up with was alot of small pumpkins and squashes. With the wet summer alot of these rotted aswell so I ended up with only 8 or 9 usable specimens. They made nice soup and chutneys though.

My cabbages were a total disaster. I think my netting wasn't a tight enough mesh so they were riddled with caterpillars. Major slug damage aswell towards the end of the summer. I would say the cabbage fiasco was just down to me not paying enough attention.

On the success side of things were the spuds (the axona and mira did well despite the blight), chard (although some of it bolted in that hot spell when we were all worried about the water), beetroot, white turnips, carrots (didn't grow enough though), onions, peas, spinach (bolted a bit in the heat aswell though).

My plans for this year are to do alot more successional sowings. I'll be follwing Gerry Dalys advice and harvesting when things are alot smaller, to keep continuity of supply. Lots more fruit for me this year aswell, I'm getting a load off Future Forests at the end of the month. There's deals on bulk buying so if anyones interested in going in on something drop me a line. Some sort of a fence and some proper little frames for netting the beds (ala Jim and Paddy) are on the wishlist aswell.

Hope to see you all down there.

PS: If ever you get a little disillusioned with the plot have a read of Soilman

Best Allotment Competition

A few pics from the harvest so far this month.

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The first of the rainbow chard. Picked the first week in July, the dry spells followed by the heavy rains have meant that a good lot of the earlier sown chard has bolted, along with some of the spinach. Lots of spinach picked already but none photographed.

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The first load of Colleen earlies. This was just the first row that I dug and it yielded just over 13 KGs.

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More rainbow chard picked yesterday.

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Some carrot thinnings (alot of which were pretty useful), small pea harvest, turnip thinnings (nice roasted whole) and the blessed beetroot. Can't get enough of this one, the variety is Boltardy and it's doing great for me with very little soil preparation. These all get roasted whole in my house with loads of honey, salt and pepper.

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Yesterdays haul. Another 15 KGs of earlies (Colleens). These turned out to be a good cropper. I may have earthed them up a little late though as on each plant there was 4-5 large spuds, 1 or 2 tiny marble sized ones and a couple of salad sized ones. Had a few last night with a ridiculous amount of butter...nom nom nom.

Maynooth Allotments on Maynooth.org

We've been featured on maynooth.org along with Paddy from plot 32.

Plot 40 Picasa Slideshow

Myself and Isabelle were down on the plot last night to take some photos in the nice evening light.

Message Board Down

The message board is down at the minute, don't know why and haven't had any response from hosting phpbb. Will update when it comes back online.

UPDATE 19/06/09: Message board is back up and running now.

Paddys Blog and Blight Warning

Check out fellow Maynooth Allotmenteer Paddy Fada's Blog. He's got lots of great pics of his and others plots.

In other news a blight warning was issued on the 13th June and conditions conducive to the spread of blight will continue up until Wednesday 17th. With all this rain forecast for later I'm wondering whether to bother spraying. I have seen people spraying over the last few weeks and would be interested to know what concoctions are going on the spuds. Plain ol' Dithane or something more interesting...? I'll be spraying with diluted milk and a mixture of bi-carbonate of soda, washing up liquid and water. There's a good Horsetail recipe on the Irish Gardeners forum:

"Herbal teas concocted from common weeds/herbs such as nettle, horsetail (Equisetum arvense ) and comfrey can be sprayed on potato foliage to help prevent the spread of blight disease.

To make the horsetail tea you should ideally in early summer pick the green part of the plant, leaves and stem, excluding the root. You will need one kilogram (2 ¼ pounds) of equisetum to submerge in drum filled with 20 litres of rain water, stirring it daily over three or four weeks.

When the time comes, mix it in your watering can at a rate of ten parts water to one part horsetail tea, then water liberally onto your plants. Plants that show any symptoms of bight or other fungal type disease should be sprayed with this mix once every four days.

If in a rush to create a batch of horsetail tea, you can make up some by simmering 1/2 kilogram of the weed in a pot with 10 litres of rain water for about an hour. Once cooled it should again be mixed it in your watering can at a rate of ten parts water to one part horsetail tea."

And apparently a Burgundy Mixture of:

50 grammes of copper sulphate (bluestone)
60 grammes of sodium carbonate (washing soda) or sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) in five litres of water

while not strictly organic is acceptable for use by alot of organic gardeners.

Anyone noticing any blight like symptoms on their spuds?