Marigolds!

Marigolds are meant to be great for the garden for two reasons:

1. They attract bees and other useful insects
2. They apparantly help repel some unwated insects due to the scents they give off

Plus, they look really pretty and liven up the plot. We planted 12 or so, and hope that we'll notice a few less annoying pests and a few more bees to help pollinate stuff, and hoverflies and wasps to help kill unwanted pests. Fingers crossed that these organic beacons of hope do us good!

Here's a brief article on biological pest control - something that inspired the planting of non-edible plants in the allotment. We expect to do more reading and get some more pretty things planted in soon!

Look what turned-up!

Much to our delight, the turnip seeds we planted the other day have begun to sprout up in a neat little line at the front of our plot.

We'll probably leave them here for a few weeks, then start spreading them out, and giving to our allotment neighbours, once they get a bit tougher. Probably going to put them in place of the onion patch, most of which are almost ready for harvest.

No sign yet from any of the other seedlings though: the race is on!

By the way, check out a few of the health benefits of turnips here, including that turnip juice has twice the amount of vitamin C as orange juice...WOW! maybe doesn't go quite as well with a croissant though.

On the grapevine...

What could be better than brewing your own booze? How about growing your own grapes and hops then brewing your own booze. Home grown and home brewed!

We've got a big metal mesh fence at the back of the plot, which faces south and gets sploshed in hours of summer sunshine. It would be ideal for some vine-like plants to climb up. Vine like plants such as grapes and hops.

Sadly, after much investigation, it seems we missed the time to plant them (early spring). So looks like we'll have to wait until next year to get them going. This means that it probably won't be 'our round' until xmas time 2011 - but it should be a very merry xmas at that!

Here's 2 articles that seemed useful: growing hops and growing grape vines

Slugs: Copper load o this!

Within a few days of sorting out our plot, we noticed something had been chewing away at our plants. Prime suspect: slugs and snails!

The easy option would be to reach for a bottle of slug pellets and pepper the plots with poisonous little nuggets for the buggers to feast on. However, we're trying to do this gardening thing as organically as possible, so that was out the question.




The first plan was to draft in some frogs for the communal pond, which are in transit as we speak (keep posted for more on that). Until then, we did some research and one method that sounded like it probably wouldn't work was creating a barrier of copper tape around the bed, which apparantly slugs/snails won't be too happy crossing due to their slimey bits reacting with the copper. We thought we'd give it a go.



That said, we laid down a barrier of tape around one of the beds to test, after which we plucked out any slugs and snails we could find - probably not a good plan to trap them in with our beloved veg.

Let's hope this works - if not, we've got plenty more organic pest control plans for the plot.

Seedy business

The first task today was to round up all the stray/wild baby carrot plants and beetroots throughout the plot and herd them into neat rows in the front bed. Hopefully here they'll reward our caring efforts with thick chunky veg in a few month's time. Also gives us space to work and a fresh start on the over-grown beds.

After this, we rigged up 3 or 4 pea plants to the wigwam, along with a few garlic seedlings being strewn throughout the plot to ward off bugs and stuff apparently (in other words to clear out my fridge 'cause my housemate is getting annoyed).

A kind neighbour donated us a bunch of cabbage plants/beetroots, which we slapped in to trenches behind the onion patch.

We dug neat line after neat line and sewn in seeds of various plants including celery, turnips, parsnips, radishes, leeks, cauliflower and broccoli. These have varying harvest times, ranging from 3 months up to a year (broccoli). I was never such a broccoli fan, so can wait that long quite happily.

Anyway, we're starting to get a huge variety now. Kind of like a vegetarian Noah's Ark if you like!

An apple a day...

Many moons ago, we planted an apple pip in a small container at work. Fast forward two years, and that apple pip has become a huge, 2m tall tree. Apply. She has far out grew the office and has no room to get any bigger- one might say it hit the proverbial glass ceiling!

Anyway, ceilings aside, we realised the best thing for it, what with our new bit 'o' land, was to move it to the great outdoors. We're sure it's going to flourish from a bendy stick-like thing with leafs into a real tree, and hopefully even fruit in the next few years.

That shabby looking scarcrow was camping out under the weeds when we moved in - it seemed cruel to smash it up and bin it. Plus, it probably scares off the local kids from trying to retrieve thier footballs after seeing a bunch of men hanging out with this straw-haired transvestite.

The Yorkshire (Japanese) Tomato Ring

A big part of the New Yorkshire allotment is to try out new/non-conventional growing methods, and see how they fare against the more orthodox efforts and techniques of the other plots. A key part of this is to conserve room, or rather maximise the use of space, what with the New Yorkshire pitch being 2 plots each approx. 1.5meters x 6meters.

Anyway! Some time ago, we discovered discussions on a 'Japanese Tomato Ring' (nothing to do with the horror film/wells/vhs tapes). What is this 'tomato ring' you ask? In summary, it's a wire-made cylindrical tower of compost and leaves (etc), about 1m diameter, with 3 or 4 tomato plants on its outer circumference. Apparently, the tomatoes send their roots up into the tower of nutrients, allowing them to yeild massive amounts of tomatoes - check out this article for more insight.

We planted a few tomato plants of the same size near it to gauge progress in terms of plant size and crop yeild - keep posted!

Making your bed

Today, we spent some time at the allotment digging out the beds, which had become overgrown and full of weeds since the last owners left. We managed to root out 3 of the beds fully, and churn in some compost and nutrients while we were at it. 3 down, 3 to go!







We managed to construct a bamboo trellis (aka 'the wigwam') for the peas, beans, and other climbers. At the moment it's got 4 broad bean plants and 3 runner beans, and will have 3 or 4 pea plants clambering up it in the next few days. It's pretty ghetto, but does the job and gives the patch a more worn-in, homely feel. The only way is indeed up!

We've also started planting some of our plants, including the courgettes (to the left of the wigwam), and a number of tomato plants. Great work so far, but still a way to go!

Welcome to New Yorkshire

New Yorkshire is a gardening directive established by some of Yorkshire's finest ex-pats, including Abi, Adam and Ben, who migrated south to London for its warm climate and active night life. Together, they plan to get back to nature and grow everything from Alfalfa to Zucchinis.

What began in a window sill has slowly found its way into an allotment patch in a secretive location of the south London suburbs. This blog will document their progress, and they hope that it will serve as some inspiration for YOU to get yer grown on.

To get started, here's a few pics of the allotment in its infancy (and after a bit of clearing up).