Teeny Tiny Trees

When we started out on our allotment we planted three little 'columnar' fruit trees near the pond, in what was supposed to be our herb patch. They were a red apple, a green/yellow apple, and a pear. The green apple mysteriously disappeared, but the other two have done pretty well, despite the red apple taking on a rather dangerous lean in the last couple of years, and the whole herb bed getting swamped with couchgrass... The apples are great and we get a fair few, for a small tree. But we don't really like the pears on the pear tree and we'd rather have more apples, so this year we decided it was time to change things a bit.

First the pear tree had to go, and I gave it to another allotmenteer and friend from FoodSmiles, who planted it on her allotment just a hundred metres away! Next, we had a go at righting the red apple... We loosened the roots on the side it was leaning towards, pulled it back into a neeearly upright position and tied it to a strong stake, and then flooded the ground with water to try to resettle the roots, working the soil back into the loosened area and stamping it down hard. Time will tell how well we did...

We cleared the rest of the bed, digging out most of the lovage and horseradish, which had both got huge, as well as bucketsful of couchgrass roots. And we planted two more teeny tiny columnar apple trees (from J Parker's). It'll be a few years before they match the height of the original one, but they should be producing fruit by next year.

It's funny seeing this area virtually bare again, since it's one of the first areas we worked on when we got the plot eight years ago! I'm a little bit nervous about planting it back up with herbs since it didn't go too well last time... But we're hoping a few years more experience and knowledge - and the fact that the plot as a whole is much lower-maintenance now - will mean that we can keep on top of weeds this time and make sure it doesn't get swamped again.

Allotment Tour

We finally made it to the allotment this week, after having not managed to go at all during December, and did some much-needed catching up.

Here it is:

Of course, it doesn't look like much at the moment, but there's plenty going on, and considering what a battle we've always had with couchgrass and other perennial weeds we're pretty pleased with it. But it's been a long time since I took or shared any pictures of it, so let me give you the tour...

It's split roughly into seven sections, more by accident than design, with woodchip paths in between them, lined with bricks and some cheap weedproof fabric that isn't quite doing the job any more.

Section one, above, is where our compost bins are. We built them last spring to replace our old ones, in another spot, which were falling apart, and we relocated them here because it's under the shade of an elder tree and the soil is full of roots - everything we've grown here in the past has struggled a bit, so it's a good spot to use for something other than plants! The area covered in weedproof fabric over there has also been problematic, but we're determined to get it under control this year and plant a new fruit patch here, mulching heavily between the plants to try to beat the couchgrass!

Section two is the first of our three rotation beds. Last year we grew potatoes here - now the near half is covered in a phacelia green manure (and quite a few annual weeds) and the far half has rows of spinach and chard (again with the weeds...) There's also a row of scabiosa I planted out too late to flower, but it seems to be coming through the winter a treat! After we clear this patch in late spring we'll grow squashes and pumpkins here.

Section three (our second rotation bed) is where our root crops were grown, though it's beginning to look a little sparse now. The spring cabbages in the foreground are at a variety of stages - we picked our first this week but others are not ready yet, and one has rotted! :-( Beyond that is a small row of calabrese which should produce in the spring, some carrots, parsnips, swedes, celery and leeks. We've just finished the beetroots. When this patch is clear in early to mid spring, we'll plant our potatoes here.

Section four (our third rotation bed) was pumpkins and squashes last year, but now it's bare, which is pretty disappointing because I sowed most of it with field beans (a green manure) and broad beans in November. (The cardboard is there to protect a patch I left unsown, intending to make a second sowing in March.) I guess I left it just a little too late; they say early November is the latest you should sow but we did it near the end of the month. Still, never mind, there's plenty of time to sow more broad beans, and our root veg and leeks will go here from March onwards.

Section five is what we call our perennials bed, though it's not the only one! We planted it last year with asparagus (along the left hand side) strawberries (in the raised beds) and globe artichokes (far end, under little mounds of woodchip mulch and black plastic to protect the crowns from frost), as well as some parsley, sage, lavender and lemon balm. It's done okay so far but the plants are still getting established - hopefully they will be even better this year. I'd also like to plant some perennial kale among the sage - supposedly sage keeps cabbage white butterflies away, but we will see!

Section six is home to our pond (far end), two columnar 'spur' fruit trees, and our old strawberry patch (this end) which is now under a mulch of thick cardboard until we can dig it over. There used to be a really nice herb garden planted around the pond and the trees, but over the years it's become swamped with couchgrass and very few plants are left, so this area is up for redevelopment this year... We will replant the herb garden - perhaps through a membrane to keep the grass down - and the old strawberry bed will become a flower patch! We'll also be giving away the pear tree - we don't like the fruit! - and we need to right the very wonky apple tree before it goes over! We'll have to do this soon while the trees are still dormant - they won't like having their roots messed with.

Finally, section seven is where we keep our tools in our storage bench, and it's where our old compost bins were (on the right). That spot is now a lovely fertile patch where we'll put a plastic greenhouse this year for a few tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers. We've also got a little comfrey patch here which we use to feed the compost and make plant feed, and at the far end is a little bed which used to grow asparagus, though it's almost all been choked out by grass - another redevelopment project for this year. I think it's just big enough for a couple of bean teepees... or I might decide to grow the beans at home and grow sweet peas here instead, or some more fruit! I'd also like to narrow this path a bit to maximise the growing space in section six on the left.

You'll notice there's not much space here for summer fruiting crops like French beans, courgettes and tomatoes, nor salads or brassicas. A few years ago we decided we were better off only growing reasonably low-maintenance veg at the allotment, since we struggle to get here enough to look after them. It's working out really well, and we can still grow those things at home where we can keep an eye on them and pick them regularly! We don't grow many brassicas simply because we find them so problematic (what with flea beetles, whitefly, rootfly, slugs, three kinds of caterpillars and pigeons all wanting a share!) but we are adding them to our repertoire gradually. And we don't grow onions or shallots because we have dreadful white rot in the soil which destroys the crop, but we manage a bit of garlic and plenty of spring onions at home, and I'm sure we'll return to onion-growing at some point...

During our trip on Monday we pruned the apple and pear trees and made a good job of weeding and tidying the perennials bed, cutting down last year's asparagus ferns, herb flower spikes and sunflower stems. Here's a 'before' picture!

There's much more weeding to be done before things start growing again in spring, and we need to make a start on that digging very soon too. We're all crossing our fingers for no flooding this year, so we can keep at it!

Figs

When you start growing food, one of the first pieces of advice you get is to grow those foods you eat a lot, and those that represent the best value; things that are expensive to buy in the shops. Well, I don't eat figs very often but it's purely because they're so expensive - I love them. So when I wanted to expand my fruit plant collection this spring I splashed out on a fig tree.

I chose 'Brown Turkey', apparently the most reliable in our climate, bought it in March and potted it up by the back wall, where I hope in the spring and autumn the house can provide it a bit of extra warmth and shelter. Figs thrive in pots, with their roots restricted, so this is where it will stay - and I'll perhaps move it into the summer house over winter for frost protection. It was not much more than a stick in a pot when it arrived, but after a few weeks and a bit of sunshine, it began showing buds and its first little fruit. How strange to see fruit forming without first seeing flowers and leaves!

Leaves followed, of course, but no further figs, sadly. The brown spots on a couple of leaves appear to be rust, due to too much moisture either in the pot or in the air. It's not spreading, but I think I'll pinch the worst offenders off to be on the safe side, and give it some extra seaweed treatment. Apart from this, the plant has been healthy and trouble free, and its proximity to the house means it's unlikely to get any attention from birds (fingers crossed).

Now, when I first looked into fig-growing, several sources informed me that figs forming this year would not be ripe until next year. The tree starts to produce tiny figs throughout the summer, and at the end of the growing season any small ones which have formed late should be pinched off to concentrate energy on the earlier-formed ones and get them ripe next season. At least that's what they say. As you can see, my fig didn't hang around, but to my surprise, ripened up over the last couple of weeks!

A few days ago, the fig was hanging straight down and its skin starting to look papery and wrinkled - the signs that it was ripe. It seemed a little small still - elongated rather than plump. I guess I must have underwatered or underfed it at some stage although I have been careful to give it plenty since it started ripening. (I just now read that too much water during ripening can make them split - whoops!)

I ate my one fig all on its own, savouring every moment, and it was wonderfully fragrant, earthy and sweet. I only hope I get to savour more than one next year! I'll be feeding the plant often to encourage it...

My own fig harvest may have been small, but while I was still in a figgy kinda mood I noticed Sainsburys has an offer on Turkish figs at the moment - just £1 a pack! - and, inspired by a fig and dolcelatte tart recipe I spied in Delicious magazine, I rushed out and bought some.

Figs pair well with smoky meats, ripe cheeses, nuts and bitter greens, as most will know; figs and ham, or stuffed with goats cheese, are classics. In our house ripe cheeses are a bit risky (blue? "too socky", goats? "too farmyardy"), so I went for a nice safe bit of brie instead of the dolcelatte, and there's lots of Swiss chard in the garden and leeks are in season, so I added some extra greens to the recipe. And I didn't have any walnuts for the nutty pastry, but I did have a handful of pistachios... Well I never really follow a recipe; I just use it as a starting point... The bacon in the recipe is entirely optional - this would be great without it as well.

Chard and Fig Tart
(serves 4 or more)

• Combine 250g plain flour, 50-80g finely chopped walnuts or similar and a big pinch of salt, and rub in 150g cold unsalted butter with your fingers until it resembles fine breadcrumbs.
• Combine an egg yolk with 2 tablespoons cold water, and add gradually to the butter/flour until it comes together (you may not need it all). Knead briefly to combine, then chill for 15 minutes.
• Roll the pastry out (it's very crumbly - try rolling it out between two sheets of greaseproof paper for ease) and transfer to a 30cm square baking tray or flan dish. Prick the bottom all over with a fork, and chill for a further 15 minutes.
• Trim the edges, line the flan case with greaseproof paper and fill with baking beans or uncooked rice, and bake for 10 minutes at 180C. Then remove the paper and beans/rice and cook for a further 10 minutes.

• Finely slice 4 baby leeks and fry gently in a little oil over a medium-low heat, along with a handful of lardons, or 3-4 rashers of smoked bacon, chopped. Meanwhile, strip the leaves from the stems of around ten large chard leaves, finely slice the stems and add them to the leeks. Chop the greens and add them after a couple of minutes. Cook gently until the chard is wilted and any juices are reduced away.
• Time to assemble the tart: Spread the leek/chard/bacon mixture evenly over the pastry base. Beat two eggs and the extra egg white with 100ml milk, season, and pour evenly over the veg. Quarter 4-6 large figs and arrange them on top. Finally, slice/tear up 100-150g cheese (blue-veined, goats cheese, or brie) and scatter over the tart.
• Bake for 20 minutes at 180C, until the figs are caramelised on top and the cheese is oozing and golden.

This was delicious - a perfect combination of crumbly nutty pastry, tasty greens, salty bacon, sweet figs and oozy cheese - and certainly passed the family supper test, with the additional of a few roast potatoes to make sure no-one could possibly go hungry. Lil sis discovered a new food she likes and lil bro (I probably shouldn't call him that) told me it was good three times without being asked!

A Productive Day

We were planning all week to visit the allotment for a bit of a tidying-up session on Saturday. It was a bit of a surprise when the temperatures suddenly dropped, after all this mild weather we've had, and we woke up to a fairly hard frost. It was pretty though.

 Young Lamb's Lettuce

Purple Sprouting Broccoli

It didn't put us off - I dug my thermals out and we spent a lovely day at the plot, pruning, weeding and tidying.

First job was to sort the compost out. After failing to spread any last year, we had two bins three-quarters full of decent compost with a layer of newish material on top, and a couple of random heaps elsewhere just because we had nowhere to put them. We forked the uncomposted stuff out of one bin and removed six barrowfuls of lovely compost, then started again with the plot's winter waste and tree prunings at the bottom, the other random heaps, and then the layer of uncomposted stuff from the other bin, leaving us a huge heap of the black stuff very nearly ready to use in the other bin too!

I pruned our two 'spur' fruit trees, confident for the first time that I knew what I was doing, having picked up a little book about pruning over Christmas! I always feel mean cutting them back though - they're so spindly!

The apple tree, on the left, is leaning rather badly after a heavy harvest and strong winds during the summer. I'm not really sure how I should try to straighten it - or whether I shouldn't. Any ideas?

Finally, we decided that since the pond was frozen virtually solid (but the soil was perfectly workable), it would be a good time to dig out our huuuuge clump of horseradish from right beside it. Planting it here was a big mistake and, although I know we will have left roots behind and it'll be back, I'm going to try to get rid of it altogether.

It was hard work, but we got the whole crown out along with several thick roots from beneath. We brought home 5.6 kilos of horseradish! That's a lot of roast beef dinners! I'll have to read up on other uses of the stuff and try to preserve some too.

It was a good day and it felt great to get a head start on the new growing season. I don't think I've ever had such a productive January on the plot before - it has certainly never looked so tidy at this time of year!

 Cotoneaster in the garden

Community Orchard

On our allotment trip the other day we brought home a bag of lovely apples, not from our tree (they're all long gone now) but from the community orchard.

What fab colours! I'd love to know what the purple variety are...

I'm not exactly sure of the history of the place, but a couple of years ago the allotment association took over this plot at the back of our site, which already had several exisiting fruit trees, and turned it into a communal area cared for by volunteers and with fruit available for all association members. Although there are only apples remaining at this time of year, the orchard now contains pears, plums, and a few things I don't recognise too. This is the first time we've really made use of it, and we're glad we have - they're delicious! I'm glad Eddie's so tall, too - he managed to pick a lot of the fruit no-one else could reach at the top!

How Do You Like Them Apples?

For the first time since we planted it in 2008, our 'Gold Spur' apple tree has borne fruit... And it's pears!

I'm sure this is somehow my fault; I must have got them mixed up when planting. I always thought it was the pear tree that I planted near the path and someone kindly strimmed to the ground while it was still pencil-thin, but apparently not.

They're too hard to eat right now - like apples, you know they're ready to pick when they twist off easily with the stalk intact, but unlike apples you have to let them ripen for a few more days off the tree.

Only a couple of the apples are ready so far. They look amazing - they're soooo red!

Hurrah!

Our strawberries survived the frost! And what a lot of them there are!

I'd better get some straw...

Very pleased to see fruit forming on our apple trees too. The biggest harvest we've had from this tree previously was four apples, but this year there are four per branch! Will they all last...?

And this tree has never given us so much as a single blossom before, but this year is doing so much better!

A Day Without Learning is a Day Wasted

This is how our allotment looks at the moment:

Gah! But don't be fooled; it's not all nettles and fat hen. There's asparagus, cauliflowers, broccoli, calabrese, herbs, leeks, swedes, strawberries, raspberries, potatoes, runner beans, beetroots and all manner of courgettey squashy things in there too. And check out those sunflowers!

This past week we've dug up most of our potatoes. It's not a very impressive harvest - I guess those late frosts did more damage than we thought - but they'll keep us going for a while, and I suspect there are a few more more deep ones to be found when we have time to dig over the patch a second time.

We also brought home our apple harvest; three times what we had last year! Although one as you can see has been munched by a maggot.

And we brought home our garlic too; thirteen small but lovely bulbs. One of them had gone to flower, and what a funny creature! At the top of the flower stem was a bunch of tiny garlic cloves, exactly the same as the ones that form bunched together in the ground! Who knew? I'd never have guessed they grow cloves both at the bottom and at the top of the plant!

Well, you learn something new every day!

Flourishing

The water iris is in full flower...

...the potatoes have made a great comeback after the late frosts...

...the apples are starting to swell...

...and look at all this lettuce!

I think it's safe to say the plants are enjoying the warm weather and the rain showers!

Of course, the slugs and snails are enjoying the rain showers too, and I've had damage to some courgette plants, sweet peas and strawberries. Organic slug pellets have now been strewn everywhere. I read recently that bran is good for killing slugs - they love to eat it but it swells inside them or something... Perhaps I will give it a try.

Last week I finally got round to planting the pumpkins and squashes, which are growing away happily in their new positions now. The two in the 'hotbed' of old weeds at the far end are planted in piles of growbag compost. I'm looking forward (with only a tinge of scepticism) to seeing how this works...

However, one of the squashes is not doing so well; this is the only Waltham Butternut squash plant that grew for me, and it's really a rather poor effort.

I discovered too late how fussy butternuts are about temperature, and my first sowing germinated poorly, sulked for a few weeks then died. But my second sowing got far better - warmer - treatment, and still did nothing. I have given up on them for this year, but next year I will pay them even better attention. I want some butternut squash!

Also at the weekend I mulched the strawberries. I could have done with a bit more straw really, but I think it will do. The weeds are poking up through the straw already... And there hasn't been a lot more fruit - just one more strawberry since the first! But I'm sure they'll catch up with themselves soon enough...

The weeding begins...

The hail and freezing rain showers have eased off again, and we've managed to get some good weeding done over the last couple of days. Yesterday I weeded and earthed-up the potatoes (a tricky task in such small beds), and Eddie made a good start on the onions and carrots.

That onion/carrot/parsnip bed is a nightmare - there are loads of potatoes popping up! And there was me thinking last year's potato harvest was a disaster - looks like we just couldn't find them! But it's good to see, under all the weeds, that the carrot seedlings and the parsnip seedlings are coming up nicely.

Today I dug over another of the flower-beds too. This is where we planted the volunteer hazelnut tree last month, which is doing well, and I have planted some borage seedlings here too. I think I will seed the rest with poached-egg plant and marigolds, and plant out another bee-balm.

Gosh; look how weedy the raspberries are already, on the right! Must turn my attention there soon... I am painfully aware that this is just the very beginning of the weeding season...

The 'red spur' apple tree is in full blossom now, and it's gorgeous:

Makes me wonder if there's something wrong with this one; 'gold spur':


Remember my wasp trouble last week? I have removed a new wasp nest almost every day since - she just wouldn't give up. But today I finally caught and killed the wasp. I felt pretty bad about it, actually, but sometimes it's us or them, right?

Anyway, it allowed me to finish giving the bench a clear-out and tidy. We have no shed so this is where we keep everything. Trouble is, 'ventilated' also means 'damp' and 'lets all the bugs in', so we recently bought a couple of plastic boxes to make our lives easier. A big one for the trowels, other hand tools, gloves, string and other gardening essentials; and a small one for tissues, sun cream, wet wipes and plasters. No more will spiders nest in my tissue box! No more will ants infest my favourite gloves!