Metamorphosis

You may have seen here and also here that for the last two or three weeks I have had my vines wrapped in fleece in an attempt to protect them from the risk of damage from the cruel frost which has visited the plot a few times in early May.

To the casual observer the vines may have appeared lifeless as they have hung there draped in white fleece death shrouds and I must admit that in the dark, when I have gone to light the greenhouse heater, they have looked like nine frozen contorted ghosts. However, I think they have had an appearance which is more like huge white pupae hanging from the vine wires. Inside each chrysalis metamorphosis has been taking place as buds have burst, leaves have formed and new growth has started to reach up towards the sun.

Last weekend I felt it safe to declare that there will be no more frost this season and so on Sunday afternoon I carefully opened and removed the fleece chrysalis from each vine and, to continue the metaphor, the new green leaves unfurled and started to soak up the bright and warming sunshine like newly emerged butterflies. And so, the vines have entered the next stage of their life cycle.

Precautions Pay Off

This time last year my early vine growth was stopped in its tracks by a cruel May frost. This year I have taken precautions and wrapped the vines in fleece. I had a peep behind the fleece this morning and I'm pleased to report that the vines are thriving. I'll leave the fleece in place until next weekend when, hopefully, all risk of frost will have passed and I will then look forward to a long hot Summer and a bumper harvest of grapes ready for pressing and fermenting.

Avant Garden

If the artist Christo had an allotment I think it might look something like this...

...but he's probably not so cutting edge as to attempt to do anything so radical (or daft) as to cultivate grapevines in a North Lincolnshire swamp where, even in May, the so-called Queen of Months, there is a serious threat of damage from vicious sub-zero temperatures.

Coping in drought conditions

Between work appointments today I managed to nip up to the plot to water my greenhouse seedlings. When I got there I found that my vines were having a paddle in a newly formed pond.

So far this year my vines have been doing really well. All nine of them survived the winter. Masses of pink buds had formed in late March and early April and a couple of weeks ago small pale green leaves started to break out and unfurl into the spring sunshine. We are officially in drought conditions and we live only a couple of post-codes away from a hosepipe ban. I hope that my vines can now survive these "drought conditions" without drowning.

I didn't want to leave them in standing water and so after watering the greenhouse seedlings I took my fork and pierced a few drainage holes into the ground around the perimeter of the water-logged area and then I dug a couple of sump holes in the paths between the rows of vines. Being between work appointments I was still wearing my office suit and shiny shoes.

When I returned to my car to set off for my next appointment I realised that I had been watched by a couple of bricklayers who are putting the foundations in for the toilet block which is being constructed in the top corner of the site. Some comment was made about this being the most gentrified allotment they had ever seen. I shall now expect them to fit gold taps and an ermine-lined seat to our on-site throne room.

These are the blogs that weren't

I have got myself a little part-time self-employed sideline of evening work which has been taking up quite a lot of my time lately. The extra income is coming in useful. If nothing else it is helping to finance the horrific fuel costs for my long commute to my day job. The downside is that opportunities to spend mid-week evenings pottering about on the plot have become few and far between.

Lack of spare time is also the reason why it has been a few weeks since I updated this blog. There are quite a few things that I would have liked to have blogged about but I just haven't found the time to sit down and type up my thoughts.

I was going to tell you about the pesky rabbits that I chase off the plot at 7 o'clock every morning when I stop by to open up the greenhouse.

I was going to tell the tale of how the supermarket grade broccoli, which you may recall the local organic farmer gave to me, has turned out to be cabbage. I was going to talk about the black kale which I have been given and the miraculous health benefits which it is reputed to provide. I was going to weave joyous prose on the subject of my beloved vines which have come back from the brink of death.

I wanted to go off on a journey of speculation as to what my neighbour might be cooking-up with this pipe and bucket arrangement which has appeared on his plot.

I wanted to speak in defence of cucumbers; they are not killers. I wanted to tell you about my potatoes, sprouts, asparagus, strawberries, rhubarb, onions, shallots, spring onions, carrots, garlic, leeks, garden peas, sugar-snap peas, beetroot, cauliflowers, courgettes, pumpkins, tomatoes, lettuce, french beans, runner beans, raddishes and chillies, all of which are thriving. I was hoping to share with you the recent glorious allotment sunsets.

But unfortunately I have not found the time to do any of this. However, if my suspicions are correct, I will soon be able to afford to retire from work so that I can spend long lazy days on the plot because I have good reason to believe that there is a pot of gold hidden in my compost box.

The Queen of Mean

I received a newsletter from a seed company this week which described May as "The Queen of Months". I disagree. She might sometimes be warm and pleasant during daylight hours but don't be fooled by her false friendliness because she is fickle and after the sun has gone down she can quickly turn into a vicious and spiteful old witch. Last year she cold-heartedly murdered my beans. This year she has blown her icy deathly breath over my beloved vines. Just look at the mess she has made of them.

I was so proud of the progress of my plucky little vines last weekend. Did you see the photos I posted? Their perky shiny green leaves were soaking up the Spring sunshine and they looked bright, alert and full of promise for a fruitful Summer. Now, after the frost of Tuesday night, they are nothing more than grey, listless shadows of their former selves.

I had heard the forecast which warned of a chance of frost in rural areas on Tuesday night but I made the mistake of thinking that after surviving the harshest of Winters these vines were indestructible. I have now learned the lesson that there is a great deal of difference in cold tolerance between a vine which is in a dormant Winter state and one which is bursting with new Spring shoots which are full of fresh rising sap.

I don't think the May Witch has killed the vines. She has certainly nipped in the bud all the early season growth but I am optimistic that there will be more growth to come from new buds which are yet to burst. Although I am disappointed by this frost damage I must remind myself that these vines are still only just over one year old and I never expected to take much of a crop off them until year three and so, hopefully, in the long run this frost attack will be of no consequence.

In any event, next year I will be sure to be prepared for the capricious and vengeful May Queen and I will have fleece blankets on standby ready to wrap up the vines and tuck them in for the night if there is ever a hint of frost in the air.

On a brighter note, whilst staring out of the kitchen window, lamenting the damage to the vines, I noticed that the first chilli pepper of the year has formed. The first of many I hope.

The Super Panther Strikes Again

The vines all seem to have been enjoying the recent sunshine and they are thriving. There are even some very small grapes forming.

The weeds on the paths between the rows of vines have also been doing well...

and so today, seeing that the weeds were ankle deep, I decided to do something about them.

Last year I had kept the paths reasonably clear with use of the hoe every now and then. I left just enough vegetation in place to hold the paths together. I had considered laying chippings on the paths between the vines when I laid out the rest of the paths on the plot last Summer but I decided against it. I had some worries about drainage and so I thought that by leaving some growth on the paths there would be something there to help soak up any excess rainfall which would reduce the risk of the vines drowning in standing water. 

This year the weeds have grown so quickly and densely that it would have been a back-breaking and futile task trying to clear them away with the hoe alone. There is no power supply at the allotment site and I don't have a petrol mower but I knew that buried away somewhere in my garage there was just the right machine for the job.

In 1990 my Father-in-Law gave me his old manual lawnmower, an ancient Qualcast Super Panther. A year or so later I bought an electric mower and my wife suggested that the old Panther should be taken to the tip. I didn't dump it but managed to keep it tucked away in a corner of the garden shed. It was old and battered but it was still in perfect working order and so I couldn't see the point of throwing it away.

We moved house a couple of years later and the Panther was again threatened with a one way trip to the tip but again I managed to hang on to it and stow it away in the shed sure that one day it would come in useful for something. We moved again eight years ago and the mower came with us. I kept it in the back corner of the garage where, over time, it became buried under a stack of old paint tins, bricks, golf equipment, camping gear, garden furniture, tools, bicycles, scooters, plant-pots and assorted bits of wood which one day might come in useful. This morning, like a suburban archaeologist, I excavated the back of the garage and extracted the mower, a 1960s artefact, from the c2003 strata.

I cut a practice stripe across the back lawn just to check that the trusty old Super Panther still worked. It worked really well and so I took it up to the allotment plot where it made easy work of paths. The result is not exactly centre court at Wimbledon but considering I used a 40-50 year old mower which hasn't seen a blade of grass for twenty years I am very pleased with the way the paths look now. I knew the Super Panther would come in useful one day.



Bud Burst!

A bit of sunshine over the last two or three days and the slightly warmer temperatures have worked wonders for the grapevines; the sap is rising and buds are bursting out all over the place now. When I get a moment I'll celebrate with a bottle of home-made wine.

I still don't expect to get much of a crop of grapes this year but next year, year three, with a bit of luck and with nine three year old vines on the plot and a spare vine at home, I should be able to start wine-making on an industrial scale. I can't wait.

Bud Life.

I dare not go as far as to declare "bud burst!" but unless it is just wishful thinking or my eyes deceive me I think I can see a bit of colour and some fullness in the buds on the vines.

For weeks now, or even months, the first question I have been asked when greeted by fellow allotment holders is, "how are your vines?"

I have lost count of the number of times that I've given my pessimistic stock reply of  "I won't know until April but I'll be surprised if they have survived". Even now I cannot safely assume that a late frost won't kill them off but I must admit that I am now feeling more confident about the chances of getting some grapes this year than I have been at any time since early December when we had temperatures of minus 11c one week and minus 18c a few days later.

The other good news from the plot today is that the first asparagus shoots (purple jacmar) have started to push through.

Pruned

I have spent most of the last two days eating and boozing. Between feasts I have been nodding-off in an armchair catching up with the sleep I have lost in late night sessions following The Ashes cricket downunder. Today I managed to break the cycle of behaviour which had consisted of an afternoon nap with a glass in one hand and a tin of toffees in the other while the kids played on the wii or a film played to itself on the telly. It took considerable effort but I managed to get off my backside and make the short journey to the allotment site.

The ground is still frozen hard and a thin layer of snow lingers on. More snow is forecast for tonight. The ground has been frozen solid since the end of November. There is no possibility of doing any digging unless you have a pneumatic drill. The ground was well and truly frozen when I paid a short visit to the plot on Christmas Eve to pick sprouts for Christmas dinner, which were delicious by the way. There were some other plot-holders struggling with pick-axes and metal spikes to break up the ground so that they could extract their parsnips from the tundra. I hope they were worth the effort.

In theory, I still have some potatoes in the ground. In reality, I don't know if there will be anything still there. I should have harvested them weeks ago but didn't get round to it and when I have had chance to get onto the plot the ground has been so hard that my garden-fork has rung like a tuning-fork when I have tried to prise the ground open with it. I must wait for the thaw before I will find what has become of the remaining spuds. I suspect they will be mush.

The purpose of my visit today was to prune the vines. By the end of the Summer most of the vines had reached the top support wire, about 6 feet high. I have now cut them all back to about 2 feet to where the stems are about as thick as a pencil. All the advice I have received is to do this task when the vines are dormant. In view of some of the temperatures we have suffered over the past few weeks I have no doubt that that the vines are dormant; my concern is that they may be permanently dormant. After pruning I spread a mulch layer of well rotted horse-manure around the vines. I still don't expect much of a crop of grapes next year but hopefully by this time in 2012 I'll have a few demi-johns of home-grown home-brew bubbling away in the spare bedroom.

Bud Burst!

Apologies for the lack of recent updates. I have had a very busy couple of weeks. I have changed my job and returned my laptop to my previous employer and I now find that I am well down the pecking order when it comes to the use of other computers at home. The last two weekends have been taken up largely with family celebrations and parties for my daughter's birthday and my parents-in-law's golden wedding anniversary.

I have however still managed to fit in a few hours work down on the plot and today I am having my own private celebration to mark Bud Burst. Eight out of my ten Rondo vines now have buds growing through the wax coatings. I have put pop-bottle cloches over the other two vines and hope to see buds on them soon.

The other significant news is that the contractor installed my three large raised beds last Thursday. This weekend I have transplanted onions, spring onions, calabrese, broccoli, and brussels sprouts from the coldframe and into the raised beds. I have also planted a couple of rows of onion sets, red and yellow, along with some solent wight garlic into one of the beds. I had bought two garlic bulbs but unfortunately found that one of them had started to rot when I came to plant it. The garlic and onion sets have been hanging around in my garage for a few months awaiting the arrival of the raised beds and ideally should have been planted a long while ago. I have also now planted rhubarb and asparagus into two of the smaller raised beds.

Finally, I am pleased to report that the greenhouse frame is still standing. I have aquired some eight foot lengths of treated timber (8inches by 2 inches) from which I will construct a base-frame for the greenhouse. I plan to incorporate a couple of raised beds into the base-frame inside the greenhouse. Once the greenhouse has been securely fixed to the base I can start to think about glazing it. At home I have tomatoes and chillies which are itching to be moved into a greenhouse. Small flowers are appearing on the chilli plants which I assume is a good sign but I could be wrong.

Bed Time

As promised in my previous blog entry (and as requested by Nina) here are a couple of photos of the vines which I planted on Good Friday. I have planted 9 Rondo vines on the allotment and I have another one to grow against a South facing garden wall at home. The vines have been imported from Germany by Winegrowers Supplies of Somerset and have come with their own plant passport which I am told I must retain. I don't know why; perhaps the vines are planning a trip abroad. The vines are grafted onto rootstock and are coated in wax. When the buds grow they will burst through the wax coating (hopefully).

The third photograph shows the three small raised beds which I have made. There are strawberries in the middle one and the others are awaiting rhubarb and asparagus.

The good news today is that the contractor has made a start on constructing the large raised beds on the site. There are about 90 beds to be built. He seems to have made some good progress today and the weather forecast for the rest of the week appears ok and so I am optimistic that by the weekend I will have three large raised beds in which to plant my onions and garlic. I should also be able to transplant a few items from my desparately overcrowded coldframe and get cracking with some direct sowing of the various seeds for the numerous varieties of salad leaf which I seem to have accumulated.

I spent yesterday afternoon disentagling the greenhouse which resembled a large christmas cracker wire puzzle. I am pleased to report that it has gone back together quite nicely. After replacing the previously loose-fitting nuts with new ones and hammering out a few kinks in the aluminium struts it seems to be significantly less flimsy than it was the first time I put it up. Once I have anchored it down to a firm base I will set about glazing it. I have not yet decided upon the best type of base to construct for my needs but my initial thoughts are that I will need to raise the height of the greenhouse by a good few inches to reduce the risk of me smashing my head through the glazed roof; I am tall and quite clumsy.

Rhubarb rhubarb!

Last week I noticed some tasty looking rhubarb stalks appearing on a few allotment plots which reminded me that the three crowns of Timperley Early Rhubarb which I had ordered from Kings in January, for delivery in March, had not arrived and so were now Timperley Late.

I 'phoned Kings. They apologised for overlooking my rhubarb order and promised to dispatch it straight away. At the weekend a parcel of funny looking rhubarb arrived from Kings. I am not a botanist but I examined the evidence and concluded that the specimens they had sent to me were in fact 12 strawberry plants (Cambridge Favourite Variety) and not rhubarb.  I reached this conclusion after reading the leaflet which arrived with the parcel which gave instructions for planting and care of strawberries. The plants were also held together with a tag which was labelled "Cambridge Favourite Strawberry".

After the Bank Holiday weekend I 'phoned Kings again. They apologised for the cock-up and told me to keep the strawberry plants. They will arrange for their wholesaler to send some rhubarb out to me as soon as possible. I have rushed home from work each night this week eager to see if the rhubarb has arrived. Unfortunately the only rhubarb which has been delivered to me has been in the form of letters, leaflets and news-letters from the local parliamentary general election candidates.

I did a bit of work on the plot over the Easter weekend. The vines were planted on Good Friday. I will post some photos when I get a minute. I have also built three small raised beds, one of which now accommodates 12 strawberry plants. The other two small beds will be for rhubarb and asparagus (or possibly pumpkins). I am still waiting for the contractor to construct the three large raised beds which were promised weeks ago and I have not yet set about seeing what can be salvaged from the tangled mess which was previously my greenhouse frame.

The Grape Dilemma: resolved

Having the opportunity to grow things which can be turned into alcohol greatly influenced my decision to sign up for the allotment. This was after my previous wine-making activity was interrupted when the 7 year old vine in my back garden failed to come into bud after the very cold Winter of 2008/9. The old vine went out in a blaze of glory having produced 100lbs of grapes in the previous year from which I had made 10 gallons of wine, a bottle of which won 2nd prize at the local agricultural show.

Vines will form a central part of my plot but over the last few weeks I have been dithering about which variety would best suit my location. I had settled on buying Dornfelder vines. Everything I read seemed to indicate that Dornfelder would be hardy enough for North Lincolnshire and would produce a heavy early crop of deep red grapes suitable for wine making but I had some nagging doubts and never got round to placing an order.

I drove through a very snowy Holmfirth today and remembered seeing a tv programme a year or so ago about a couple who had set up a vineyard on a hillside nearby. I thought that if there was a vine variety which could survive the Arctic-like West Yorkshire Pennine climate it would thrive on my plot which is almost tropical by comparison.

The Holmfirth Vineyard has a website http://www.holmfirthvineyard.com/ from which it can be seen that their red grape varieties are Rondo, Regent and Acolon and Rondo is their strongest vine.

Despite this massive clue I stubbornly stuck to my decision to order Dornfelder vines. I emailed my order to Derek Pritchard at Winegrowers Supplies in Somerset http://www.winegrowers.info/ I mentioned that I would accept Rondo if Dornfelder was not available and I asked Derek to let me know if he thought I was making a big mistake with my choice. Derek knows what he is talking about what with having imported 840,000 vines in the last 25 years and having his own vineyard and winery.

Derek soon put me straight, "Rondo would be by far the best variety for you". It ripens earlier than Dornfelder, is more disease resistant and may require a couple of sprays against mildew compared to the 8 or so that Dornfelder would need.

So, Rondo it is. I have ordered 10 grafted vines and they will arrive in early April. I will put three rows of three vertically trained vines on the plot and the 10th will go against my south facing garden wall at home.

Allotment seed order. January 2010.

Seeds ordered from E.W.King and Co through the National Society of Allotment & Leisure Gardeners Members' catalogue:-

Asparagus Crowns. Purple Jacmar. 12 crowns.

Runner Beans. Enorma. 45 seeds.

Broccoli. Spike, Annual Purple. 100 seeds.

Calabrese. Chevalier. 65 seeds.

Sprouts. Cascade. 60 seeds.

Rhubarb. Timperley Early. 3 crowns.

Leeks. Giant Winter. 300 seeds.

Lettuce. Marvel of 4 Seasons. 550 seeds.

Spring Onions. White Lisbon. 600 seeds.

Onions. Bedfordshire Champion. 250 seeds.

Chilli Peppers. 35 seeds.

Pumpkin. Tom Fox. 10 seeds.

Garlic. Solent Wight. 30 cloves.

French Beans. Blue Lake. 100 seeds.

Strawberry. Temptation. 50 seeds.

Marigold. Golden Days. 200 seeds.

Dianthus. Chinensis. 175 seeds.

Nasturtium. Alaska. 24 seeds.
Jewel Mixed. 25 seeds.

Potatoes. First Earlies. Duke of York. 3kg.
Second Earlies. Estima. 3kg.
Early Maincrop. King Edward. 3kg.
Late Maincrop. Golden Wonder. 3kg.


Still to be ordered :- Vines. 4 x Dornfelder.