Gone with the wind

This is the greenhouse frame which I erected on Sunday afternoon:-

This is what I found when I came home from work tonight:-

It looks like we have had a bit of a storm blow through today. The allotment is like a swamp and, as you can see my, pride and joy, greenhouse frame is now a tangled mess of aluminium sections. I did notice as I put it up on Sunday that there was one cross member missing from the back of the frame and a couple of the nuts could not be tightened up as they just spun around on the bolts when I tried to tighten them up. I had planned to fit a cross member this weekend and replace the faulty nuts and bolts and then fix it to a base frame. The greenhouse seemed quite secure when I left it but I can only assume that the structural integrity was compromised by the missing strut and the loose nuts and the wind today took advantage of that. 

I was a bit pressed for time before it went dark tonight so I haven't been able to examine the full extent of the damage but hopefully it will be salvageable.

My 10 Grapevines arrived last night and I need to get them planted this weekend so I went up to the plot after work today to dig holes ready for planting. I put a dollop of manure and a scoop of slow release plant food into each hole and then covered it lightly with soil. I will stand the vines in a bucket of water for 24 hours and then plant them in the holes this weekend. However I am a little bit concerned that the site does not seem to be very well draining. It is like quicksand in some parts. In the picture below it is not easy to distinguish my planting holes from my deep sunken welly prints. I will just have to wait and see if the vines take to it.

Hopefully the swampy conditions and greenhouse damage will prove to be only minor set-backs. Everything seemed to be going so well last weekend. The composting boxes arrived;  I collected a nice pile of well rotted pony poo with assistance from Lucy; I also planted three rows of first early Duke of York potatoes.

Greenhouse

I have been keenly following second-hand greenhouses on ebay for the last 3 or 4 months but I have had no success with my bids. I suppose it is because I am too tight. Last week someone asked if I had tried Freegle. I had never heard of it. I had previously attempted to register with Freecycle, which is a similar kind of group, but the moderators of my local group at Doncaster rejected my application for some unexplained reason.

These groups have the objective of keeping reusable items out of landfill sites. They put people with things to throw away in touch with others who might be able to make use of those things.

On Friday evening I was accepted by the Scunthorpe Freegle group  http://www.ilovefreegle.org/ . I posted a message saying I was on the lookout for a greenhouse. Later that night I was offered a greeenhouse (without glass) by Lee, a Freegler, who lives about 8 miles away from me. I have been to dismantle and collect the greenhouse this morning. It is a beauty. 8ft x 6ft aluminium frame, manufactured by Eden. Best of all it was free!

I will re-assemble the greenhouse frame on the plot this afternoon. Now I need to source some glass or polycarbonate sheets. I will probably end up buying the glass but I can't complain about that given the money I have saved on the frame.

Chips with everything

The raised beds have not yet materialised but we have had a delivery of wood-chips to the allotment site. I have taken some for the path between my plot and Tony's plot, my neighbour to the North. Each plot-holder is responsible for the path to the North side of their plot.

For my wedding anniversary last year my wife sent me out to the garage to see the present she had parked in there for me. It was a fabulous two-wheeler in British racing green. Today seemed like a perfect day to get it out of the garage for the first time and to take it for a spin up to the allotments. If you look carefully you might catch a glimpse of it in a couple of the photos below.

Plots and Plans

I went up to the plot on Sunday morning to mark out positions for the raised beds to be installed by the site contractor this week. The whole allotment site looked pristine with the new layer of topsoil. I got the feeling I get when I see a large area of newly fallen snow; torn between not wanting to disturb the surface whilst at the same time feeling a childish urge to run around and roll about in it.

I resisted the temptation to lay down and make a soil angel and I set about the task of marking out the bed positions whilst a gang of local tearaways, in bovver wellies and armed with swords, marched up and down the plot boundary to compact the ground in readiness for a delivery of wood chippings to make a path.

There was debate amongst neighbouring plot-holders as to whether it would be preferable to have beds running North/South or East/West and how much room to leave between beds. I have laid my beds out so that I can plant in long rows running North to South. I could have saved space by positioning the raised beds closer together but I decided that I would prefer to have room to get a wheelbarrow between the beds and so my beds are perhaps a little bit wider apart than most that I have seen marked out on site.

I went back up to the plot on Sunday afternoon and erected trellis posts in readiness for the arrival of the nine Rondo vines which are due in April. I didn't have time to thread the support wires between all the posts but went home pleased that at last I have got onto the plot, got mud on my wellies and made some constructive progress.