Morland Road Allotments

It is with a tinge of sadness that I write this article, the last I reckon before I do the deed. Ever since the eggs went into the incubator, the rule was that any cockerels would be eaten. I’ve wrung necks before but this is a little different – I hatched these myself.

Anyway, I am planning on doing it Saturday morning after the French students have gone. I’ll hang them up for a day to let the blood drain into the head and then as before, cut the whole head off = no blood! Then they’ll be plucked drawn and frozen.

I am actually looking forward to it, the last one we had was very nice and he was quite an old bird. The ones I have now are about 17 weeks so they should be lovely and tender. It really is the best meat you can get providing you cook it properly.

I’ll let you know how it goes……..

With a mix of non stop work (the wonders of being self employed!) and ridiculously hot temperatures, I have been unable to do pretty much nothing down the allotments for the past couple of weeks.  Plants are dying and weeds are growing!

Out of the 5 tomato plants in the greenhouse, only 3 have survived.  The other 2 were planted where the radish died and the same has happened to the other 2 tomato plants.  I think there could be something wrong with the compost used in the front section of the bed?

We are slowly working our way through the gigantic pile of potatoes, the rest of which shall be dug up soon as the skins will start hardening – then they won’t be new anymore  We’ve still another 6 or 7 20ft rows!  They are also starting to scab and show signs of little wire worms

The runner beans are climbing ever higher.  It has to be mentioned that they are my favourite vegetable and if they die, I will be most annoyed.  There are also a few rows of carrots emerging along with beetroot and radish.  We haven’t had (touch wood) any signs of white butterfly or caterpillars on the brassicas yet, all which are coming up wonderful.  Again, weeds are surrounding these but the plants are still growing.  It might help disguise them from butterflies!

Once the self-employed workload gets back down to a capacious level and the weather cools down, I’ll think about setting aside a few days to clear up the weeds.  I can’t wait for the Autumn as I would like to try and turn the greenhouse into a yielding success – it is just far too hot (even with the door and window open) to grow anything in there at the moment as I do not have the time to water them twice a day.

I have acquired 2 more cockerels!  They’re 6 weeks old and they (providing everything is ok) will become boyfriends for my hens.  The cockerels I hatched with the hens will all be for the pot when they’re big enough.

So what breeds are they?  I’ve got a Norfolk Grey (which is actually black) and a Legbar which is grey.  The aim is to rotate them between the girls every month to produce lots of nice colourful eggs.  Colours could range from pale blue to light green or dark brown to olive green!

I’ll add some piccies once they have settled in.

I am going to stick some more Maran & Cochin eggs in the incubator in the next few days hoping for some more hens as I’ve only got 3

So…  Just over 10 weeks old, below are some of the chicks I hatched back in April.  They’re Marans and Cochins.  I can see we’ve a few cockerels which will be for the pot when big enough.  I will then give the remaining hens an un-related cockerel from my farmer friend.

I’d like to see something harm my chickens again! Above is Max the young police dog keeping everything in order!

Nearly halfway through the year already…

I have got carrot, beetroot and radish seeds outside now in rows spanning the whole plot along with various brassica plants in the old chicken run and more outside that need covering.  The cucumbers and courgettes have also been planted out.

We are digging the new potatoes that are supplying an abundant crop as well as young broad beans that are still getting bigger.  We’ve had super-early beetroot and strawberries from the greenhouse.  The tomatoes are waiting for a space in the greenhouse…

So that’s another month nearly gone.  It makes me wonder what I’ve actually done!

Hopefully today or tomorrow I’ll be putting out the first lot of runner beans from the greenhouse ( a little late but the plants are rather large).  I’ll then follow on by planting some seed directly in the ground for a slightly later crop.  There’s cabbage, sprouts, sprouting broccoli and a few other brassicas to go out if I ever get the netting frame sorted out.  I have considered using the chicken run for a brassica cage this year.

The chick(en)s I hatched a few months back are getting bigger day by day.  These will stay at home where they have the protection of 2 dogs.  They’re 8 weeks tomorrow so in another three months they should hopefully start laying.  I can see that we have a cockerel which I shall swap for an unrelated bird once he’s bigger and then get breeding at home again .

With demand for allotments at an all-time high, some people are digging up their gardens, others covering concrete with containers.  Rightly so too! Re-creating the 70’s sitcom The Good Life has been fuelled by the ever-rising price of fresh vegetables.

The price of traditional British veg including carrots, onions, beans, peas, lettuce and tomatoes should be considered extortion nowadays, especially with the recession biting at everyone’s ankles.  And what’s more, the government is letting supermarkets get away with it.

Pots and containers are overtaking balconies, doorsteps and even rooftops.  Abundant with fresh vegetables they have cost no more than a bag of compost, a container and some seeds.  The only other thing required is a little water and tender loving care.  You don’t need any experience, you can find out all you need to know online, in a book or on TV.

Two window boxes can easily keep you in salad leaves all through the summer right through to autumn.  Just a few steps from the kitchen into the garden and you have what is essentially ‘free’ food requiring very little effort.

If you have space outdoors for a couple of large buckets, you’re easily able to grow your own tomatoes, peppers, runner beans and other climbing vegetable plants.  You’ll need to give the plants something to climb up, a few bamboo canes tied into a tepee shape will suffice.  They’ll also need watering two or three times a day as pots are prone to drought.

Why not try growing some tomatoes in hanging baskets?  You’ll need a bush variety tomato seed and the usual garden items.  You can then hang them up and they will look nice as well a taste nice.  Seed catalogues have actually reported a decline in the sale of flower seeds – is this why?

Just don’t rule out flowers completely!  You can eat Nasturtium leaves (nice in a salad or stuffed), they look nice and bring in the bees to pollinate your beans.  Other flowers such as Marigolds are useful as a pest control.

If you are not the type of person to trawl around a garden centre, bite the bullet and have a look!  If you really can’t stand being seen socialising with old age men fighting over the last net of Jersey Royals, you can buy seeds online.  The twofaced supermarkets have even cottoned on.  Just slip them in with your shopping and no one will say anything – honest!

The innocent looking kitchen windowsill could be covered with a selection of herb plants.  These can be purchased from a garden centre.  You should expect to pay around £2 – £5 per ‘cut and come again’ plant but when you consider a little plastic packet of wilted parsley in a supermarket costing upwards of £1, it really isn’t a bad deal.

If you’re the person that’ll dig up the garden then you have an allotment pretty much at your fingertips.  There are people even turning their front gardens into a veg patch.  Lots of space means room to grow potatoes, brassicas and even put up a greenhouse to bring tomatoes, peppers and suchlike on earlier.

In as little as a few days, you could be well on your way to saving a small fortune every year on fresh vegetables.  With a small section of your garden turned to soil, it is more than realistic to think you’ll be saving over £200 a year on food costs.

If you are lucky enough to have an allotment then you have access to the most useful information source of all.  Other seasoned ‘allotmenters’ know what grows and what doesn’t.  They’ll tell you the best way to grow your veg and laugh at any other suggested ways that don’t work.  Old Keith in the corner will know every single pest in the area and John will show you how to plant your peas ‘the proper way’.

At the end of the day, you’ll be guaranteed something – fun!  If it works and you have lots of free fresh vegetables to gorge on, well done.  If it all goes belly up, there’s always next year!

I came down the stairs this morning and the postman had been before I woke up for a change!  What greeted me under a pile of HMRC envelopes was the above Dig In seeds I ordered at the very start of the campaign.  I had been waiting so long for them, I never thought they’d actually arrive.  Nearly half way through the planting season – they’re not too late then

What did I get?

• A rather large leaflet containing ridiculous amounts of information that nobody needs to know.
• Half an A4 sheet of strange paper stickers.
• 1x packet of carrots (Early Nantes).
• 1x packet squash (Hunter).
• 1x packet lettuce (Lollo Rossa).
• 1x packet beetroot (Boltardy).
• 2x packet tomato (Gardener’s Delight).

All in over-the-top pretty little hermetically sealed packets with a nice picture and yet more babble on the back on how to apparently grow them.  I don’t know why I ended up with 2 packets of the tomatoes, but its a good job I did.  There’s barely 10 seeds in a packet!  With my current seedling death rate I’d need 7 packets of what they were giving away to get just 10 plants!  But you can’t really grumble for nothing

Now over the next few weeks I’ll see if the other packets I ordered at weekly intervals up until a few weeks back arrive.

I went down the allotments, as I do every morning but today seemed a little strange.  As I open the gates I can normally hear the hens talking to each other but not today.  I proceeded to the greenhouse to get some food for them and then I noticed only 1 hen was in their usual spot waiting to be fed.  I looked up over the broad beans and saw what I thought was all the chickens dust bathing; only no movement.

At this point I was alarmed so ran up the footpath and found 7 of the 8 chickens to be laying dead on the floor.  I walked around the pen checking for any signs of fox.  No dug holes, no ripped roof netting, no large gaps, no signs of vandilism…  What the hell has gone on?

The only thing it could be is either a ferret, stoat, weasel or similar.  They will kill anything that moves.  I have never seen any of them about but I am told they are around.  If you look at the picture of the white cockerel, it has been grabbed in something’s jaw and mauled right through to the bone.  No other chicken pens on the allotment were raided either!  And it didn’t seem whatever it was had tried eating its kill.  Any other possibilities?

I have let the remaining hen go on holiday to another chicken keeper on the allotments until I can establish what to do next.

Various plants on the windowsill are getting larger day by day and the tomato plants in the greenhouse are going on fine.  Once the cold temperatures have finally gone, they will all be dumped into their final planting positions.

The radish died in the greenhouse.  I don’t think they liked the rich compost they were planted in or it could be too hot?  But the beetroot seems fine, planted directly opposite them.  Any suggestions?