Moving Rhubarb

From Allotment to Garden

Allotment Sit. Rep.

So, if you've been following me here or on any of my social media, you'll know that I have finally given up my allotment.

It was a 1/4 plot about ten minutes walk from our house, and I know some people would kill for that convenience, but there were so many issues with the plot, it's location, access and the surrounding plots, that trying to reclaim it every time I visited was increasingly backbreaking and heartbreaking.

Besides rescuing tools, storage boxes and watering cans there wasn't much to bring home from the plot. The only thing I had in the ground was some Stockbridge Arrow Rhubarb plants, which I had carefully lifted, divided and replanted in a new bed (well, new to the rhubarb) last year. They did really well in their new location, and we managed to get a really decent crop from them earlier this year, but trouble was brewing...

Rhubarb Stockbridge Arrow freshly picked

Our neighbour's raspberries, planted along our shared fence line, were sending up vigorous canes on our side. Initially I tolerated them, scoffing the odd fruit on my side, but as our plot visits became more infrequent, so the raspberries began to take over. First they engulfed the grass path, our main route up and down the plot. Digging is impossible in dry months as the soil is clay, flint, chalk, the raspberries didn't let that stop them, but all we could do was chop back the top growth. I considered napalm for a moment, but...p'raps not!

Then the odd shoot started appearing in the first raised bed where the rhubarb was now setting up home. These canes were easier to pull/dig up as the cultivated soil was a looser structure than the uncultivated paths, but by the time we visited in early May the runners had spread to further beds and more paths. You could barely see the huge rhubarb leaves amongst it all.

Lifting

Mr PB and I worked together using a border fork and spade to dig round each plant, keeping as much of the rootball as possible. I did a quick clean up of the roots, removing any obvious weeds and raspberry runners that had wormed their way in, and then removed any damaged leaves and stalks. Some crowns were too badly compromised, so we came away with five and left the others. We popped them all in the car and drove straight home.

It was a hot day, and I had absolutely no idea where I was going to put them in the garden, so I filled a huge container with water and popped all the plants in, with the intention of making a decision within a day or two.

Fast forward about a month...

On a shopping spree at Wilkinsons, I found these great planting bags, £2.00 for one tall and one short bag with handles, made from tarpaulin type material with neatly eyeleted drainage holes. They looked perfect as a temporary/semi-permanent home for my rhubarb so I bought three packs of 2...oh and a pack of Seed and Weed gloves, 3 pairs for £1.50...and a load of other things!

These Wilkinsons Vegetable Grow Bags would be perfect for my rhubarb - cute gloves too!

Transplanting

It took a bit of planning to do the actual transplanting of the crowns. First I needed to unbag and harvest my Red Duke of York Potatoes, so that I could reuse the compost. Then I needed to empty the tumble composter which was full of well rotted chicken manure. I put a layer of each into the bottom of the bags, making sure the compost went right out to the edges so there would be no air pockets.

Wilkinsons Vgetable Grow Bags ready for planting

Then I drained the disgustingly smelly water out of the rhubarbs' container and picked over each crown for weeds/raspberry runners again.

Stockbridge Arrow Rhubarb crowns after soaking

A month in water had not done the tuberous roots any good at all, some had gone horribly mushy, and the smallest plant wasn't worth keeping.

I cut away as much rotten material as possible, put one crown per planting bag, and continued filling with a mixture of the two composts, leaving a gap of about 5cm before the rim of the bags, to allow room for watering.

Stockbridge Arrow Rhubarb planted in the Wilkinsons Grow Bags

Hopefully the rot hasn't destroyed the roots completely, only time will tell.
Love PB xx

Time for a Change - Growing my blog and changing focus

In the blog beginning

Since I started this blog, so many things have changed in my life that I realised the blog no longer fitted it very well. Things that were important to me back then have gone, some have blossomed and grown.

"Pumpkin Becki's Little Allotment and Garden" was a way of recording all my successes and failures as I took on a brand new, never-before-cultivated allotment, in the village where we were also self-building a house on a 0.1 acre of land...yes, 0.1 acres.

Well, it's now 9 years since we poured the foundations, and our self-build project has become our perfect home. We were careful to begin work on the garden as soon as the mucky building site stage was over; we had a 'dream' list of things we wanted from our garden, and I think we've managed to achieve them:

• A greenhouse - check
• A Potting Shed - check
• Chickens in a fox-proof run - check
• A working kitchen garden - check
• A hive of honey bees
• A pretty, ornamental garden - it's a constant work in progress, but who's garden isn't!

Now, that's quite a lot to expect from such a small plot of land, especially when a large chunk of that is taken over by the dwelling. The biggest boon was removing the Leylandii trees, which by doing a deal with our lovely neighbours, gained us a couple more metres on the length of the back garden and so much more light and rainfall. The garden has thrived!

Successes and Failures

The success of the garden has lead to the downfall of the allotment though. I'm sad about that, and I still haven't officially given it back to the landowner, but I know that it has served it's purpose, helping me meet people in our new village, and giving me a wonderful grounding in growing edibles when I didn't have a suitable space at home.

Once the house was complete and the garden well underway, we allowed pets back into our lives. My husband Paul had grown up with cats, but I've always had small animals, especially guinea pigs and hamsters, and they don't mix terribly well with puss cats, neither does the busy main road on the other side of our fence. We also desperately wanted to keep chickens, ever since watching the Channel 4 'Escape to River Cottage' series with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, so cats weren't really an option.

Positive changes

In the space of 9 years, we have had 7 guinea pigs, 4 hamsters, 3 chickens, some tropical fish and thousands of honey bees, and as we stand now, we have 10 pets in total.

So I started thinking about my blog, and why I struggled to keep it up to date. That's when I realised that it's because it doesn't fit our life anymore. We aren't aspiring allotmenteers now, I'm not trying to win tonnes of prizes at Garden Society shows with my flowers, veg and fruit. Huge chunks of time are now taken up caring for and spending time with our family of pets.

What do I do about that?

Well the gardening and allotmenting lessons I've learned are still very important to me, so I didn't want to end this blog, but I thought that with a slight name change, a freshening face-lift and development of subject matter, I could encourage my little blog to grow with me.

So welcome to "Pumpkin Becki - The story of our garden, built from nothing; and the ever growing collection of pets we share our lives with"

Rebecca xxx

Another Gardening Confession time - It's So Embarassing ...

What have I achieved in the garden?

Here we are, 2nd July,
And I cannot tell you a lie
I haven't sown any seeds at all
Have I hit the gardening 'wall'?

Okay, enough of the dreadful poetry, but it's true, it's 2 months since my last post, and I don't feel much further on than I was then.

But I suppose I have done some things... the weather has been absolutely dreadful, which hasn't helped matters, but I know my heart hasn't been in it so far this year :-(

So what have I done?

My kind neighbour gave me a stack of seedlings, flowers and vegetables, and I've planted most of these out in the garden (please don't mention the lottie :o! ). So I have now got some sweet peas and french beans flowering.

A little bonus I discovered yesterday, is that an unpicked Achocha fruit, from last years plants, has seeded itself into the raised bed, so I've got at least three plants appeared, and they look nice and healthy.

Flowers

The summer bulbs I planted in the 'woodland' garden are starting to pop up and look super, especially the lillies and anemonies. It would be lovely if I had some looking good for the Summer Show.

MiL is moving house this week (sad, but very sensible), and I managed to dig up a couple of particularly pretty Aqueligia from her old garden. It's kind of nice, because now there will always be a little bit of 'Longfield' (my OH's childhood home) here in our garden.

I managed to plant up the hanging basket and window baskets at the front of the house, and they are filling out really well.

I took some cuttings from a nice Dianthus at our old house, and they have taken root and put on new growth, so I've popped them in the garden here at the new house.

I've clipped the hedges back a bit, but the rain has really encouraged them to bounce back, so I have to keep revisiting it.

The delphiniums have flowered quite well (not as well as someone I know), but they do suffer from being under the neighbours monsterous leylandii trees.

I have Hollyhocks about to start flowering - the first ones I've ever managed, so I'm really excited to see them do their thing.

Summer Fruit

I've got lots of summer raspberries forming, which is really exciting, as my little wood mouse has eaten every single strawberry, just before it's been ripe enough to pick - little monkey! So, today I've bought some plastic bell cloches online, and hopefully they will protect the last fruits for me to enjoy.

So...actually, that's quite a lot ... I don't feel so bad now :-)

I'll add some piccies soon.

What a stunning weekend!

Wow, the weather has been fabulous this weekend, so I made the most of it in the garden and at the lottie. 

Saturday afternoon I took down the 'summer' baskets from the front of the house. They really were on their last legs! The baskets have a coir liner, which I have then lined with a piece of compost bag with holes poked in the bottom. This time I cleared out the old plants and scraped out about half the compost, but left the ivy and liner in place.



Then I added fresh compost, and planted up two colours of pansy and two white ericas into each one. Then gave the ivy a bit of a haircut.

 

...not bad! And a darn site tidier than the remnants of the summer baskets that's for sure!!

  

Today, the weather continued to be fine, infact it was even better, as the strong breezes from yesterday had dropped right down. I took the opportunity to pop up to the lottie and plant out my onion sets and shallots. Normally I miss that window of warm dry weather, the Autumn rain sets in and it becomes too wet to plant them out. I end up having to wait until quite late in the year before doing this and the little bulbs sulk in the cold wet soil until the spring, so I am really chuffed that I timed it so well this year. I wore a fleece to walk up to the allotment, but once I arrived I decided it was t-shirt weather. Here's the lottie in the middle of a tidy up... I pulled up the remaining broad bean stalks and supports from bed 1 (in the foreground). Gave it a jolly good weeding , dug it over a bit and then applied Blood, Fish and Bonemeal.

I lightly dug this in and then planted out Shallot Jermor and Golden Gourmet, and 50 Onion Radar sets. Bed 2 got a similar treatment once I had pulled up the last of the pumpkin and squash vines, and here I planted out 100 Shensyu onion sets. I also hacked back a bit of the horseradish foliage (the big green blob in the middle of the picture). The leaves will die back naturally soon, but I needed to get a bit more light to the beetroot growing just to the side of the horseradish. I think we'll have to lift and divide the horseradish as its just a bit too happy where it is, it may try to take over the world soon!! I also applied a dressing of blood, fish and bone to my seriously pathetic leeks! I thought that the recent rain would have really got them off to a flying start, but they've made very little progress in the last month and are still no thicker than a pencil. I had a similar problem last year too.  Last year I bought plantlets of 'Autumn Giant' (phah, that's a joke!) from Sutton Seeds. This year a kind neighbour donated about 100 young Musselburg plants to me.  I just hope the extra feed will get them going again, otherwise I'm at a bit of a loss.

 

My first post...I'm very nervous.

It's two days before the Garden Society Autumn Show, and my garden is looking a bit disasterous.

• My huge pink Dahlias have been munched by earwigs (must remember to put straw-filled flowerpots out next year to catch the little blighters).
• My tomatoes are looking great...but they are all green - not a red one in sight!!
• I have one pathetic french bean
• My carrots are tiny

However, I might be able to scrape together a fair set of shallots, my grapes are looking super, I've got quite a few pumpkins and squashes, some lovely tiny purple chillies called 'Pretty in Purple', and I've managed to grow celery (thanks to my friend Zazen's advice), its quite slender, but its worth a go.

I've entered 21 classes for this show, but I don't think I'll  have enough produce to actually exhibit in that many classes on the day. I haven't looked at the lottie for a couple of weeks, so I'll either get some nice surprises, or some nasty shocks! Eeek!

I'll post an update with some piccies after the show on Saturday.