New Beginnings

Spring is around the corner and so Matt's Patch is being reborn. Yes - I'm back!

I have been given a new allotment in the village which means I should be able to spend more time there, or rather, it should be easier to pop in and do bits and bobs.
I hand over the cash and get to see where my plot is on March 5th.

In the mean time I have taken advantage of the slight warming of the weather to plant some seeds.

A week ago (Feb 19th) I planted the following:

• Tomatoes - Sweet Million F1
• Tomatoes - Alicante
• Peppers - multi-coloured rainbow mix
• Broad beans left over from a two years ago - will they work? I'll let you know!

Although I'll be getting a variety of potatoes from Coventry Market, I picked up a few of these blue ones while I have having a scout around the market stall. I think they're the same as these.

Still alive

Hello!

Just a quick update to say Matt's Patch is still alive although slowing down now.

We're still getting loads of raspberries from our autumn canes. There is even one cucumber still growing in the greenhouse!

Today Emily and I went and lifted all the potatoes that were remaining in the allotment. I wasn't holding out much hope given the prolonged dry weather earlier in the year.
However, we were rewarded well and best of all we got loads of Pink Fir Apples! I was panicking a bit because I could not remember where I planted them with the other spuds. I made a little map when I planted them but they were missing off that too! Anyway, I boiled up a couple to try and they are the finest potatoes I have tasted for a long while. Fantastic flavour and of course a great shape!

I'll upload some pics tomorrow (no promises though!)

First Strawberry!

Just a quick one to say we had our first strawberry of the year last week.

First strawberry of the year

Obviously there was the ceremonial cutting and sharing of it. Only three ways mind, as Mrs Matt does not like strawberries!
It was off one of the three strawberry plants that were taken last year as cuttings from runners and kept in the greenhouse over winter and only went outside about a month ago. There are lots more fruit on them and we've had another red one since. Yummy.

Newly laid turf

The people who lived in our house prior to us moving in decided to put round beds in the middle of the lawns. Now this may look pretty - well, they would if they had nice flowers in them - but they are a royal pain when it comes to mowing.

So a couple of weeks ago we decided that we'd do away with at least one of them - the one by the greenhouse. This is what it looked like (pic taken winter 2008-09)

This was how the lawn looked before Emily's work

So we started the job and Emily took it upon herself to dig out all the plants that were in the bed. This was not an easy task considering the vegetation was in full growth. After a few hours of hard work and sheer determination she had dug everything out. Well done Emily - fantastic job!

The next day I set about squaring off the edges and levelling the earth. I gave it all a good soaking and then laid some rolls of plush new turf.

This is the result:

New lawn

After laying the turf I kept it well watered over then next few days to make sure the roots didn't dry out while it was knitting into the earth.

The hardest job was making sure that the new turf was level with the existing garden. In some places this is not quite right but there's not a lot I could do about it at the time.

We're really pleased with it and it's opened up the lawn a lot. We plan to do the other round bed in due course.

Cucumber News

I'm growing four cucumber plants this year which is almost certainly too many (I know the picture has five seedlings but one was a spindly outcast). But I'd rather have too many than not enough. Again I bought a packet of all-female plants to save the hassle of having to remove any male flowers. The variety is Passandra and is 'mini' type - you pick the fruit when they are about 15cm long.

After a few days in my home-made propagators this is the state of them on the 24th March:

Young Cucumber seedlings

Well, it's nearly 10 weeks on and now look at them! The cucumbers themselves are already a nice size. The biggest one at the moment is over 5cm so not long to wait ...

Loads of flowers on the cucumbers

They've been re-homed into the old recycling boxes and I've put up some netting in the greenhouse for them to climb up. Hopefully it should be able to bear their weight.

The Courgettes are getting bigger

And here they are in the very overcrowded greenhouse! My only concern now is that as they grow they'll start to block out light to the other plants.

Lots of pots in the greenhouse

If you look closely you can see the irrigation system which is part of another hi-tech project and will be reported on soon - once it's up and running!

Germinating Courgette

Both last year and this I've grown courgettes from seed. What has amazed me is how large the seedlings are and how quickly they grow.

So this got me thinking - a germinating courgette seed would be the ideal thing to film in timelapse.
So I downloaded the trial version of HandyAVI and set it up in the office with a webcam pointing at a small pot containing compost and one zucchini seed.

HandyAVI is a very cool piece of software - it can do lots of things beside timelapse. I set it up to record a frame every 3.5 minutes. After a few days I was rewarded with the following video:

Even thought it seems bright in the office, it seems that the seedling grows taller than normal, searching out better light.

Been a while

My goodness I can't believe it's been sooooo long since I posted anything.

So, a quick round up of what's been going on is in order.

I've planted lettuces - lots of lettuces - and they've come up well and gone into the planter outside with a second crop in the greenhouse. I've been a bit more sparing with the seeds in this second lot as the first batch was far too many!

Hmm, maybe too many lettuce seeds

Last year's sweetcorn did not do very well at all and I think I read somewhere that they don't like their roots being disturbed so this year I've planted them in the inner cardboard tubes from loo rolls. You then put the whole thing in the the soil when you plant it out.

Sweetcorn, in toilet roll tubes

On the allotment front, the weeds and grass have been growing faster than I'd have thought possible - far faster than anything that I could grow myself!
I've been slowly digging out areas for planting, with this bed containing peas and runner beans. I've put mesh over the top to try and stop the birds having a free lunch.

Peas and beans under mesh

After a couple of weeks the peas have made an appearance - nothing much of note from the beans though. It's been far to cold and dry. May seems to have been quite a rubbish month so far.

The peas have come up despite the dry weather

The frost we had in early May has hit everyone's plants, potatoes especially. Luckily mine had not come up too much (they were planted on Easter Sunday) so the leaves they lost seem to have been replaced with new green growth. Hopefully they'll catch up. Somewhere I have a 'back-of-an-envelope' map of what varieties I planted where. I'll have to find it so I know what's what before too long.

Frostbitten potatoes

I must update more often... I must update more often... I must update more often... I must update more often... I must update more often... ;-)