More herbs

We went to another herb nursery recently and got a few more herbs. This time we got some wormwood, some thyme, some mint, some chamomile and a rosemary.

I'll write up a definitive list shortly. For now, I've put them in place still in their pots in the herb bed.

The two tall plants are rosemary and jasmine.

Finally, the sweetpeas are doing well, so here's a shot. I got lots of flowers yesterday.

The long view

Here's a nice overview of the plot with its various beds and structures.

rampant rhubarb

This stuff just goes from strength to strength. We can't get through it quickly enough. So far Laura's made rhubarb crumble, stewed rhubarb, rhubarb and cinnamon torte, rhubarb and polenta muffines and rhubarb fool. She's planning some rhubarb and rosewater pavlovas for some of the next crop.

Where there's muck there's brassicas

We finally got around to planting out the brassica seedlings we'd been nurturing in the shed and then hardened off on the outdoor shelves. They look pretty good. We've planted a row of purple-sprouting broccoli (for summer) and some brussels sprouts (for Christmas dinner and winter in general). We had loads in the end but gave the remainder to our neighbour, John, and the rest were snapped up at the allotment seed exchange.

The green net was hidden round the back of the shed when we took over. We untangled it and let it dry and it's spot on for detering birds and cats from nibbling our crops. We made the stakes it's tied to ourselves and I think the final effect is pretty good.

compost bin

I've managed to repair/replace our rather old compost bin with a new, improved version made from the ubiquitous bits of pallet. Once you start looking for the things you realise they're everywhere - just waiting for your allotment gardener to grab and take apart for various construction schemes. Anyway, here's the transformation in all its glory.

Growth

I took a few pictures of the growth that's happened over the last few days. First is a comparison of the herbs from ten days ago.

I was given some lettuce plants, which I planted by the apples and raspberries. I also planted the first of my salad plants. They are from an Italian salad mix. You can see them in the second row behind the more compact lettuces.

In the photo below, you can see the salad leaves in their pots (under the radio). You can also see my brassicas (left of the picture), the apple mint (middle) and sweet peas (left). They have hardened off and should go in soon. I'm told that I should protect the brassicas, so I'll have to build a net over them. Luckily I found one in the shed clear-out.

There are blossoms on one of the apple cordons. I'm meant to take them off this year so that the plants concentrate on their growth, but I'll leave them on for a bit to enjoy.

The other fruit has put on more growth (cue another shot of the rhubarb). We've picked a lot of this and it's still going strong.

The quince is looking good, though the cuttings I took are looking a bit sorry for themselves.

Finally, the raspberries have started bushing out. They're not as tall as some of the others around the site, but they're only just in and look bushier than some.

Planting the herbs

We planted the mints in tubs to keep them under control. I'm hoping they'll fill out nicely and share space. Let's see. Here's the garden mint, the black peppermint and the Moroccan mint. We placed the tubs at the end of each path.

All the other herbs went into the herb bed. Some of them are going to be quite big, so I left a lot of room for them. It's quite a sad little herb bed just now, though we did get some golden feverfew (Tanacetum parthenium 'Aureum') and apple mint (Mentha suaveolens) today. Notice that the apple mint is the same species as the pineapple mint we've already planted, but it's not variegated. It's leaves are incredibly hairy.

They are from Rouken Glen, where we went to get a max/min thermometer after the DIY shop had only digital ones that required batteries. There's no point in recording temperatures with a thermometer that can run out of batteries overnight when it's the coldest night of the year, for example. The one we got is the standard mechanical/chemical one that won't run out of batteries.

You can see the bit of the herb bed that is planted so far. The curly wood sage is in the foreground, with the common sorrel and various chives to the back left. The purple sage is to the right, towards the quince's stake. You can see a mint planter at the back.

The view from above shows the bare ground. I'm going to fill that with either lots of annual herbs (basil, etc.) or a flower seed mix I've been given.

Compost bin

On a tangent to the herb thread (which I'll continue in a sec), I built the second compost bin.

I'm attaching old carpet round the sides to exclude light, as some nettles and others are still growing. I've done most of the original one and one side of the new one. The hanging piece of carpet above is for the left-hand side.

I've also added a bit of old compost and some weeds to the new pile.

Starting a Herb Garden

I read an article about Jekka's Herb Farm and thought, "Let's get some exciting herbs and fill the herb bed." Unfortunately I was put of by high postage to bring the plants up from Bristol (and Bristol's warmer, etc). I went on the Internet and found two great-looking nurseries, one on the Ayrshire/D&G border and one in Perthshire. Unfortunately they both opened for the season on Easter Sunday and we couldn't go to both, so we went to Plants with Purpose in Perthshire. The Ayrshire one is Barwinnock Herbs. Hopefully we'll get there sometime.

We had a great time in Perthshire and the nursery was a cool little back-garden operation with many excellent kinds of herbs and medicinal plants.

We got, from back to front, left to right:

• Lemon catnip (Nepeta cataria citriodora)
• Black peppermint (Mentha x piperita vulgaris)
• Sorrel (Rumex acetosa)
• Welsh onions (Allium fistulosum)
• Chives (Allium schoenoprasum)
• Saffron (Crocus sativus)
• Pineapple mint (Mentha suaveolens 'Variegata')
  
• Purple sage (Salvia officinalis Purpurescens)
• Lime mint (Mentha x piperita f. citrata 'Lime')
• Horehound (Marrubium vulgare)
• Grapefruit mint (Mentha x piperita f. citrata 'Grapefruit')
• Curly wood sage (Teucrium scorodonia 'Crispum')
• Moroccan mint (Mentha spicata var. crispa 'Moroccan')
• Basil mint (Mentha x piperita f. citrata 'Basil')
• Lavender mint (Mentha x piperita f. citrata 'Lavender')
• Garlic chives (Allium tuberosum)
  

I've put them all in, which is for another post. To finish, here are some bonus photos of the herb garden in a box.

Hopefully I'll get to visit Jekka's Herbs at some point when I'm down south.

Seedlings

I pricked out a few brassica seedlings and put them in individual modules. you can see them on the bench in the photo below. The mass of seedlings at the back are the ones I didn't prick out. I'm going to give them away at the swap day in a few weeks, as well as save some just in case.

You can see my sweetpea seedlings at the front-left and salad seedlings at the back-left. One of the nicest surprises was to see the sweetpeas I'd planted in the open ground next to the raspberry posts have germinated. I really stamped the ground there, so I'm very happy they are managing.

Laura sowed freesia and hop seeds two days ago and we've got herbs seeds sown, as well as a couple of courgette seeds for in a tub, tomatoes, chillies and sunflowers. I also have some thyme seedlings, which I'm quite proud of.

Shed, inside and out

I worked a bit more on the path to the new compost bin and replaced the random bits of sandstone with some bricks that had been abandoned by the front door of the allotments.

They are very flat on the sides and a bit rough on top. I think they were used in a driveway or pavement with the smoothe sides up and were thus quite deep. I took the easy way out and used the largest surface area as my path. It's flat enough to walk on and use a wheelbarrow on, so suits my purpose fine.

I found the green netting when clearing out the inside of the shed. It was in a plastic bag filled with water, so I left it out to dry.

I gutted the inside of the shed and repositioned the benches. I now have lots of space to put seedlings and seed trays so they are near the light. As it was, as soon as something germinated, I didn't have anywhere to put it.

I'm going to build shelves under the long bench on the right to add more space. With the new benches in place I've moved all my seedlings down from the flat. I'll chat about them next.

Growth and spring

Time for some more photos of growth. First off, the strawberry trough and pots on the patio.

The strawberry trough looks excellent, but I think I might put the bulbs elsewhere once they are done because the strawberries might suffer from being shaded by the leaves. That would involve disturbing the strawberries though, so I'll think on.

The flower patch is looking good now. I still need to plug gaps with the potted bulbs. Some flowers have overflowed into the first path, which looks quite nice, so I'm going to leave them for the moment.

The rhubarb patch is looking excellent. Not long now. Actually, I think some are ready.

The sticks in the nursery bed are budding better than anything else in the garden. That could be shock from being cut off and rammed into the ground. I hope that they take. The quince cuttings are certainly much further ahead than the tree they came from.

Finally, the garlic is going very well. I'm very proud of it all.

We've also got a line of radishes and a line of spring onions where the leeks are going to go alongside the raspberries. The radishes (French Breakfast and Munchen Bier) have germinated. No sign of the spring onions yet.

Water collection

One of the more urgent items on my to-do list is guttering to collect water and direct it into my water butt (collected from Polmadie dump and is my best find). The water butt by itself collected about a centimetre of water over two or three weeks, which is fairly pathetic. No wonder as its surface area is less than a square metre.

So I rigged up some guttering to flow round the shed from the compost bins, round the back and then back along to the water butt. You can see the end of it below.

There are little holes to be plugged where nails have been bashed through the guttering at some point and a join that's not water-tight, but it's working. It's not rained for a while, but over the course of a day or so of wet weather it collected 10cm or so of water. It's not rained since of course, but that amount has got me through more than a week of watering seedlings and seeds.

I raised the butt up so that I could get my watering can in.

The final touch will be connecting the down pipe to the end of the gutter. That will guide water down, rather than rely on gravity (that's not so good on windy days when mini water falls can be blown off course). I also need to add a lid to keep detritus out, or so the books say. That's low on my list.

Quince strap

I replaced the bin bag that was helping to support the quince with a proper strap.

New compost bin

The compost bin is absolutely overflowing and I can't get anything else into it. This photo from the back doesn't do it any justice. I'll get another of the front because I forgot this time. That's over six feet of organic waste from just my side of the plot.

You can see where I've started the new compost bin round the back of the old one. It's got a moderate amount of new material in it and a little bit of existing compost to start it off.

I've got only one pallet for it so far and even if I had another one, I couldn't get it in because of all the scrap wood i've stuffed down the side there. I'm going to buzz-saw that up next week.

The main problem with the new bin is that the path to get to it is mainly a border filled with ferns. I have to cross into the neighbouring plot to get to it sometimes. And to get to that path I have to go through a weed-infested border on my side. So, once I'd sorted out the nursery bed, which made up half of the weedy border, I put in some stones to start a path round to the compost area. It looks rubbish now, because it is, but I'll level them and fill the gaps with herbs and the like.

Nursery bed

Before I get onto the nursery bed, here's how the final cross-plot path is looking.

I've filled a bit with bark chippings and finished the junction with the path through the fruit area.

I've done only one side of the fruit path and three bricks of the other side, but you can get the idea. The stomped grass in the pathway is about 10cm higher than the final path will be, so I feel quite high when standing on it (it's also higher than the concrete area). There's quite a large drop where the small slab is (in the foreground) where I carved out some of the turf.

On to the nursery bed. John (my plot-mate in 65a) donated some blackcurrant cuttings, which are about 90cm long. He got an established bush from his father-in-law who pruned it and suggested using the trimmings. I've put them in a new nursery bed, which used to be covered by a messy compost heap. It's right next to the apples at the end of the concrete area.

I've also put two cuttings from the quince tree in the bed on the off chance that they'll take (they are at the back right). My hope is that they'll be successful and give me a chance to try out an experiment in grafting. The theory goes like this:

• Quinces are often used as stock for pear grafts.
• Pears can also be grafted onto hawthorn (do you see where this is going?).
• Therefore, quinces can be grafted onto hawthorn.

Of course horticultural techniques rarely follow such general rules, no matter how logical. However, I'm going to give it a go as I may have spare quince buds (it's bud grafting that's required) and have a hawthron hedge that could be jazzed up with quince branches.

Growth

Spring is almost here (I think it is here, but never mind). The flower bed is filling with the transplanted daffodils from the rest of the plot, though some are still dotted randomly in the other beds.

There are certainly enough flowers to last us through the spring. I planted garlic a few weeks back and it's coming on nicely. It's next to the raspberries. I'm working on the theory that the garlic will keep harmful insects away from the raspberries, but should use marigolds instead as they are better known for that. It's a bit of an experiment (more on experimentation later).

The snowdrops from Burton Agnes have settled well and have fat seeds pods, which is good news for future snowdrops under the hedge. The smaller ones in the photo are from the compost heap on the allotment and are a bit further behind. No seeds from them either, by the look of it.

Check out the buds on the hedge. It won't be long until the leaves are out.

The last set of photos show the rhubarb bed. This little patch is looking pretty good. I'll probably split it come the autumn and fill any gaps in the rest of the bed.

You can see that this patch is much further on than the others. There are quite a few buds breaking out, but not throughout the bed. I think the hedge maybe suppressed some growth; with it modified and more simpathetic (privet is less forgiving than hawthorn) things should get better.