Keeping on top of Things

Sunday 26/05/13

Katie, Dwayne joined by James Naomi & Dasiy

As you can see with the weather being lovely we have had an explosion of activity going on up the site,

the plants are coming through and we cannot keep on top of planting out and watering everything

so we would just like to say a big thank you to all our volunteers.

This weekend we were joined by a young family with a baby with them, 

 as the up and coming blog entries will show how far this project has come on  we are having trouble to keep  the plants fed and watered.

Here is Naomi with Daisy watering the onions, shes taking an interest from a very early age

Here is James watering the French beans he has just help plant

And here are all three enjoying the sun getting the ground ready to plant out the peas

We have a lot going on over the next few weeks so please watch this space but even better, come up and get involved, we have people from all walks of life getting involved.

Eversheds Give & Gain Day

Friday
17/05/13

Volunteers - Leon, Ben, Huw & James

We have been very busy up at the allotment the last few weeks with organising planting, weeding, and most importantly watering. – it is true what they say that a couple of good weeks of weather make all the difference

So sorry for neglecting this blog..........

So this week we must say a huge thank you to Eversheds the solicitors firm. They have very kindly made a substantial donation from their charity pot, which has gone a very long way in helping us buy much needed equipment for the project.
....not only that, but they also sent four strapping lads down for a day of hard labour through their 'give and gain' scheme.

Heres Katie and the boys from Eversheds Cardiff......

With the money Eversheds donated we were able to purchase a number of items on our 'bucket' list.
A lantern for when when the dark nights draw in, gardening gloves, rake, trowels, a table for seeding and planting in the poly tunnel as well as a water butt and thermometer (it got to 44 degrees in the poly tunnel  this weekend!)

The volunteers were fantastic and extremely productive. They were valuable help and worked efficiently in a team - something they must of learned from working at Eversheds.....

They helped to collect stinging nettles to make a liquid fertilizer. Ben got stuck right in there.....and stung several times too. Thats dedication to the cause Ben!

other jobs they did included painstakingly weeding the potatoes, planting out the runner beans and netting them to protect them from the pesky birds............

The team work I witnessed whilst the guys were building the bamboo teepee's reminded me of those school projects where you had to build the tallest structure out of straws and make it hold a certain weight! There were some very scientific suggestions of the most efficient bamboo teepee structure design, loving your work boys.........

they also proved to be a very dab hand at DIY and built us a few raised beds.

The boys told us they enjoyed their day, and we certainly enjoyed having them join us on the plot. Thank You all so much. You are more than welcome any time boys..........

........................Please come back!!!! 

Doors, Floors and Seedlings!

Saturday & Sunday & Bank Holiday Monday

04 - 06th May 2013

Volunteers - Austin, Dwayne, Liz, Keris, Katie & Katie

The boys made a door very resourcefully from bits and bobs from around the allotment! The poly tunnel company has helpfully only given us enough wood to make half of one door - we need two! 

We had received another delivery of wood chippings - this time we went for 5 tonnes instead of 2. We are learning that this project is much bigger than we expected. We are using this to re-cover the paths now we have edged them.

 The woodchipping is also being used to cover the floor in the poly tunnel. Using the same principle as the paths outside, we laid mesh across the whole floor and then woodchipped over the mesh. We have run this throughout the poly tunnel including under the raised beds as we don't want weeds to grow through the plastic.

It was time to transport all the seedlings from my dining room into the poly tunnel. Austin is happy that we are finally getting our dining room table back, as I have been using it as a greenhouse for the last two months! 

We planted some more seedlings to start their lives in the poly tunnel. We have planted seedlings at four week intervals to ensure that we have a steady flow of growth & so we dont have a glut of one particular thing come harvest season. 

 It was all go this weekend, we had a new volunteer join us, also named Katie (easy to remember). She and I made this rather delightful bamboo structure to house the runner beans when they come through.

Keris and I then went along next to each stick, burrowed a hole, filled it with compost and a runner bean seed. 

Raised Beds & Hopes

Saturday & Sunday
20 & 21/04/2013

Katie, Dwayne & Angharad

The Saturday was a glorious day spent in the sunshine
(suncream is on the shopping list)
Firstly we began to complete the covering of the poly tunnels floor to suppress the weeds

Here are Katie and Angharad adding the woodchippings to complete the suppression,

it was uncomfortably warm in there, but at least we know that the tunnel will work well once its complete.

We had a wonderful surprise later in the day when Grahame Howard of Howard Handy Man Services, rang to say that he had finished making the beautiful raised beds he has produced for us free of charge!!

He sourced the timber from Travis Perkins in Llanishen, the beds are made from railway sleepers which Travis Perkins very kindly donated to Grahame so he could make us some, very much needed, raised beds for the poly tunnel. Fantastic!

Thank You very much for your generosity Grahame Howard & Travis Perkins, from everyone at FareShare.  

Here are Grahame & Dwayne getting the rasied beds into the poly tunnel

http://www.howardhandymanservices.moonfruit.co.uk/

The rasied beds were rather large (and heavy) they measured 8ft by 4ft and we hauled them carefully into the tunnel, that was a lot of hard back breaking work.

Here they are 

(they are bigger than my bed)

Other jobs we carried on with were the general maintenance of the plot, it was a bit windy during the week and blew the felt off the shed and broke a window, so we had a tidy up in the shed, fixed the roof and window. One of the jobs that is taking a while is the path edging, we allocated a lot of free wooden planks but due to their previous life we had a lot of nails to remove to make them usable.

.

Once the planks were ready we carried on edging the paths in kind of straight lines.

Steaming Heaps of Compost

Wednesday 10/04/13

Liz, Katie & Dwayne

Corr we had a delivery today of compost, about 18 tonnes apparently
if you want to know what that looks like, it looks like this

Liz put here car here for scale, she doesnt look impressed
(We got used to the smell)

Our plan was to spread the compost over the top of the plots and then turn it in to improve the condition of the 'well rested' soil, to hopefully break down some of the clay qualities.

Here is Liz attacking a pile with what looks like a makeshift gasmask

And here is Katie spreading it out in the rain, which didn't make it any easier

This is towards the end of the evenings actives the compost was so hot that it was still steaming as we spread it out over the ground!

Further Construction and Planting

Saturday 6th of April
Volunteers Austin, Katie, Liz & Dwayne (who joined later)

It was a very busy day down the allotment today with the emphasis on planting out all the bulbs in the Amaryllidaceae family, which to you and me are onions and shallots.

Firstly we used a bulb dibble tool to make a hole which we packed compost into to help replenish the soil and to give the bulbs something to grow into as the ground is still fairly hard.
We then planted out in rows following a combination of instructions from helpful neighbours the bulb packets and the trustworthy books.

We planted a couple of hundred bulbs in total with loads more still to go!!

To aid identification we improved the signage for the plants (sorry crops still learning the lingo)
we spray painted names onto off cuts and cut them at an angle so they are easy to stick in the ground.

They do look rather splendid...

The main job of the day was to complete the next step of the poly tunnel which wrap it in its polythene casing, this was a job for eager volunteers and we are just that.

It was a mighty job and we didnt understand how much work it would turn out to be

see it doesn't look like a lot of plastic, oh how wrong we were...............
what we had to first was to cover the metal frame it hot guard tape which stops the plastic from melting to the frame.
It look a lot of effort to get the tape on straight (well in a line)

Once the  frame was  prepped it was time to commit and get the covering on, so we placed the polythene in the middle of the frame and slowly folded out the plastic.

(the hand is there just to grab the polythene if it tried to blow away)

Katie and Austin giving a sense of scale to how big it actually is

The next task was to get the plastic frame nice and tight so we had to bury the plastic in the trench we had previously dug and the soil would provide a large weight which would pull down and keep the polythene nice and tight, this took a lot of effort as we had to get out all creases or folds and we did this by starting in the middle and working our way to the corners.

 When we got to the ends of the tunnel we buried in the trench shuffling the plastic around to create a nice tight tension, and fitted the door frames.

Here is the nearly completed poly tunnel with us still working hard as the sun sets behind us.

Once the door frames went in we just cut out the plastic to the doors and this is how we left it at about half eight in the evening

Friday 29th March 2013 (Good Friday)

Volunteers - Katie, Liz, Austin & Angharad

The poly tunnel had arrived at the Fareshare depo, so we used the van to transport all the bits down to the site. The tunnel is a beastly 30ft long x 14ft wide x 7ft tall and consists of many confusing parts. We had been told that if you can put together a peice of Ikea furniture then you can put this together too......

Poly Tunnel being unloaded from the van.........

.........Even that was enough to warrant a sit down and a cuppa!

Our first method of construction was to follow the instructions to the letter. It recommended measuring out the positions of the foundation tubes using Pythagorus' theorem!!

 It wasn't long before we got frustrated with the fact that each time we checked our measurements they seemed to have changed by as much as 5 inches! 

After 3 hours of agonizing measuring, digging and leveling we arrived at the decision that we would just lay out all the pieces, put the frame together and use the extremely precise method of just plonking it in the holes and adjusting the foundation tubes to fit. 

The moment of truth as the frame went up..........

By Jove! We did it! 

We had taken the advice of another plot holder and gone to Homebase to get some ready mix concrete to hold the foundation tubes in position. This will ensure that the structure wont blow away in any strong winds. 

The frame was up just in time to watch the sunset over the plot. Although it was still a chilly 4 degrees, today you could smell spring in the air!

This was todays plan.....and we achieved it! 

Saturday 30th March 2013

Volunteers - Katie & John

Today was a beautiful sunny day, I almost felt warm at one point! John and I made some path edges for the main path - which we plan to do to all our paths in time. This is to stop the woodchippings on the path blending into the main growing space. 

To make a path edge we got a length of wood and nailed to steak pieces to each end to anchor the plank into the ground

John sawing the steaks at a right angle so the wood can be easily malleted into the ground.