Hello to me!

[tim_n]

Hi

Just joined about five minutes ago after recommendations to come this way from MSE Green Fingers, Downsizer & selfsufficientish.com

I live in a flat with no garden, but have an allotment close by in Rochford, Essex.  I run a blog on www.waark.com as I have chicken and duck like aspirations, but unfortunately that is a no-no by our local council at present.

By day I work for a large government body which allegidly deals with the railways, by mid afternoon & late evening and weekend I am mostly split by St John Ambulance, a scout unit and my allotment.  Somewhere in there fits my fiance-soon-to-be-wife.  Silly woman.

I'm also the owner and maintainer of our local allotment society website http://www.ralga.org.uk - but there's nothing really on there at the moment.  I'm thinking of setting it up on googlesites so everyone on the allotment can host their own site/blog etc.

My current obsessions are:

- trying to grow asparagus.  I've failed three years running.
- trying to grow and then eat more than 10% of the spuds I harvest
- getting a partial working permaculture system on the go.  I've been encouraging frogs down my allotment, but haven't really had an awful lot of luck so far and all I've ended up doing is creating a death trap for small children.  And a perfect enviroment for slugs.

Late last year I attempted to try a harlow carr 3x3 bed system.  It worked after a fashion but I failed to realise the dream by being distracted by shiny things.  I've also tried the two sisters bed (that's the sweetcorn which just about grows, the courgettes that took over the world and the slug infested climbing beans which did not so much as climb but be eaten from the ground up.  Bah.

Last year I finally got round to building a dedicated bed for my asparagus, so I've got my fingers crossed, built a shed and erected a greenhouse.  In recent news I've been weeding, split my rhubarb yesterday which was making a bid to be the first rhubarb in space or at least eclipse the sun and am looking forward to tonight, planting elephant garlic in cardboard tubes in my shed.  What a life I lead...

[tim_n]

[shirlton]

Welcome to the site Tim-n. Hope you enjoy yourself on here

[nilly71]

Welcome to the site Tim. Good luck with the asparagus, i'm starting my first one soon so we can compare notes :)

How big is your plot?

Neil

[tim_n]

it's a half plot - I wanted a full plot but over the past two years I've barely coped with half!  25% is covered with a plastic greenhouse, pond, compost heap, water barrel, & shed. another 40% is covered with raised beds and the rest is a mixure of couch grass, a few fruit sticks, couch grass and couch grass.

[cornykev]

Hi Timn  and welcome to the world of daft allotmenteers, :P  what do you do in your spare time.  ;D ;D ;D

[saddad]

Welcome to the site Tim, have you two set a date yet? I did a Feb 1/2 term 23 years ago so as not to disturb the growing season!!
Asparagus is well worth the effort. We've almost cleared the couch from our fifth plot, but did start 15 years ago...  ;D

[Old bird]

Hi Tim!

Welcome!  

I, luckily, have an organic asparagus farm down the road from me although I did buy some of their 3 year old plants that they had left over when they were planting a new field last year so maybe I will have a few of my own!

Although I allowed my chickens to potter where the bed is and among the jerusalem artichokes so maybe I won't be too successful!

Why do you bother with spuds?  I tend to ignore them to a degree because you can buy a huge bag of spuds for £5.00 or so and to me the space is more precious for more expensive things like strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, goosegogs etc.  etc (your girlfriend may forgive you the time you spend up the lottie if you grew lovely fruit for her! Just an idea though!  

You sound like the ideal person to tackle your council into allowing you to have chickens on the lottie!  As it is a current "trendy trend" they may just change the rules and that would use up your unused space then and they would certainly sort out your couch grass for you!

I have never heard of a Harlow bed system - what does it do - how do you make it and is it worth making?

As for frogs - check out some frog spawn from someone who has some and pop it into your pond - that may be the way forward for your frogs - but remember if you use a strimmer to tidy the paths or anything there is nothing worse than an injured slow worm or frog - complete abject horror!

If you have a proper coffee place within your work why not try to get the used ground coffee and put that round your beans - it is not infallible although they don't generally like it much!

Anyway - good to meet you - and good luck with your plot this year!

Old Bird

;D

[manicscousers]

Hiya, Tim, nice to meet you  ;D
good luck for 2009  ;D

[lorna]

Welcome to A4A, you won't find a better site.

[ACE]

Why ever do you want frogs on your allotment?  2 or 3 years down the line you will kill the lot of them filling in  the pond because it is too dangerous for the children. I can never understand why people have to frig about with nature. Frogs have far better places to go. The one or 2 slugs they might eat in a year will make no difference at all. A hedgehog passing through will eat more in half an hour.

[hippydave]

Frogs should be encouraged in every garden and allotment, if you have water and they spawn you can end up with 100s of slug eaters and they can get under things where the slugs hide that hedgehogs cant frogs will stay in the area longer.

[tonybloke]

Wotcha Tim!!
Frogs are a fantastic addition to a wildlife friendly garden, and they do keep the slug population down, I even have a couple of them move into the greenhouse in the summer! ;)
A piece of 4 or 6 inch reinforcing mesh laid over your pond will save any children freom falling into it. ;)

[Squash63]

Hi Tim, welcome to the group.
Good luck with your asparagus, some people on our site grow it easily but I'm not one of them.  Let us know how you get on.

[SamLouise]

Hello, Tim, welcome to A4A :)

[star]

 ;D ;D ;D ;D Hey up Tim, from another permy nutter. Your plot sounds great, so does your pond. Cover it as suggested to make it safe for the young 'uns.

Good luck with your asparagus, good to have you on board ;)

[Lauren S]

Hello Tim and welcome to A4A from me too  ;D

Happy growing in 2009

[tim_n]

plenty of coffee grounds here from the machine and would save the cleaner from emptying it.  Is it the slugs or the beans that don't like it?

Going to dig up the pond this year (it's more muddy stagnant slush than a pond anyway and I'm going to move it and replace it with a much bigger fibreglass one I got from a skip (the last was made from plastic from a sofa.

The frogs last year did a lot of damage to the slug population.  They got all the really big ones and just bit off the tasty head bits, leaving the dead body behind - hopefully that meant they killed off more of the little blighters.

saddad - we're booked in for late june, but we're not having the honeymoon till november.  Instead we're going to potter around after the wedding in England for a few days as a mini-moon.  Or so I've been instructed.

Fortunately she does help out down there (We're supposed to share the workload 50/50, but both of us always feel the other does less, so I'm counting the hours down there...) so generally it works with me turning the compost and her eating the strawberries.  We currently have two goosebery bushes, several raspberry & logan berry, 1 rhubarb (currently in 4-5 pieces), dwarf apple, grape vine (not yet planted) and many, many strawberry plants.

[caroline7758]

Welcome to the site,Tim. Sounds like you have a busy life!

Don't mind Ace, he likes to stir things up. ;)

Here's a bit about the Harlow Carr beds- not far from me.

http://mygarden.rhs.org.uk/blogs/alisons_blog/archive/2007/01/23/first-blog-from-the-harlow-carr-3-x-3m-plot.aspx

[Old bird]

plenty of coffee grounds here from the machine and would save the cleaner from emptying it.  Is it the slugs or the beans that don't like it?


Hi Tim

They don't like moving over it as it is uncomfortable for them plus it still smells fairly strongly of coffee.  It certainly is not fool proof but has helped me!  It is not ideal putting large wadges of it over the beds as it tends to make a crust over the earth and the rain bounces off it - but I just break the surface gently with a fork or trowel if this happens and you are off again!

I get mine from a coffee shop and I get about 3 bucketfuls a week! So I use a fair bit of the stuff and the ground has certainly improved enormously and I am finding works everywhere now - which is what I want!


Old Bird

;D