Allotment Clearance & A Failed Idea
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 12 апр 2024
- Really random day of pottering around trying to find jobs to do when it's raining outside and you're not dressed for the cold!
Support the channel:
If you enjoyed this video and want to donate to help me keep making them you can do so at: / natjb or make one-off donations through ko-fi.com/naturallyjb or at paypal.me/naturallyjb. Thank you so much for considering this, times are hard and there is no pressure!
Affiliate Links:
► Fancify your garden or greenhouse with Copagrey! Use discount code JB10 at checkout for 10% off staging, potting benches and seed shelves! www.copagrey.com/shop/
► 10% off Grown Local seed orders with code 'NATJB': grownlocal.co.uk/ref/Naturall...
► Plan your allotment layout FREE with Vegplotter at: vegplotter.com/?a=JBPLOT ► 20% off the paid version with code JBPLOT
► My Favourite Garden & Filming Gear: kit.co/NaturallyJB
► Garden Supplies, Crop Protection & Raised Beds: Harrod Horticultural tinyurl.com/298v6bpo
► Failed crop or forgotten seed!? Plug Plants: J Parker's tinyurl.com/2d8adpqj
(Not quite) Live shows!
Potty Mouth Garden Podcast uploaded every Monday at 7pm! @pottymouthgardenclub
Playlists:
All my uploads, starting from 2020!: • Overgrown Allotment Tr...
My allotment diaries: • Allotment Diaries
Beginner guide series: • The First Steps | How ...
My (long) Greenhouse Build: • Greenhouse Works Begin...
Instagram:
I'm not very regular at posting and mostly just take pictures of insects and butterflies and nice things like that: / naturally_jb
Cit a piece of wood From 2 by 2 wood to fit in the ends of the scaffold poles and hammer down to give a means to screw a cross baton on. You can cut the over shoot off. I use dowelling that fits snug. I made 40 metres of blackberry hedging with 6 different types of blackberries which crop at different times with comfrey for compost and weed suppression,and early flowing bulbs for cut flowers growing in between. Easy crop just top the 50cm beds with wood chip in autumn and prune out old canes. Apache is the best variety. Just built a small water tank within poly connected underground to a large tank next to allotment water tap . Easy watering.
I'd rather watch one of my favourite youtube gardeners than watch the news (depressing these days) or most of what passes for television in North America these days ("reality" TV is about as unreal as it gets). I find this relaxing, inspiring and educational.
I bought a cheap ‘portable digital luggage scale up to 50kg capacity’ to weigh my produce at the plot, fits easily into a pocket along with a plastic bag to use for weighing and transporting crops home. Enjoy your growing season 🌶️ 🍅 🥔
To faff or not to faff that is the question. Psychologically we all would like to see ourselves as brilliant engineers structuring our gardens like NASA planning to land on the moon. Sadly I am not that person. Confession : I am a bodger. I use superglue. Add in a touch of technological incompetence, fingers crushed by cricket balls and an imagination that is Tolkienesque - you get a fun garden - a beautifully researched garden but utter complete chaos. JB : you can work a camera You are an engineer. Build your pea structures like you did for your home garden. I have trouble tying two bamboo canes together😂
I think commercial strawberry growers grow their strawberries in a long raised trough in a poly tunnel to get an early crop. Obviously deeper than gutters but not deeper than a hanging basket.
The weather has definitely been the story of this winter and Spring and it has been quite demotivating at times. I planted out some more salads and brassicas at the weekend only to have hailstones yesterday. Grr I hope the netting protected them a bit.
The fencing pin idea for plant supports is great. I did buy some a few weeks ago with a view to arranging them to make an easier version of a brassica cage for the short ones as I use water pipe hopes and it is annoying to try to work out how to keep raising them with ever longer bits of bamboo cane inside.
As you say a real faff. I totally sympathise as plant supports and netting things are my pet faff jobs too. I struggle with the best ways to protect the crops from everything else that wants to eat it, dig it up, poo on it .....!! It is the part about veg gardening I don't like. But it is a necessary evil. I really enjoying watching the vids, alway find something useful from them and they are always entertaining 😃
I'm adding a trellis atm, its 3ft at the front, 5.5 at the back, but I've used 2x1 secured to the bed, I'm going to add string at the back and wire at the front. I'm in a wind spot in the garden so it was needed. However hopefully it will not blow down.
If you want a challenge with cutting stems, try growing Portuguese walking stick kale.
Wow just looked at some pictures of that! Amazing
Hi JB, all your seedlings are doing well. Tough job chopping up those stems of your green sprouting broccoli. I love chopping up the plant waste too & it is therapeutic 😊 I went to my plot yesterday for the day with no plans but, I got lots done with some chill time thrown in too 😉 thanks for sharing and take care 😊
Good show JB, scaffold clamps are 7/16th Whitworth thread, (20.83mm AF) you can buy a specific scaffold spanner (7 quid at toolstation) or at a push 21mm will be a bit oversize may round the nut if it's seazed tight, 6 sided 21mm socket would do it, but the 12 sided 21mm sockets will probably spin and round the nut off
You always come through! I managed to get them yesterday with a 6 sided 21mm but my god it was a struggle!
I so agree with you - faffy jobs! When I look at old pics of allotments they look so open and lovely. A few wigwams, no hoops and nets covering everything!
Yes it was interesting reading recently about how many of our pests like allium leaf miner and carrot fly are relatively recent arrivals! I'm sure they still had to keep pigeons off the brassicas though!
An idea for the scales, JB. If you get one of the scales that fishermen use to weigh their catch, you can just hang a carrier bag from it that'll weigh nothing in itself, but be good for your harvest. They won't take up much room and cost about a tenner.
Perfect idea, thank you!
Hi JB
- strawberries in gutters outside may be a goer but inside perhaps too much watering?? Perhaps when you get your shed fixed several rows attached to the outsides might work. You could also try cut and come again lettuce/salad crops
- using your mower seems a brilliant idea. I see people do this in the autumn with leaves
- those faffing jobs are a necessary evil just embrace it and feel the satisfaction of a job well done
- fencing pins .. use three in a row and then lay bamboo along the tops resting in the crooks. It makes laying netting neater and two rows form a cage over a bed
- fencing pins can also be used for stabilising frames eg trallis as they can be hammered deep into the ground (I've just done that to stabilise an obelist on a very windy postion supporting an evergreen passion fruit)
- don't become obsessed with weighing everthing it's all about the process, being out in the fresh air and the calming peacefulness that gardening brings
- vertically growing peas, beans and baby squash over arch ways, across two beds, is perhaps the way to go. See jessie at Plot 37, she's put two along side one another with a gap between then lays long bamboo canes across them from end to end to give much more stability ans once its done is there from year to year 👍
Keep up the good work 😃
JB we use gutter for strawberries works very well
Loved this update. I enjoy chopping up bits for the compost. It’s hard work but strangely satisfying
We have huge guttering for the farm sheds, they’d hold a fair bit of soil if you could source some off cuts of that
In terms of cost of the allotment and what I produce, I kind of gave up on that. I know it's cheaper to buy potatoes than grow them and I know that the expense I put out most likely doesn't save me any money at all, in fact it is probably a loss! But that is not why I do this. I just love seeing things grow that I have nurtured. I love that what I've grown is on the plate a couple of hours after I've picked it. I love preparing to cook what I have grown. I think it tastes better, or at least physiologically it certainly does! Also, I do this because it makes me feel good mentally and also gives me a very good physical workout! My wife and I adore our time on the allotment regardless of our successes or failures. If you relax there is a lot of humour in allotment growing. And that is where the cost has no value because at the end of the day, wellbeing is priceless.
100% ! I completely agree about the humor, that's why I'm laughing through about 50% of my videos 😆
JB. I think a gutter with strawberries would look wonderful, but, I think keeping it wet enough, inside a tunnel, would be a bit of a problem
In my first year of growing I bought a heated propagator and a greenhouse. I built four raised beds. The greenhouse base on in my sloping garden had to be dug out and prepared before a greenhouse was even possible. I then kitted it out. I guestimated that my first harvest worked out at about £600 a radish hahaha. That was three years ago and in terms of food and flowers I've produced since, the best investment I ever made
Love it
I bet those were the most delicious radishes you've ever grown 😆
I'm the same with the vertical growing and plant supports.... I begrudge forking out on some rubbish supports from a garden shop, I want to build my own but can't commit to buying all the parts.... so my latest plant support for beans is bamboo weaved through chicken wire. It actually did the job well considering and super easy/cheap. But now I have random bamboo and chicken wire lying round the plot where it's not a "real" item... a job half done is as good as none lol
The price of timber these days does make building your own a little trickier now. I think everyone's plots have a lot of chicken wire lying around!! Bamboo in the ground always scares me because if it snaps your entire plant structure goes!
Hi JB. Those brassica stems will break down much faster in your composter if you bash them with a club hammer first. They split very easily.
I have planted strawberries in gutters for the last two years-mine are outside, so watering is done by Mother Nature in the spring, and drip irrigation in the summer! I do have drain holes & I do have to feed them quite often to keep fruit coming. Downside for me is they don’t survive my winters so I replant bare root strawberries each year in late winter. I grow everbearing berries. 🍓 I am switching my berries all over to vertical planters because replanting each year is frustrating-so now my gutters are full of lettuce and other greens! The vertical planters worked amazing for strawberries last year and they wintered over and are already forming berries this year! 🍓 Good Luck!
We are enjoying this a lot and learning so much about how to improve our skills in the garden, thank you!
Weather has been complete pants, I am way behind with my bed prep and have loads of stuff to plant out 😅. Jo Devon 🙂
I'm currently hiding from the hailstones in my greenhouse 🤣 you'd have thought I learned my lesson
If you have ants in your compost it is probably too dry. I add a bucket of water and some bits of cardboard every time I add some material. The cardboard will help it stay moist or soak it up if too wet. The ants should move to find a dry home. On the other hand they do make really fine compost for you !
I plant rows of peas width wise in raised beds. This means picking both sides without walking on the bed. Use metre square of netlon clematis trellis 2inch squares threaded, woven onto four of the green coated canes. Used bamboo one year and the wind broke it off at the ground!
Oops I wish I'd watched this video before I left my Brussel Sprout stalks in the bottom of my compost heap. I turned the compost the other day and now they are well and truly buried. Seems like they'll still be there after everything else is rotted down. Oh well you live and learn.
Thanks for this video, your allotment is great. 👍Here's hoping for some sunny days soon.🌞
Having them in there won't do any harm so don't fret too much!
@@JBNat Yes that's true - thanks
@@JBNat Yes that's true - Thank you JB 😊
I don't like building cane frames for climbing beans so I just built a permanent bean frame. Just 3 two by two joined together like a goal post and I used screw eyes all along the top bar that I will put long canes through and in the ground for french beans to grow up. Have to wait and see if it's going to be strong enough to withstand storms. If it works I will be pleased I don't have to tie together loads of canes this year or dismantle the frame either which I find even more tedious.
Sounds really good
@@JBNat To be fair I borrowed the idea from Steve's Seaside Kitchen channel. See his Making a permanent pea and bean frame video if interested. Only difference is he used chunky 2.4m 100mm round fence posts rather than the 50 mm square wood I used. And he drove his posts into the ground whilst I attached my posts to the raised bed. I've only put eye hooks along the horizontal top for vertical canes whilst he does that plus eye hooks on the vertical posts too and criss crosses twine through them for growing early peas. I really like the eye hooks along the top for beans though as it it completely eliminates the need for using twine.
Hi JB, you are not wrong about visiting the plot and all the plans go sideways, I always have a list of to do's but get by passed with other things I see that I can do instead, it all gets done eventually, not necessarily in the right order. Take care Happy growing.
JB, get a scaffold spanner from a builders merchant, cheap as chips.
Have U ever watched digging allotment, he makes very good frames/cover for beds they seem simple enough to make. Might be worth checking out
My sprouting broccoli is still going for it, which is good because I love it! I discovered summer sprouting varieties 2years ago so we've been eating it almost weekly since about August!
That sounds amazing! Maybe I should try one of those this year, any variety names you can remember?
@@JBNat I'll send you a msg on discord ☺️
All my brassica stalks go through my garden shredder .... I can't be arsed with loppering - respect to your patience 😂
Maybe one day I'll have some kind of solar power set up at the allotment I could run a shredder off ha!
@JBNat just run your mower over it, it's like a garden blender 😊
I am so behind on EVERYTHING but YESSS....my leeks are a micro bigger than yours!!!....ok maybe not time to celebrate. Joking aside its all looking awesome JB and we all know Steve is up there cheering you on. Lets not get into my chillies. They'd give you a good laugh 😂
Lawn mower … that’ll chop it down nicely for the hot bed
I love how distracted you get 🤣Definitely weigh and track how much produce you're picking this year! And please make some kind of dedicated video at the end of the year / season - whether you end up saving money or not, I always find those kind of videos super interesting to watch! 🤣It's something I really want to do this year too.. I love a good spreadsheet 😅
I'm a data nerd too. Loved watching JB's chilli experiment comparison. 😁
Garden stakes are no longer an issue for me as I planted a Willow tree in a wet area of my land and after a first coppicing, the next year it shoots up tons of straight "stakes" of varied thickness. You have to let them dry out thoroughly over the summer or they will root, but once this process starts you never need to buy stakes again.....and they look great are environmentally friendly. A win-win-win!
Very very nice, and one of the reasons I wanted to get some Hazel in the garden. Tempted to plant some at the allotment too though, get a mini coppice going
With you 💯 re fence pins. I also use a wood framed panel of wire mesh that I attach to those pins or t-posts with wire for a quick structure. The panel might also be useful for you to lay across freshly sown seeds as a quick and temporary protection against nawty foxes if you don’t want to necessarily net att.
Love your hot composter. It’s worth spending the time chopping the input.
I used to tip the gutter for peas/mangetout very slightly for excess water to gravitate to one end that had gorilla tape taped across slightly higher to let water out but keep soil in. Succession sowed the gutter each time it was transferred to the garden. Used to love fresh peas but tend to get frozen ones now. I still grow mangetout for garden snacking but in module trays and stick one anywhere there’s space to share. Bit of a jungle, my garden. Not nearly as organised as your beautiful area.☺️
Love this. I think I need to make some similar frames for netting/wire mesh!
i bought the fishing style scales to start weighing my produce , in aplastic bag, since starting my allotment. I also have crops in the garden but I don't bother to weigh those as I have the garden anyway and don't have to pay out rent on it. I have had my allotment plot since The beginning of September '23 and have been keeping a record/ So far I have harvested 1.6kg curly kle, 500 grams leks, 975 grams purple sprouting and 1.1 kg kalettes. I have also harvested 3 kg onions, 10 kg various squash, 40 heads of garlic , 10 kg new potatoes, a lot of salad leaves, 40 beetroots, 15 celeriac, and 30 kg potatoes from the garden since September, I didn't count crops i was harvesting in the Summer, such as beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, courgettes, melons, peppers etc. I think that shows me it is very much a worthwhile and rewarding hobby. Happy gardening 🙂
Love it!
Hi JB it’s hard work but it feels real good when finish❤❤
Me too....comment to JBs dislike of staking
I grow all my strawberry plants in gutters along my fence three high you just need to water every day if no rain it works really well
Hmm every day might be a stretch but I'll give it a go!
I like the strawberry 🍓 idea I may try this . Another nice blog. Thankyou
strawberry growers grow them raised up these days, in gutterlike things, because of slugs but also so workers don't have to bend down, i would get those rectangular windowsill boxes, you can get long ones and a few in a row, they do need drainage or a column, if you have lots of scrap wood (from a pallet say) you can make hexagon shapes and alternate to corners, stagger them, sorry not sure how to describe, but when you shift the corners you get planting pockets
For our strawberries we made a long trough made from three scaffolding planks and is in our polly tunnel I would love to show you our allotment if you want to take a look we have a channel just look for allotment with two gay dads would be great to have your feedback and my chillies are growing well loving your videos as always ❤
oh...and Spoon Tomato update. All my other tomatoes that are up-potted in the greenhouse are tall and green with thick stalks while the free Spoon tomatoes are still skeletal/straggly/leggy/lacy?. They look like if Tim Burton had tomato plants in A Nightmare Before X-Mas...but we'll see what the fruits are like. I'm doubtful, but open-minded if worth the trouble!
Hahahaha that sounds quite similar to brads to be honest!
"Any comment in the suggestions" 🤣Ah, so no surprise floor lettuce then huh! Looks like the chili plants in the greenhouse (the "established" ones) look a bit happier now! I agree about it being a hobby. I only grow chillies though, but I'm pretty sure I'd be the same if I grew vegetables as well. Also, can't you put the broccoli "crown" on the ground and run it over with the lawnmower? 🤔That should make it more chopped up 😄
I’m pretty sure that Cheddar strawberries are quite often grown in a guttering system.
Fantastisch Good video JB Ronde the moostiun Top planing good weekend friend ✔️🌱⛅👍🌷🧤🥦🌰
🐝Thanks for the great video🌻 ow now rain🤣 WHAT YOU THINK WE GOT LAST YEAR!!! 🤣 scream angry 🤣
Me too❤
you should mow over your compost material to get it chopped up and small then empty the grass bag into the bin 👍👍
I've never tried this but does it not just fly everywhere? Mower is out of action unfortunately!
spray wd-40 on the screws before you try to unscrew them love from Iceland
give it to you 👏for me that is a waste of good time chopping those stems for the amount of compost you would produce i could get on with loads of jobs mine go in the green council waste bins to be turned into compost
plot is coming together now looks great 👍
Yes not very efficient when you think of it time wise but I do like the idea of keeping as much on site as possible 😊
👍
jb u need some loppers 1 chop and your purple sprouting gone
👍🌱
Re the scaffold poles, WD-40 and an adjustable spanner...
It would have had to be an insanely large adjustable to get those loose!
👍👍👍
Nothing wrong with ants in your compost mate. Their tunnels aerate the compost and aid breakdown. Plus they eat scraps and produce waste which results in compost. I intentionally leave fruit on top of my pile to feed them and often check on how long it takes them to finish their treat. They are a fantastic part of the ecosystem.
It's more the idea of them being in a hotbin... I don't want to cook an entire colony of ants 😭
You end up watering the strawberries in gutters every day
Yeah a few people have said this which does put me off as I'm often away for a fair few days at a time!
WD 40 on the rusted bolts will help loosen them up.
Hallo jb Rondje the moostuin Top men Good weekend fried 🫛🌱🌷🪻🫛🥬🥦