Allotment 19/5/10

Beans are quite easy to grow. We all know this. You take a dried husk of a thing, put it in some compost and then about 2 weeks later up it comes, raring to grow.


This has always been my experience of them anyway up until this year. This year I have had no end of problem with mine and it is mostly my fault.

I am what could be described as an inpatient gardener. When March turns up I like to get pretty much everything going. Tougher seeds are planted at the allotment, parsnips and early carrots, and seed trays are planted up and placed on window sills. This is a fine plan as long as the weather agrees to it.

My first set of beans where planted into pots and put on my dining room window sill and came on very quickly, so quickly in fact that they were ready to plant out at the beginning of April and when they were far too big for the house they went in on the 19th. Unfortunately the weather disagreed that it was time and it got really cold again and they died. A small tear was shed.

I was not to be defeated though and a second load of beans were planted up (dwarf French, runner beans and climbing beans for those who are interested) and again placed in the dining room. The climbing beans were up first, the others took their time.

Up early one morning I couldn’t find one of our kittens and I assumed that she was having some sort of outside based fun until I went into the dining room. We had, accidently, shut her in there over night.

She shot out when I opened the door and headed straight for the litter tray as she had been sat there with her tiny kitteny legs crossed all night. Well that wasn’t all she had been doing. Spread across the dinning room carpet was the content of 2 of the pots containing my beans, bugger. For some reason she had left the ones that had sprouted alone.

So I scrapped the compost back into the pots assuming that the beans would be there and I could just pat the soil down and carry on. Oh no, my cat had eat the beans. All of them. Sigh.

So now I am on my 3rd attempt at growing beans for 2/3s of them, the climbing beans were planted out yesterday now the nights are warmer. Let’s hope they will be ok, I’m getting a bit bored of them.

Allotment 3/5/10

A continuous update on how my seeds are doing would (has) become a little dull so I will stop that, probably. I will try to bring you plant related stuff though as well as allotment updates and news.

 Today, being a Bank Holiday, there were only a couple of things that we could legally do so this morning we did some DIY and then we got stuck in a traffic jam and got rained on. Ah a blissful May Day bank holiday.

 The reason for the Traffic Jam sitting was so that we could get to Wimborne to see, via the National Gardens Scheme, Deans Court Gardens. This a very pleasant looking house, not open today, and 13 ache garden.

Now, whilst all this foresty stuff and semi-wildness is lovely there was a better reason to go there. They have a lovely kitchen garden surrounded by an 18^th Century serpentine wall. To say that I am jealous of all that space is an understatement.

The weather improved and sun came out as we wondered around this truly beautiful place. Bee hives, 8 or 9 compost bins and carrots growing in those huge basket things that you can see (it to avoid carrot fly I believe). A top afternoon out all round.