New allotment diary, March 8th

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New allotment diary, March 8th

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cab

Joined: 01 Nov 2004
Posts: 32429

Posted: Tue Mar 08, 05 9:57 pm Post subject: New allotment diary, March 8th

Popped down to the plot to plant raspberries. Got nine in. Got six left. The first nine in are Glen Clova, a variety I've know for a whole and have seen grown successfully. Planted a foot and a half apart, between two posts with crosspieces to use as supports.

The others will wait a bit longer till I decide where to put them. Might finish the row with three of them (gley lyon), and put the other three on the other side of the pond for shading it, along with the blackcurrant bush I couldn't help myself buying in Asda.

I got one side of the pond dug over this evening too; on one side of the pond I'm having flowers because I feel like it, and to give some constant cover for anything that chooses to live there. The pond is in the fifth or so of the plot that hasn't been dug. That bit, in front of the shed and by the compost heaps isn't getting dug over, not yet anyway. If the weeds there turn out to be too nasty (on what might turn out to be be a very old currant bush I can see what looks like bindweed from last year) I'll do so and put some grass seed down. Not that I think I can stop bindweed that way.

I've been promised some pond sludge (to get the thing 'live') and some frogspawn. In such a small pond I'm going to need something to keep it oxygenated, so I'll go looking for elodea. There has to be somewhere to scavenge that.

It's nice to think that I've made a mark and got something in. Makes a big difference. It'll be nice to get the rest going too.

nettie

Joined: 02 Dec 2004
Posts: 5888
Location: Suffolk

Posted: Tue Mar 08, 05 11:23 pm Post subject:
Good for you Cab. I am waiting to hear if I've been lucky in getting a lovely little allotment next to the church, the raspberry canes are still there! Fingers crossed

cab

Joined: 01 Nov 2004
Posts: 32429

Posted: Wed Mar 09, 05 9:53 am Post subject:

Oh, wouldn't it be nice to get one with raspberries already there?

I've got a theory that some of the older raspberry varieties will keep fruiting and spreading almost indefinitely, but many of the newer ones decline in quality quite quickly. I know spots where raspberries have invaded land from allotments and gardens and fruited prolifically for decades (places where I picked as a kid, and old-timers would stop and tell me whete the rasps had come from).

Good luck getting your plot.

treehuggermum

Joined: 16 Feb 2005
Posts: 43
Location: Surrey

Posted: Wed Mar 09, 05 1:00 pm Post subject:
We were lucky enough to inherit raspberry canes, red- and black-currant, and some very old gooseberrires with the allotment that we took over last summer. We found them under tons of bindweed, and have now liberated them.

Bugs

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 10744

Posted: Wed Mar 09, 05 1:05 pm Post subject:

Cab wrote:

I know spots where raspberries have invaded land from allotments and gardens and fruited prolifically for decades

We're still eating (delicious, Treacodactyl-made) raspberry jam from last year's semi-wild garden harvest.

No idea how long they've been there or whether they were ever planted - the garden had probably not been touched for the best part of 15 years before we moved in, and surrounding gardens showed no sign of any production either (they show even less these days after one side chopped down all his apple trees and the other side sprayed and weedmatted every last inch. Sometimes I think you should have to have a licence to own a garden

)

The raspberries roughly border a path at the top of the garden and are mixed in with blackberries in the wild bit at the top. The fruits are uneven and the plants not hugely reliable, but there are so many of them we do rather well overall.

cab

Joined: 01 Nov 2004
Posts: 32429

Posted: Wed Mar 09, 05 2:29 pm Post subject:

There was (is?) a tumbled down patch with big sandstone blocks in it in Wreckenton, Gateshead. It's next to the allotments, and lower than the level of the main road. It was (is?) crawling with raspberries. As a child (12 ish) clambering amongst them, an old timer stopped to see what I was doing, and she was delighted to see me picking the raspberries. Turns out that it used to be a tiny Catholic school, and the raspberries invaded from the hedge where they'd always been, something like 30 years earlier when the school was pulled down.

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