About me



I'm a half Finnish designer who has since taken a break to bring up my children. I used to work in Graphic Design, but now I prefer working with textiles and illustration. This blog is about my allotment and garden. I have been gardening for many years and grew up watching my mum and dad do the same. I began my allotment in Jan 2010 in memory of my father who passed a way just before then. I also love cooking and finding inventive and delicious ways to make my produce into meals. I'm growing with my experiences, and welcome any helpful advice! Sometime soon I hope to use my garden as inspiration for my art.

Thursday, 14 April 2011

Dry as a bone

We continue to have very dry weather here in West Kent, and our tap is still shut off, and I've used up all my reserves in the water butt. With no more rain forecast in the next week or so, I'm wondering how to keep the whole plot going without losing all sown seed. I've ordered a 10ltr water butt to take water there from home and will fill up bottles and tubs then drive VERY carefully down to the village!

As a result of the very dry weather here, I've held off doing too much at the plot and concentrated on raising strong plants in the greenhouse to give them a better chance or establishing themselves once the rain arrives. I had a flush of planting the other night, sowing french beans, swede, lettuce, dill, basil, tomatoes and a variety of cut flowers.

I popped to the plot this morning with the children and saw the asparagus tips that emerged a few days ago are still there thankfully, but are coming up really slowly, not sure if they need a good water to get them going, but they are certainly taking their time! Still hoeing off lots of thistles every day or two. I have broad beans, peas, lettuce, radish, parsnip, endive and chard seedlings up now. I sowed another row of carrots (autumn king) in trench of compost (kindly suggested here for parsnips by Green Lane Allotments) so we shall see how that goes.

Aside from that I'm continuing to pot up and harden off. I potted up some Blue Kuri Squash, Pacino Sunflower, Sweetcorn and asters (which mainly died and didn't like being moved at all!) My cucumbers (spacemaster) are growing fast in the propergator so I'm off to pot them up now.

Off to do a raindance too!


2 comments:

  1. Try to keep your carrot seed damp if you can without water as dry compost is difficult to rewater!

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  2. I got it straight out of a bag so it was pretty moist, and I'm watering every other day so hopefully it will work this time

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