CORNWALL IN BLOOM 2012

Our association entered a Cornwall council initiative way back in May of this year called Cornwall in Bloom in which community groups were encouraged to apply for judging by an RHS qualified official. The categories that interested us were 'grow your own' and 'first impressions' as if I say so myself, when one enters our pretty, mature tree surrounded site for the first time, it is a visual treat if that visitor has the remotest interest in ideal growing conditions.

After being inspected thoroughly by a friendly lady judge called Manti in early August when the site couldn't have looked or been maintained any better, I felt a little optimistic when attending the award ceremony at the Eden project. This was on the evening of Thursday 18th October and I hoped that we may get some recognition for our efforts in turning a rough field full of brambles, bracken and weed into a thriving, productive allotment site that so many get pleasure from.

Our hard working committee, l-r Jim,Neil,Mike,Billy,lower Ruth,Glynis, Cathy

The Gallery at Eden was packed with over 200 gardeners and growers from all over Cornwall and the evening was opened by Tracy Wilson, a radio Cornwall DJ who kept us all amused with her quips all through the ceremony.
We were presented with a 'Full Bloom' framed certificate which meant we were good enough to be considered for the overall category winner for 'Grow your own' award. The 'first impression' category was won by Hayle town for their flora and fauna so that was not to be ours.

It then came to the 'Grow your own' category winner announcement and Tracy turned to our table and our 7 committee members and said in a loud voice,
"The winners are..........................Lanhydrock allotment association"                  Yes!!!! it was a long walk across the front stage , my good lady and I gulping in pride and pleasure to collect the award from the official who shook my hand and said, 'well deserved!'
All our committee took to the stage as well to a lot of applause, to receive an array of prizes, a huge shield engraved with our associations's name for 2012, a smaller shield that we can keep, a framed certificate confirming our category winner status and a £250 cheque. Plus an RHS guide to 'Britain in bloom' which we may be encouraged to enter next year. We then had 2 or 3 photos taken as we left the stage and I hope these may feature in a press release in future.

Our group were now on a real high, so pleased to scoop this award having only been open for 30 months and we couldn't wait to inform all our members of our success, it is a real prestigious award in this county which we will be crowing about for 12 months now. The standard has been set and we will be striving to retain the shield in 2013 and with our friendly, helpful community we may just do that! It's not just help from the committee but the tenants pitch in for a shift on occasions too, we all love our little bit of nature, our sanctuary some say.

Dung time

With the runner beans running out of steam now (they were good in the end) and other crops being harvested it's time for an Autumn clear up and the start of the digging of as much of the plot as possible.
What better time than to incorporate a ton or two of well rotted horse and calf manure with the dig? Rather than have many different suppliers carving the site grass paths up with their various transportation of soil improvers, I encourage all to use the same farmer to supply every ones order delivered on the same day. This way, we can set about repairing the paths asap as a trailer carrying nearly 5 ton of wet manure coming on site 10x is bound to cut the 'turf' up but by using the same track each time the damage is minimal.
Our friendly farmer who is local is supplying 33 of our tenants with a mixture of calf and horse, this being the third year now and when it arrived this year we were very pleased to see hardly any straw with it at all other than well compressed some time ago into the actual dung.
The members were given the option of ordering a third,half or a whole trailer full and I needed a degree in maths to work out how much to put where as with this 3 acre site and the dung being wet didn't want folk, especially those not over strong to cart it too far. Chris happy to tip it where I wanted it so a lot of working out to do but worth it as members pleased with their lot, one's wife even said she hadn't seen him so excited for quite a while! Whatever does it for you?

Pictures show one pile for just 6 members which indicates the volume needed and the other some of the tracks made just after being repaired with top soil.

Mixed verdicts on Sarpo Mira

Just as a follow up to the last blog there have been several members who have now harvested their blight free Sarpo Mira potatoes and cooked them with differing comments on their performance when cooked.

I was personally disappointed with the way they broke up when boiled and those that survived were not the tastiest potato I've ever had being waxy and floury. I will try chipping them next or at least my head cook will and I'll report again before recommending whether our tenants grow them or not. Others have reported to me that they are delighted with their results. I'm sure at the end of the day, it will be down to individual taste but it is so rewarding to have a type of maincrop potato that will go full term without getting the dreaded blight midway through its growing season.This has been so frustrating for the last 5 years at least and everyone in Cornwall has given up trying to grow tomatoes outside the greenhouse for the same length of time. It seems 'something' is missing when we can't grow our Moneymakers, Big boys and Pixies.

The runner beans and squash family came good at the very end of the season and saved all the crops from being a total failure which bemused the new folk to the site this year when they were told when starting that they would be taking so much home that they had grown themselves when in fact nothing did well until very late. I won't use that phrase when introducing new members again!

I don't overwinter many crops preferring to leave fallow after incorporating plenty of good, well rotted horse and calf dung of which we are about to take delivery of 11, 3 ton trailer loads for all of our members that ordered, but I do like putting in a couple of rows of the Japanese Senshyui Yellow type. If we have a normal winter without too many hard frosts they produce very large bulbs and can be harvested a month earlier next year than normal types. I had one good year and one bad in the last two and is pot luck but the loss is minimal on the pocket if they fail.

Right, back to planning our Christmas dinner and prizegiving evening for our members, early this year on 1st December mainly because of the good deal we have been offered by doing so and because our chair and her hubby who is our site 'steward' have decided to take themselves off for a cruise for the middle two weeks of the the month and we need them to come (to pay for the wine).  

BLIGHT FREE POTATOES, YES WE CAN!

Back in June this year I was summoned to the gate to meet a very friendly chap who wanted us to trial some maincrop potatoes that he was going to donate to us. I was quite dubious as here in Cornwall we can never grow maincrop spuds due to the onset of blight which this year had even hit our first and second earlies a month earlier than normal. He assured us that they were as blight free guaranteed as you could get in the UK. I said I doubted they would be any good, we were a good 6 weeks late in planting and I KNEW they would get blight as it was turning out to be an exeptionally wet summer also with the humidity just right, (or wrong), the exercise seemed pointless.

I was surprised when he produced 2 hefty 25kg sackfulls for us to try. As they were free of charge other than giving feedback on our results, I decided to persuade several of our members to plant a few rows on any spare land they had left. This wasn't easy as it was peak season and although a 50 ft allotment is reasonable to grow what you need, it can be under a bit of pressure for space at times, certainly for potato rows. Around 12 of us, including myself, found room to plant a few rows and they were showing within 2 weeks.

Blighty weather continued through July and August but we tended these potatoes as normal, earthing up, etc. and the plants looked very healthy so we were keeping our fingers crossed that they would stay that way.

They flowered this month and one of our tenants could not resist digging some and we were amazed at the crop, photo here of three roots and vowed to grow these next year as we have been frustrated at our efforts the last 3 years.

The type are SARPO MIRA maincrop and if the JBA potatoes website is looked at, they have a good write up so we know what to do now and thank the friendly guy at the gate that day for nagging us to try them!

The proof will of course be when we see how well they cook and keep.

One pic of the three root crop and the other of how the remainder of the row looked this week. Pretty good.

A Touch of Sunshine

Sunshine! That rare commodity this summer.   Isn’t it amazing how a little sunshine lifts your mood?   Been trying to sow my brassicas but beaten each time by a) slugs nipping off the seedlings as they emerge b) pigeons stripping the tender leaves before I get chance to fleece them (okay that is my fault not the pigeons) c) just the lack of warmth/light.  But ever hopeful sowed another batch and placed them in the safety of our cold greenhouse and.....well we’ll see what happens.     However the under-gardener bought some plant plugs from a seed company, I have a suspicion he doubts my ability to grow brassicas, my grandson visited recently and to him fell the honour of planting them out and checking them today they seem to be holding their own against all comers.

Shame about the sweet peas though, with all the bad weather recently they certainly have taken a battering but they have put on a fantastic show growing up and over my arch.  I had visions of rows  of sweet peas just like those in the Sutton Seeds trial beds – rows half the length of a football no a rugby pitch (well  this is Cornwall the home of rugby) . 



best drying bean ever!



Mine were neatly entwined with the beans

District Nurse            and              Ryders Blue Coco,

good dried or fresh

Think next year I’ll just put beans on the arch and plant the sweet peas somewhere else. 

Looking at my lavender today filled me with shame!   They are in desperate need of a prune but have lost my shears........I am sure there is a gremlin on our plots cause everytime I put something down it seems to disappear.   I realise that my dotage is fast catching me up; the under-gardener is nodding his head frantically here, but I am sure it’s not just that at least I hope not.  

Junior Gardener's area

What pleasantly surprised us when taking on new tenants is how many young families showed an interest in having a plot with us and in total we now have 39 children under 12 on board. A trip to the allotment site is not every child's wish for a good day out but we think we found the answer to the visit not just being a learning experience by having a dedicated safe area where a bit of steam can be let off and an opportunity to make new friends offered.

The very far corner was sown with decent grass seed with the helpful Fullwood children the first year we opened, then a wendy house, many toys, plastic and rubber of course were gradually added. The area is mown weekly and the whole patch is something that we are proud of and very well used by the juniors. In fact one parent told me that their children beg to come to the allotment nowadays instead of having to be persuaded to go.

The committee keep the toys in good order, anything broken or split is removed and we freshen up the choice available usually with donations from far and wide. 2 years ago we were visited by Camilla from the Eden project, who liked what we were doing, donated a lot of rugs and cushions some of which now sit in the wendy house and the small tent which was put up this week for the school summer holidays to give a bit more interest.

Being fenced in on the 2 outside boundaries by the 7' deer fence means the children are perfectly safe and an option for parents to sit and watch the very young is possible by sitting at the adjacent picnic table and having lunch or tea with them.

We've had some negativity with one person's view that children are there to learn, NOT play but in my experience of bringing up 5 girls and a boy (only 2 mine!) a mixture of the two really works and if a child is bombarded with information, they soon get very bored. We intend keeping this feature as it does work and is very popular.

What weather?????

Can the weather not make up it's mind?   Woke up this morning and it's pouring down come lunchtime the sun was shining .......so hotfooted it up the plot and armed with a joblist a mile long, string for tying up plants blown apart by the strong winds and an enthusiastic grandson ready to do battle! What a stange season we're having, lost all but one of my cucumber plants to voles, slugs have decimated my Kohl Rabi and have had to cover all the brassicas due to the colony of pigeons resident on our site.  

My grandson admirably disposed of the slugs found on site today (I don't feel I can divulge the gorey details here though) wish he was here more  often I might stand a fighting chance then!  

 Mind you the plots are looking good despite the weather and attack from 'wee beasties', had a good crop of blackcurrants and whitecurrants.   Put those with the redcurrants from my garden and I see lots of Summer Puddings in the coming weeks.   Trying some new squashes this year, Jumbo Pink Banana, looking good amongst the sweetcorn and climbing beans. Anyone else tried this variety?  Would appreciate some info about them if possible.   I decided to try the '3 sisters' method of growing these 3 crops, not that space is an issue but I thought it might protect the sweetcorn from the strong winds and retain moisture in the ground......not that that's been an issue this year. 

  Sweet peas have done well but put to shame by the flower display on Penny's plot, amazing show of cornflowers!.     Considering the weather and taking on a new piece of ground she produced a stack of flowers for her daughter's wedding next weekend.   Standing back looking at my plot and the others on the site I feel that we've done some good work there, okay we've had some failures but all in all they look pretty good and I've seen many people leave the site with armfuls of produce..........a lot more than some people further up country have harvested.   But hey we are gardeners and  therefore never satisfied we just have to plan for next year and pray for sunshine!