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Perry, I understand that they are ready when there is slight cracking around the stem bit where it meets the fruit. I notice this sometimes and think, ‘I’ll harvest those tomorrow‘ only to find the next morning that the slugs and woodlice have beaten me to first bite! Also at this time, there is a slight smell of ripe melon, much stronger when the pests have broken the surface.
My crop of Antalya Melons in the polytunnel is looking great, due to the hot weather I would imagine.
Enjoy.
JeanetteHi Offwego, if your horse manure is fresh, (less than 6 weeks old), how about making a hotbed with it? Contain it in 4 pallets tied with baling twine for example. Water it every foot or so and trample it down as you go and it should then generate a lot of heat as it decomposes. Make a lid to contain the heat, I use old glass shower doors or a wooden frame covered with polythene. You could then sit your seed trays on top to germinate your seeds early, I usually cover with cardboard to make a barrier on top of the manure. If this heap is about a cubic metre, the bottom heat should last at least a month.
Obviously, being fresh manure, you can’t plant directly into it because the roots would just be burnt by the ammonia etc. but after a month or so, you could put about 6 inches of a ‘growing medium’ such as home-made compost, spent growbags or bought multipurpose compost on top and grow shallow rooted crops in it such as Paris Market carrots etc. Later, say around May, you could plant a squash or courgette in it grow it with the lid off. Next year, you will end up with just under half a cubic metre of well rotted manure to put on your no-dig beds.
Win win!
The best time to make the most of hotbeds is early in the year, say from mid January, to take advantage of the slowly increasing daylight.
Charles has examples of his hot-beds in his videos.
And here’s a link to one I made in 2017, (I haven’t had the discipline to keep the website up to date I’m afraid!)
https://alottyj.weebly.com/hotbeds-2017.html
JeanetteHi Jen, it’s great that you’ve got an allotment, it will open up a whole new world to you.
I’ve found that the best and thickest cardboard for no dig is what bicycles are packed in. It doesn’t have a lot of printing ink on it, it’s really thick and when opened out, covers a large area.
It’s best to take the sealing tape off it, (worms can’t digest it), also remove the staples with strong, long nosed pliers.
No dig is the way to go – initially, it will take some effort, but in the end will save you time and effort – so start making your own compost, check out your nearest cycle shop and good luck with your plot 🙂
JeanetteHi Jack, A llot of allotment folk around here use blue water pipe or round electric conduit which you can get from builders merchants. They can be lengthened by putting about 450 mm or so of cane in the ends which goes in the ground. For netting, we use debris netting, (also called scaffold netting), which you can get online from Tarpaflex. The only thing with that is that it does have gaps in places due to the pattern. Jeanette.
Thank you Don.
Hi rtj1211, I haven’t tried growing potatoes in 30mm pots like Dan before, this will be the first time.
I live in Portsmouth which is in the south, last year was wet and other times dry. If it’s really, really dry, I might water but I probably won’t water until the potatoes are showing flowers because I believe that’s when the tubers will be forming and that’s when it will be the most beneficial to water.
I managed to get the pots for £2.00 each plus postage but the prices have increased since then, I think it’s the law of supply and demand!I can get 56 litres of multipurpose compost for £4.00. I am going to add Blood Fish and Bone and also some Potato Fertiliser to each pot.
I will be using a mix of varieties including Sarpo Mira, Kestrel, Charlotte, Rocket and Maris Peer and maybe a couple more.
I am trying this method in pots because I have osteoarthritis and I don’t want to dig and then draw up the earth over the potatoes, it’s too much trouble and too painful.
As I said, this will be the first time I’m attempting to grow the potatoes like Allotment Diary so I will have to let you know how I fared about September/October. Jeanette.Sorry folks, the last link in my previous post was for the advert! Here is the correct set of links:-
Is this the Ultimate No Dig way to grow potatoes in the future?
Here’s Allotment Diary’s Dan with his pot raised Golden Wonder and King Edwards which he got blight on the foliage so they didn’t make a full harvest, http://youtu.be/qI4mcM6I4T0Here’s his crop of Sarpo Miro blight resistant ones harvested 6 weeks later, http://youtu.be/dMrkIecqQL8 (He shows how he grows them in earlier YouTube videos).
And even more Sarpo Miro grown in home-made compost in pots from Chris at Allotment Journal, http://youtu.be/PHhh__9zdbc
I’ve got my pots ready to try for myself this year! Jeanette
Is this the Ultimate No Dig way to grow potatoes in the future?
Here’s Allotment Diary’s Dan with his pot raised Golden Wonder and King Edwards which he got blight on the foliage so they didn’t make a full harvest, http://youtu.be/qI4mcM6I4T0Here’s his crop of Sarpo Miro blight resistant ones harvested 6 weeks later, http://youtu.be/dMrkIecqQL8 (He shows how he grows them in earlier YouTube videos).
And even more Sarpo Miro grown in home-made compost in pots from Chris at Allotment Journal, http://youtu.be/3GAfLDiPFWk
I’ve got my pots ready to try for myself this year! Jeanette
I know technically that peppers are a fruit because they produce seeds, I think this link should be filed under ‘Vegetables’ not ‘Fruit’ in the Forums. People may not find this interesting info if they only look in the ‘Vegetables section.
Just for clarity, the adjustable gap is in the top panel of the door, not over the door. An improvement would be to put some sort of vent as high up on the ends as could be, to allow for the rising hot air. I have pondered this but can’t see a solution because this is where a lot of the polythene has been gathered up because of the curve of the hoop so even if one constructed a wooden frame to put a vent in, it would be difficult to fix this frame to the hoops.
I would think that it would be a definite advantage to have double sliding doors, but at the time I couldn’t afford to get them, c’est la vie! JeanetteHi Bluebell, I put up a 10′ x 20′ polytunnel in May 2014 and wish I had been able to go to 12′ wide because my paths are very narrow if I have 21/2 to 3 foot wide beds either side and a bed in the middle for tall stuff such as tomatoes, it’s a bit of a squeeze getting along the paths when everything is growing strongly. I would also say go for the largest you can afford and you will still feel you needed to get a bigger one!
I bought my tunnel from First Tunnels and went for the Thermal anti drip cover, (I think called Super Therm now), I find I do get condensation and some drips and this seems to happen where the polythene touches the Twin Support Brace Bars and the drips fall from the bars. I have since put anti hot spot tape along these and that seems to have made it worse as it’s created a barrier for the condensation to hit against, but then, the metal bars were touching the polythene and it’s recommended to fit the tape to stop the polythene deteriorating prematurely due to heat build up.
I went for single sliding doors because this means you don’t have to worry about where a hinged door would swing out to, either inside or out, as I don’t have a lot of room, so the sliding doors just run along the ends not taking up further room.
I have put half inch square solid metal mesh on the top panels of my doors and on the outside I have put runners to hold 4mm twin walled polycarbonate sheets sliding up and down for ventilation, i just screwed on some vertical runners with holes drilled about every 4 inches and I fashioned some 2mm metal rods into stops that I just insert where I need to hold the bottom of the sheets.
My allotment is on a very windy site and is orientated with the ridge east/west (with a southwest prevailing wind). I have been worried about gale force winds meeting a solid object, so I leave a 3 inch gap at the top of both doors all the time to allow any wind to blow through and thus far, it’s been okay.
I have anchor plates and wooden base rails and have buried about 6 inches of the polythene in the ground to tidy it up and also create a bit of a physical barrier for bugs. We are not allowed to use concrete on our plots so the anchor plates are just buried 600mm down. Another plot holder has Aluminium base rails and regrets it, he says the locking centre rails are really difficult to press in and once the polythene is trapped, the locking rail is really difficult to get out.
I didn’t use the supplied nails for all the battens holding the polythene, my thinking was it would be easier to change anything if I used screws all around, this being the first time I had put up a tunnel. This may prove to be useful for the ventilation screen and side vent. I found this to be a bit ‘Heath Robinson’ because the rod holding the 20 foot of polythene is only supported at the winder end and is floating at the other end, just relying on the polythene holding it level all along it’s length and this was quite difficult to get evenly wrapped around the rod. In practise, when I wound it up and down at various times, I trapped my Melon leaves around the polythene, so at the moment I have decomposed leaves wrapped around the polythene either side and I can access the inside to clean them off but not the outside as it has the ventilation screen, (net), fixed via the battens, so it means that I will have to remove the battens to take the net off in order to clean the outside of the polythene screen. If I had used the nails there would have been a danger of splitting the battens with the constant removal of them over time.
I will be looking to try and get some sort of solar powered fan for further ventilation because you certainly need ventilation/cooling in a tunnel most of the time, especially when it warms up and removal of condensation when it gets cold. I figured that I could fit a large sheet of ply on the east side from the continuation of the ventilation panel support rail and the base rail as it shouldn’t affect the polythene cover, a fan could then be fitted in this ply panel. I just need to find a source for a fan a bit stronger than those tiny ones fitted to boats or motorhomes! (Any suggestions would be really helpful).
I think, like Sarah said, you will need to open up every day because the temperatures and humidity change very fast and the air needs changing frequently. I did think about putting up another side vent and screen to get more ventilation and rang up the Company to order it but they said as the tunnel had been up more than 6 months they couldn’t recommend messing about with the polythene cover and I wouldn’t get it drum tight so I haven’t gone down that route. In your case, it may be worth thinking about getting it for both sides.
With regard to the cover tightening, it was only my sister and I who put the tunnel up and we got it almost tight but needed the extra strength that only men can supply in order to get it drum tight. The wooden base and side rails made this tightening easier than just burying the polythene without base rails I feel.
So a lot to think about but it really opens up more possibilities and gives you a month more growing time at each end of the year, and a lovely shelter from the wind and rain! At the moment I have salad leaves, onions, cabbages, pak choi, pea shoots all coming along nicely and today I started on building the frame for my hotbed in there. The possibilities are endless! Good luck. Jeanette.I discovered some really tasty Tomatoes this year to try in my new Polytunnel, my favourites were Sungold, Black Russian and Azoychka – a yellow beefsteak which I think is a Russian Heirloom variety. I was disappointed with Golden Sunrise and Gardeners Delight but maybe I watered them too much and diluted the taste? Also I had my first encounters with the Tomato Moth Caterpillar, (it loved the Black Russians), it comes in 2 colours – light brown and also green with a yellow dotted stripe along it’s side, the first signs of it”s presence is a bit of round green poo near a cigarette burn sized hole that it has munched!
I bought a packet of a Caliente Mustard a couple of years ago but I have clubroot on most of my allotment and have held back from sowing it, at the time I bought it, I didn’t realise it was a brassica. Has anyone with clubroot tried growing it and did it make the clubroot worse? Or does the build up of compost through using the no-dig method lessen the clubroot problem?
Thanks, Jeanette