Wet!

I am not sure when it is going to stop raining! Seems like every day has some rain, and so I haven't been up to do much meaningful work in the allotment recently.

One job I have done though is to space the fruit bushes out a bit. The two minarette apple trees and the damson tree have been getting rather crowded by blackcurrants and raspberries and I think last year this, combined with the poor cold start to the year, caused them to have problems. We had blackspot fungus on one of the apples and the damson crop was much reduced, with quite a few of the fruits getting mould. There also seems to be some kind of insect that is laying clear sticky egg sacs on the damsons which is really annoying as left unchecked these seem to burrow into the fruit, damaging the skin and the whole thing goes mouldy.

So, last weekend my youngest daughter and I set to and cleared a bit of ground to extend the fruit patch and then we dug some holes, filled them with some lovely compost from the bottom of the compost bin, and then carefully transplanted two blackcurrant bushes, and several raspberry canes into their new homes, making sure we kept as much of the rootball and associated earth as possible, and made very sure not to damage them.

A week later, and they seem to have taken hold, and the rhubarb that we also split down is and replanted a chunk is sprouting already.

Thus, the two apples and the damson have a lot more growing space, and it is currently clear of weeds etc. So we'll see how they get on.

Current crops are parsnips, a bit of green sprouting broccoli, some sprouts, as well as the occasional tomato and pepper from the plants in the house. Yesterday I had to buy an onion for the first time in 18 months! There's still some green beans in the freezer, and dried kidney beans in a tub, as well as 4 bottles of the parsnip wine I made last year.

Mildew and Blackspot

A couple of problems have occurred with one of the apple trees and one of the pear trees, the Conference one, the Comice appears to be ok.

The apple appears to have a form of mildew

The pear has blackspot fungus, which it had last year and I thought that I had cured it.

Unfortunately for the organic side of things, the only thing that is available for dealing with it is Diphane-945, but needs must. Pears always seem to look a bit droopy and unhappy even when there is nothing wrong so I want to deal with this again this year. Although I want to do everything I can organically, I am not so strict as to not use something when really needed.

Anyway, both the apple and the pear got a dose of Diphane-945 the other evening - suitably late on so that there were no bees or other beneficial insects around. Another dose in a couple of weeks or so.

Green data centres

Working in IT, you are conscious of the amount of energy your computers, especially your servers use. The trend over the past few years has been in virtualisation, where multiple virtual servers sit on one physical server and by extension cloud services, where racks of such servers are hired out to multiple companies on an upon-demand basis.

The articles below considers the energy efficiency and environmental impact of such data centres

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-27405810
http://www.techweekeurope.co.uk/comment/icelands-data-centre-saga-continues-127966
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22879160

Allotment report

Lots of things to do in the allotment and back at the house. All the potatoes are planted, most of the onions, parsnips, carrots in our tyre stack, hopefully out of reach of carrot flies. Mice may have eaten the first row of peas but we have more growing in the greenhouse.

Early potatoes growing well, but had to be protected from the frost at the end of last week.


Back at the house, we have had a tomatoes or two from our now 4 year old tomato plant. Lots of things are in pots but not much has come up yet, not sure why the broccoli isn't showing yet.

Peppers in the house

posted from Bloggeroid

The vegetables that came in from the cold.....

I haven't been on the blog recently for several reasons, one is that I have been spending a lot of time actually doing the allotment, rather than sitting in front of a computer screen writing about it, but the other is that I spent some time in Moscow recently with friends.

Whilst I was there I visited their dacha, which they refer to as their "country house". Thought the countryside (which is mostly forest anyway) is a rapidly disappearing commodity outside of the MKAD (Moscow outer ring road), as lots of dachas get thrown up with no planning rules and no restrictions.

Anyway, our friends grow fruit and vegetables as best they can given the short growing season, and the fact that the land around the dacha is really just forest floor which is very unsuitable for growing. So, they have created a lot of raised beds, and got a glass house (which needs repair due to the weight of last winter's snow crushing it), and have grown quite a variety of fruit and vegetables, such as cucumbers, apples (which are attached close to a single stem plant) and salad plants.

Although not suitable for directly growing, the forest is good for mushrooms (гриб), which every Russian seems to know which are safe to eat and which aren't, and go out every autumn to pick and preserve.

Mushrooms are preserved in brine rather than vinegar, and often with a variety of other things such as lemongrass. Similarly cucumbers grown as gherkins are again preserved in apple vinegar or salted water. Beetroot is salted, diced and mixed with salted potatoes and beans. All quite delicious if you are into pickled and salted dishes. Cabbage is preserved similarly to German sauerkraut although other cabbage options are available (not to my taste!). They refer to the standard cultivated white mushrooms by the French word champignon.

Up to a third of Moscow's population have some form of country plot or house ranging from something similar to our allotments right up to 4 and 5 storey mansions and beyond!

Most vegetables, fruit, ,milk. meat etc come from much further away from such as Estonia and more southerly former Soviet states such as Georgia, Ukraine and so on.

I am now trying to blog post on my new tablet, which I got online for about £40. A little quirky at times and doesn't handle all apps and games, even occasionally hides apps! However for the price and general convenience it is fine. Also using Bloggeroid from the Google Play store, which works much better than the actual Blogger client.

posted from Bloggeroid

Winter Pruning

I managed to finally get some allotment time when it wasn't raining!

Today's job was winter pruning of an espalier apple tree that we have on the back fence of the allotment. This apple tree produced a lot of fruit this year and I hope I haven't exhausted it for this year.
However, it does need keeping on top of for training on the fence and is roughly laid out as follows
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This is simplified, there were some more sticky out branches and perhaps another vertical.

Now, ideally you would want
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It's a bit too far gone I thing for that however I think I can get  some more horizontals higher up, and the existing verticals which I have left in have fruiting buds

So, I have chopped a quarter off the highest (middle) vertical, back to a bud on either end, and taken out a few of the other straggly branches to neaten the tree up but I didn't want to go too far for fear of weakening it at this time of year when it is starting to bud. I have also tied some of the verticals a bit better
                       
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So, next year it will get further neatening, and over time I should build up the training along the fence.