Steve's Seaside Life Blog
I think I will be starting this diary with “what a difference a week makes” fairly frequently now, but it’s so true. After months of hardly any change on the allotment, suddenly everything is growing, leafy quality is improving and the whole feel of the place is transformed, in fact...
After much debate, I’ve finally decided to offer users of my gardening apps, eBook, web site, diary and my youtubers the opportunity to support me via the site Buy Me a Coffee. Thanks so much for all of your support!
Last year I decided that planning my allotment on a spreadsheet wasn’t for me. I’m a visual person and I found messing around with a spreadsheet was a real chore, I wanted to enjoy my planning. I decided to use Airtable as the basis for a solution, I chose it...
This document captures answers to the most common questions that I get about our allotments, what we grow and how we grow. Where are you? England North west Lytham St Annes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lytham_St_Annes The allotments are here: https://goo.gl/maps/3XBLthZwqp8AddHh7 Are you really by the seaside? The house is ½ a mile from...
This is the third draft of my guide to growing an abundance of vegetables all year round, especially in the so called Hungry Gap. The “jobs for the month” sections have been expanded in this version and I have new photos! I’d love a bit of feedback on how useful it...
What a difference a week makes. The wind direction changed to a southerly, the temperature rose and we enjoyed cloudy skies with a few sunny spells. Perfect planting weather and it needed to be, because I had quite a few seedlings desperate to be planted, but held back because of...
We’ve had beautiful blue skies and sunshine all week, but it’s been extremely cold and with the wind-chill it’s been around -10c for most of the week. Temperatures inside the polytunnel at night have been around -4 to -6c and so I’ve relied upon fleece to keep things growing, especially...
It’s been another wet week and we are heading into a very cold week, so it’s not been a great sowing week again, but then what can you expect in winter. We are happy enough with progress though. We’ve had a few days that were good enough to get out...
I love writing these monthly reviews, although January has been a very bleak month on the allotment. Most plots are flooded and it’s been so dull/raining that hardly anything is growing, especially the salad crops. Sowing wise though it’s been a much more exciting month because grow lights are allowing...
It’s been another cold and wet week, with only a few hours on the allotment to harvest. It’s not bothered me though because I’ve been busy decorating the bedrooms and that’s allowed me to make a dedicated – cool and dark – space for all of my seed packets. It’s...
Another week of almost no sun and a lot of rain, the surrounding plots are almost completely flooded now and I have stepping stones on the path to allow me to get to mine. Its been a grim gardening month, that’s for sure. The main casualty continues to be the...
last year we enjoyed a very mild winter and as a result we lost quite a few lettuces to stem rot. This year we’ve had an extremely cold winter and as a result we’ve lost quite a few lettuces again, to repeated frost/thaw cycles. Lettuce is a very important crop...
We’ve had a very frost week and that’s put quite a check on growth, but we’ve still seen an uptick in our harvest volumes compared to last week and last year. I know from experience that even though I’m always concerned that I’m harvesting too much at this time of...
We’ve had a very frost week and that’s put quite a check on growth, but we’ve still seen an uptick in our harvest volumes compared to last week and last year. We normally have only a handful of frosty days a month in winter, but we’ve been enjoying string of...
