…As our regular reader(s?) will know it’s been a while since the last update on here, very nearly a month in fact.  We’ve not been managing to get down to the plot as much as we would like this summer for a variety of reasons, the last two weekends before this one felt like we had hardly done anything.  We tried to change that this weekend and we have got a few days booked off at the end of the week to hit the plot again (and make them both look nicer for the allotment competition judge who will be coming round soon!)

Since the last update we have decided to try and put a better path down 118, it currently has just a black membrane down and frankly looks a bit rubbish.  It doesn’t help we’ve been piling weeds on there to dry out in the sun so it looked a mess and really needed sorting.  To that end I have been scavaging a few flags (17 at the last count) which have been an absolute pain to move around, I had no idea how heavy they were.  I set to work laying a few of those this weekend whilst Pilla bravely tackled weeding the whole of 118.  It’s a huge plot but Pilla is very efficient with the hoe and managed to get the lot done.  We both weeded the front after that and the plot looks way better for it.

We now have a nice new sign on the front of the plot from the Society – the dreaded ‘Hosepipe Ban’ sign.  Our plots are pretty close to taps and we don’t really water that much outside of the greenhouse so hopefully it shouldn’t effect us too much.  We did feel sorry for the people who have to walk down past a few plots to get to a tap.  In the heat that is not a fun job!  We really have noticed the lack of rain, the ground is very dry, but it’s doesn’t look like our plants are suffering too much at the moment.

We spent the few hours we had on Sunday on the plot sorting the greenhouse.  It was really packed with chilli, sweet pepper and aubergine plants to the extent you couldn’t really get in there.  This is not great for a variety of reasons not least that the fruits in there need light to ripen.  This was a much bigger job than we thought, we pulled out all the Jalapeno, Cayenne, Padron, Sweet, Marconi, Chili, Twilight, Black Pearl and Habanero Peppers – we must have 4 or 5 of each.  Most of them needed staking and some we decided to give away, but once they got a good watering they got placed back in the greenhouse with a lot more room and hopefully a lot more light.

We have been taking loads of produce off the plot.  We must have had about 2 kilo’s of strawberries so far, including this rather interesting looking fella.  I’m not sure if we should have censored it or not!  Alongside the mountains of strawberries have been getting an almost equal amount of raspberries.  Seeing how many we got this year, I’m not sure we needed to buy the second variety we got earlier in the year, next year we’ll be swamped!  We’ve also had (in no order) turnips, cauliflowers, carrots, courgettes and cucumbers (you really forget how many of these you get.  It’s madne, ss), potatoes, red currants, blackberries and more lettuce than we could possibly eat.  Ace.

To say sorry again I’ve made a video on what Plot 97 has done this year.  You lucky things.