We are having some frustrating Internet issues at home thanks to our wonderful ISP which means it’s really difficult to get on the Internet in the evenings – which is why this post is a bit late – I’m having to do it in my lunch at work.

The exciting thing about going to the plot now is that we’re expecting something new each time – as you get closer to the plot you start wondering about what will have grown – at the moment because we don’t have much in the ground every little bit of new leaf is greeted with a big sense of excitement and achievement.  Also, because we are extremely new to this allotment business, we don’t exactly know how our plants will appear.  This week, this started growing:

Any thoughts? Yep, those are the shallots we planted a few weeks back, doing a quite remarkable small pineapple impression.  The garlic is still shooting up, we have a 100% germination rate, which I think is quite impressive.

We were a little disappointed with the seeds – it’s still very early and we only planted them as a test but the weather was so good last week I really thought they might be growing.  They are not.  We checked with Sharon next door who was also planting seeds last week, and she had got a bit of success using lids on the pots, so we borrowed a few before running off to Wilkinsons to buy our very own.  This also leads me on to a slight issue we have – we’d like to be as organic as possible.  Why is that an issue? Well you cannot have organic peat. Ok, fine.  So what is the best medium to start seedlings in? Yes, that’s right, peat.  So we are testing now – we have some seedlings in peat and some in non-peat compost and we’ll see what happens.  It’s a catch 22 though – you needs your seedlings to have a strong start in life so they are healthy and disease resistant which should mean you don’t need non-organic controls, but the best way to do that is to use a non-organic product.

In other news we finally planted the redcurrants Bob gave us and I fixed up a cold frame using some old windows Russ was throwing away. 

I’m making a website for the Society and I’ve been given some old pictures from around the place.  When I get time I’ll dig out a few and put them up, the place is almost completely unrecognisable from how it was even at the start of last year.