I’m not sure where we would be on the allotment without the bank holidays – we spent two days doing allotment jobs and half a day shopping for allotment goodies this weekend.  In fact, we got so much done this weekend that I think I will temporarily leave the descriptive posts we’ve been doing behind and try listing everything we got done instead.

Saturday

• Fed chickens and opened up the coop
• Bought bedding plants, flowers and organic slug pellets from garden centre
• Bought replacement trowel (my digging is so fierce I broke the first one on the very first use.  Plastic and metal is no match for me) and water butt irrigation system from B&Q

Sunday

• Planted out the cauliflowers
• Planted out the lemon thyme, french thyme and oregano
• Moved the greenhouse shelves into the shed and had a general tidy up both shed and greenhouse
• With Tom, built netting around cauliflowers to protect from woodpigeons
• Set up drip irrigation system to the water butt.  This should make watering our greenhouse plants a bit easier.  (More information on this another week I think)
• Pilla and Nic weeded the plot
• Pilla and Nic planted out some of the bedding plants
• Neil planted out the new flowering blue scabious (sounds horrible, is very pretty)
• Pilla added some of the slug pellets
• Put chickens to bed

 Monday

• Planted out all of the remaining bedding plants together with the marigolds from Sharon across the front of the plot, into two old hanging boxes we had and across the rear of the plot
• Created hanging boxes for flowers & possibly tomatoes
• Planted out three lavender plants
• Planted out runner beans onto the new munty frame
• Potted on two cucumbers to their final pots
• Potted on kale, basil, two sets of courgettes and more tomatoes
• Put dahlia, french beans and some basil into the cold frame
• Thinned out all the carrot containers
• Thinned out lettuces
• Added more manure to the poo pile

And finally done. Phew!  We also have another job to do after this weekend – build somewhere shady and cool.  So much of our time has been spent being cold over winter I think we completely forgot how hot allotmenting can get.  We have nowhere shady to hide and I think we should try and resolve this, particularly after a little bit of sunburn for both of us yesterday in spite of our suncream!

Special thanks to Tom and Nic for their help on Sunday and for the refreshments they brought, particularly the banana muffins! Allotmenting is much more fun with friends.