Final day of the long weekend and we still had plenty of jobs we wanted to accomplish. Having spent most of the last two days on plot 118 we needed to spend some time in the greenhouse on plot 97. There were a few things that needed potting on, having outgrown their seed trays. Neil constructed the rest of the staging to give us some extra space to spread out. We then potted on some marigolds, tomatoes, sunflowers and cucumbers. The latter are not strictly supposed to be transplanted once they have been sown but when you don’t know how many will germinate it would use far too much space to put four or more in large pots. We just made sure we were really careful not to damage their roots!
We then did some more sowing, almost nearing the end of our pile of seeds for this year. I planted three varieties of carrot (Flakkee, Flyaway and Ingot) into one of our clear beds. Carrots were a sore spot for us last year as they were pretty much the only thing we planted that didn’t work out. We used a series of pots but they went from looking quite healthy and bushy to having roots that were a mushy mess. We never established the reason for this, whether it was too much/too little water or some form of blight or insect. Rather than repeat our mistakes we decided to try a different tactic and put them straight into a bed. Considering our parsnips were successful and pretty straight we used the next bed along and sowed neat rows, fingers crossed for some seedlings.
We then returned to plot 118 and made some huge progress. Neil did some neat painting of the fence and got halfway along before rain stopped play (I’m sure the lifting of the paint lid is the allotment equivalent of a rain dance!). He then used some membrane we got from Bob (thanks Bob!) to cover the last big patch of grass and weeds between our large mound of soil and Debbie’s fence. Even if it doesn’t diminish the weeds it makes it look a lot neater for the time being.
We then tackled a job that wasn’t even on our list! Bob has kindly offered us the use of his rotavator next week to loosen the large area just behind the fence. It was pretty full of weeds and because it had been so long since it was turned over it was really hard and dry on the surface. The rotavator will do most of the work but we needed to get it started and also remove some of the deeper rooted weeds so we don’t chop them up and spread them further. It was a really good job to do as it made us feel like we have achieved a lot and certainly makes much more of the plot look like it is being worked effectively. I christened Neil the manic depressive gardener as after a brief visit on Friday he was feeling quite down and anxious about all that we had to get done yet by this afternoon he was grinning from ear to ear at how far we had progressed! Let’s hope the highs continue!
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