Due to the Manchester 10km and Edinburgh marathon over the last two weekends we haven’t been spending a lot of time on the plots and have had even less time to update the blog.  We’ve made up for the former by having a four day weekend of allotmenting and I’ve taken a lot of pictures to get a good update done.

Two weeks ago we moved the munty frame from 97 to 118 – there is a lot more room there and it held up very well in the move.  We’ve planted out about twice as many runner beans as we did last year, with a new variety that’s a cross between a runner and a french bean and as such is less stringy.  We got these out just after the last frost which caught a few people out (including killing the top leaves of our potatoes), and the beans seem to be doing pretty well, hopefully there won’t be another frost.  This weekend we quickly hardened off the sweetcorn for a few nights and planted them out in front of the runner beans.

After the AGM on Sunday we bought four Brussel sprout seedlings as out of a whole tray of our own seeds only three germinates and we have only two viable plants.  Considering just one of us eats sprouts I think two plants would be more than enough but it just didn’t feel like enough.  Still, at 30p a seedling we hardly broke the bank!  Next up was planting out some sugar snap peas, dwarf french beans, climbing french beans and peas.  To do this we had to create something for them all to climb up – the dwarf french beans and peas need support up to about waist high, the climbing beans and sugar snaps need something considerably higher.  I designed a totally unique structure (absolutley nothing like the bean structure on Bob’s plot, it’s not even close*) and put it right next to the nets I made for the sprouts (the netting is also nothing like the net structure just next to it on Bob’s plot.  Totally different*) and Pilla planted out the seedlings and sowed a few extra peas in the holes for good measure.  We then did a fair bit of weeding over the plot as the warm and wet weather over the last week seemed to have really brought out the weeds, they are growing quicker than everything else!  We also planted a line of sunflowers in front of the beans and gave the onions and broad beans a liquid feed – we have some concerns about how fertile the soil is on this bit of the plot and neither the onions or broad beans look particularly healthy.

We spent a lot of time potting on plants in the greenhouse throughout the weekend as we had lots of plants busting to move into bigger pots.  We potted on all of our tomatoes into their final pots, along with the padron and black pearl chilli’s, marconi and new ace peppers and the aubergines (moneymaker).  I took down some of the staging to make room for the plants in their bigger pots – I took the staging down but left the ‘deck’ and legs in two large pieces which I then attached the side of the greenhouse.  This keeps them out of the way and should mean it’s really quick to put up the staging again in the spring.

We did a general weed on plot 97, although there really wasn’t that many to take out.  Pilla did some successional sowing of lettuces in a free bed, something that we weren’t very good at last year and vowed to improve upon this time around. On Sunday we thinned enough of the many lettuces we have to make a tasty salad for tea.   Pilla also sowed another batch of parsnips and a few beetroot as the germination rate on the new plot has been really disappointing which we think might be a sign that the soil fertility is in need of some help .  We had tons of beetroot last year (some of which won a prize at the summer show) so only having a few will be a real shame.

Elsewhere on plot 97 things are looking pretty good – we have lots of blackberry flowers across the whole length of the bush, it’s quite amazing that this was a tiny little plant this time last year.  We have loads of little strawberries growing and in the same bed the raspberry canes are covered in fruits that are not quite ripe, flowers which results in frequent visits from many bees.  The scabiosa plant has survived the winter and now has it’s first very pretty flower.  Happily we only have a few days of work this week before we can get back to the plot!

* Ok, I ‘borrowed’ the design from Bob!