…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.
We had a few jobs to finish off or get started with this weekend. The main task was to neaten the front of the plot on the outside of the fence. The top trek layer came right up to the edge of the path but didn’t have a straight edge and in some places was wearing thin. Given the time we have spent making the plot itself look lovely we thought this part needed some TLC. We hope to put some flowers and pots there once the time is right for planting. Neil bought some thin batons of wood to make a defined edge but first we had to scrape up the top trek and then cut away the membrane. This was quite a good job for us after the seemingly never ending greenhouse saga as it didn’t take long at all and it makes a big difference.
The next pressing task was planting. Exciting! We have had a good week for deliveries and some of our parcels contained bushes that we had to leave in tubs of water until today. We went via the garden centre as the blueberry bush needs an ericaceous compost (an acidic soil) and we also picked up some multipurpose compost for some of our other tubs and a couple of healthy looking rosemary plants. We have ordered rosemary seeds but some of our research seemed to indicate that growing from seed can be quite difficult and therefore using cuttings or an established plant is more successful. So we planted the rosemary, blueberry and blackberry bushes and the raspberry canes (which incidentally look far too dead and withered to ever bear fruit, but I’m told that’s what they are supposed to look like!)
A really good allotment find came in the form of the black tubs you can see above. In their previous life they were wastepaper baskets at Neil’s work. In a bid to become more green they were all replaced by large recycling bins. And they have sat in a darkened storeroom ever since. That is until Neil liberated them after a bit of tough negotiating! He brought about 20 home and there are plenty more should we need them, which at this rate we most certainly will.
In case you are thinking that this is all we did today, we also attended the monthly allotment society meeting ( nothing much to report there) and started digging the last two beds. Unfortunately, our progress was halted at about 3pm with a flurry of snow! It had been snowing on and off a couple of times this afternoon but it didn’t really come to much and after a brief respite in the greenhouse we were back out again. However, this downpour looked set to last and so we decided to call it a day. Lets hope the plants we put in today are hardy enough to survive the cold snap.
Until very recently I thought that getting sent packages through the post was always exciting. Now things have changed. First of all, the receptionist at my work thinks I’m weird. This began about 2 years ago when we started getting sent meat through the post, so getting sent things to work always feels like a game of ‘how much can Neil annoy the receptionist’. I think I’m going to hit new heights when the fig and apple trees turn up. Anyway, back to the packages. This week we started getting allotment goodies – blackcurrants, raspberries and blueberries, followed by shallots and spring onion seeds. The initial excitement is fast replaced by ‘did we buy the right variety of (plant x)?!’ and then ‘wow (plant x) is surprisingly heavy, how am I going to get it home?!’ before ‘(plant x) needs to be kept dark/dry/wet/cool/warm how can we do that in the flat?’ and then ‘how on earth are we going to grow this, I know nothing about (plant x)?!’ before being finally replaced by ‘what if NOTHING grows?!’
So here are our shallots. Not being kept dark or cool.
Recent Comments