February Update

The end of last year and the start of this year has been very wet. My original 1/2 plot is fairly waterlogged as the soil has a lot of clay.
I didn’t have any brassicas in last year as the 1/2 plot didn’t have enough room.  So the main bed is pretty empty apart from some garlic I put in. It’s pretty waterlogged at the bottom though. Hopefully the garlic won’t just rot.
I’ve had the new plot mostly covered with plastic to inhibit the weeds, but I’ve started digging it over during the past couple of weeks, it’s been pretty heavy going.
I’ve got my seed potatoes chitting, 3 varieties:

• Rocket – 1st Earlies
• Desiree – Main Crop
• Albert Bartlett – Main Crop.

Looking forward to a good year, hoping the weather starts brightening up soon.

Big News

After years of waiting, I finally got offered an additional full plot to go with my existing half plot. It was terribly overgrown, full of weeds and brambles.

But a few hours with the scythe soon sorted that out.

With a bit of work it was soon like this

 

And after a hard day with a cultivator yesterday:

Lots of work still to do of course.

Harvest Update

Well, it has been a pretty good year at the allotment. We've had a good harvest of most of the veg planted.

The runner beans have been exceptional and are still going strong. Two courgette plants have produced a glut which we are slowly working through with ever more ingenuous recipes, last nights was courgette fritters.

The carrots weren't great, but were tasty.

A good crop of onions, but disappointing crop of garlic with most of it failing to 'bulb'.

There was a good crop of strawberries early on, and the raspberries are continuing to produce, but are starting to mould.

Still here, still digging.

Well it’s been over 2 years since my last allotment blog post. However, the allotment is still going.

2014 is going well, the weather has been good and everything is growing well. I did get off to a bit of a late start with the sowing and planting. I was holding back because of the threatened late frost, which never appeared.

The soft fruit is doing well, we’ve had around 4 kilos of raspberries and probably the same of strawberries, which have been very tasty and my wife has also made lots of jam.

I picked about a kilo of gooseberries but unfortunately they burned during the jam making.

Early March

Whilst rain stopped play last weekend, the weather on Sunday was glorious. I took the kids down, and we were there for most of the day.

I finished weeding one of the raspberry beds of couch grass and started on another.

I prepared my onion bed and added some blood, fish and bone to the ground.

I dug over the path between the top two beds as I need the growing room more than I need the path.

By the end of the day, my arms ached and my head was burned red. My hat appears to have disappeared from the shed.

First buds are out

Late February

After the snow in early February, the ground was too wet to work last week. So I spent a bit of time on sorting out the compost heaps.

This week I tidied out the strawberry patch and started on the raspberry patches. There is lots of couch grass and it's pretty tough getting it out without damaging the raspberry cane roots.