4th April 2006

In the morning, my girlfriend, Susanna, and I took the greenhouse apart at the Parris household. With the help of Ryan Parris, it took around two hours to be taken apart and placed precariously into the car. It was then unloaded piece by piece onto the plot until other factors had been addressed (see 5th April). As you can see from the photo below, the greenhouse framework and glass panels were scattered along the bottom section of the plot.

5th April 2006

Having never built a wall in my life, I decided to take advantage of my annual leave and build one! Because I hadn't taken into account the fact that Tim was tall and I wasn't, the height of the greenhouse needed to be raised by a concrete block wall. This extra height would make all the difference. Ten concrete blocks placed in the back of a Renault Clio seemed to have an overall effect on the suspension. A lesson was learned from this as an extra ten blocks required were purchased in a further two transactions. A concrete wall built by a first timer takes quite a while. If anyone needs me to build a house then please schedule in a good 25 years and don't expect it to fulfill health and safety requirements.

8th April 2006

With a wall built, Tim and I went to work putting the greenhouse together. We came across a few little problems such as putting the doorway on the wrong end and putting supports in the wrong way. By 5pm, however, the greenhouse was built. The door was missing because I didn't have enough room to fit the entire greenhouse in my car. This required a separate trip and also some replacement glass. At the end of the day we were both thrilled with the greenhouse and couldn't wait to start growing things in there.It had taken 2 hours to take apart and a day to put together.

The only annoying thing was that we hadn't had time to do any digging or planting.

15th April 2006

After last week's lack of sowing and growing, we seemed to make up for it this week. We were really excited because the first few Arran Pilot leaves had sprouted. We first had to dig the ground properly on the second section we had marked out on our plot. We took out as many weeds as possible and tried to break the earth down to a fine tilth.

We planted up some Desiree Potatoes, Maris Piper Potatoes and planted up our Sturon Onion sets, Red Baron Onion sets and shallots. We sowed some seeds in the way of Early Nantes 2 Carrots and also Purple Dragon Carrots.

We also planted up some more garlic plants because I still had a few in pots from home. We had both brought some seedlings we had sown at home, in our cold frames, to put in the greenhouse.

17th April 2006

I went to the allotment to put together the bench I had designed in my head. This was to hold all of the seedlings that Tim and I had sown in propagators on the windowsills and cold frames at our houses. I had sown around 120 tomato seeds which desperately needed to be pricked out of the overcrowded seed trays I had sown them in. Tim had sown some beans, beetroot, peas and cucumbers and courgettes. Nigel, from a neighbouring plot, gave us some leek seeds that he had a surplus of from Moles Seeds. Good man!

22nd April 2006

Today, we did a little more digging in preparation for sowing some more seeds. I had some onion seedlings, which we planted out. Tim had some other seeds he wanted to plant such as Boltardy Beetroot and radish seeds. We managed to put out some Swede Marian seeds too.

We dug a little further on the third section we had marked out and managed to get some peas in as well! We always seem to walk away at the end of a day and feel impressed that we have got that little bit further. The differences we see in the plot are noticeable each time we dig and plant. It' so nice to see things growing.

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