Saturday 3rd March 2007

The weather was pretty wet this morning. In the week we had bought a flat-pack steel garden shed and I had managed to go up at 8am to put it up on the plot. It was shaping up to be a sunny day and I went back home to get my tools. By 9:30am the heavens had opened and initially I wondered whether it was wise to go up to the plot with the amount of rainfall we had had in such a short space of time. Tim was convinced, however, especially as by 10:30am the rain had stopped.
                                             
 

We got up there and the water was steadily trickling down our pathway. We certainly did churn our path up well by the time we left! The first sign of spring seemed to be encapsulated by little green leaves on the raspberry plants. How exciting. Also, the seedlings in the greenhouse were growing extremely well. I found it quite apt that our rubbish vegetables (parsnips) are germinating in toilet roll tubes now.
                                             
 
                                             
Tim had started digging up at the top of our first plot, in preparation for shifting the blackcurrant bushes that ran down the centre of our two plots. Because we wanted to put our polytunnel where the bushes were, we thought it best to move them now before it was too late and the shock of moving them later in the year would kill them.
                                             
 

Our old chum Roger was up there too. He had come up to do some digging but thought that it was too wet. He came and chatted to us while I cut back the tree that was growing at the top of our plot and Tim was digging the earth. Roger and Charlie also made a Saturday appearance. No sign of Nigel, though, the lazy toad! We got a phone call from John, the manure man (how delightful it must be to be dubbed “the manure man”), who said that he was on his way with our second load of well-rotted horse poop. I was actually there to help this time round as it was dumped onto our plot.
                                             
 
                                             
We dug up the blackcurrant bushes and tried to make sure that we left a good rootball on them for replanting. Tim measured them all out so that it looked nice and orderly. We had already dug loads of manure into the ground but we chucked some more in the holes we had dug for each bush and also put some on the surface around the plant. I was feeling ill so I decided to leave the plot and also leave Tim to do all the work. Ha ha! Cunning, eh? Last I heard, Tim had spread some muck over some areas of the first plot. What a good lad!
                                             
 
                                             
Saturday 11th March 2007

Tim and I have spent the last month or so chitting our first early potatoes. They had their little sprouts sticking out so they were all prepared to go into the ground. You don't have to chit potatoes but we like to do it the old-fashioned way. Tim had his Arran Pilots and I brought up my Red Duke of York potatoes.
                                             
 
                                             
We took a look in the greenhouse and it was 22ºC in there and that was after we had taken the door off. We had a quick look around and saw that all the parsnips had germinated (oh well, you can't have everything!), the beans were looking really healthy and the lettuce were getting bigger and bigger. Even the carrots we had sown two weeks ago had germinated in their window box.
                                             
 
                                             
We needed to plant up the first early potatoes and this meant digging them into a patch of ground that was prepared. Luckily we had a patch ready for them on our second plot, which was covered in rotted down horse manure. As we dug a trench we realised that we had no instructions as to how far apart to plant the seed potatoes. We guessed that they must be a foot apart and each row should be 45cm apart. Was this correct? I still don't know because I haven't looked it up!
                                             
 
                                             
The asparagus crowns had arrived from Moles Seeds and we didn't really have an area ready for them. We looked around the plot for around fifteen minutes before deciding to plant them up with the blackcurrants at the top of the plot. What a waste of time we could have spent digging.   We spent the remainder of the afternoon digging the second plot. The soil was becoming more and more clay-based as we went down. We had to add a huge amount of manure in an attempt to counteract the clay. I stuck around to brush the water out of the greenhouse and to transplant the Kelsae onion seedlings into pots. I left at around 6pm, just as it began to start going dark.
                                             
 
                                             
Saturday 18th March 2007

The weather was bitter today as Tim and I worked on our weather-exposed plot. Tim had been up the plot for a while before me but I tried to keep up. Our asparagus crowns needed to be planted today so we set about digging two trenches around a foot apart. I dug one trench and Tim dug the other. We had a few visitors who came along such as Nigel, Roger and Jimmy (who has returned after a long while - hooray!). We had a natter to them all and then we realised that we weren't getting very far.

  
                                             
 
                                             
We had decided to plant the asparagus just below the blackcurrant bushes at the top of the first plot. We managed to get the trenches dug, which took quite a while. We then filled the trench with a bit of compost and then a bit of sharp sand to give the plants plenty of drainage. We made a little mound for the crown to sit on and then set them around a 1 ½ feet apart. We then covered them over with soil and gave them a good drenching.  
                                             
The asparagus had taken quite a lot of time to plant so we then decided to plant out some broad beans rather dig any more of the second plot. We had around 30 plants to put out and our new allotment neighbours had given us some short tubes they'd brought from the cigar factory that one of the brothers works in. We used these to protect the beans from frost, although we didn't have quite enough of them to protect every single one. We did manage to get the majority of them covered, however.
                                             
 
                                             

Nigel, Tim and I then went to our cars where we dealt out some seeds. We had placed a bulk order with Nigel and we were just sharing out each variety. It's fabulous being on this allotment because we can get a massive amount of seed for a small amount of money and by having friends up there we can share everything out and reduce the cost further.

Sharing seeds and recylcing pipes. How economical we all are!

 
                                             
  Saturday 24th March 2007

It was the day before British Summer Time kicked in and we certainly felt the promise of summer. After weeks of cold and rain, the sun was shining and it was actually hot outside. We relished the day as we worked ourselves silly for as long as the weather would hold out. Luckily, it turned out that the weather was going to stay. We cannot wait for the clocks to go forward tomorrow.
                                             

Tim and I started our day by helping empty a truck of compost bags into the allotment shop with a number of other men (where are the women when the lifting needs to be done?) We then walked around our plot and enjoyed the blossoming cherry tree, buds on the blackcurrants and the growth of the Polka raspberry plants. The shift in seasons really does feel more apparent with every visit to the allotment.

We decided to mark out some smaller beds this year, so that we don't trample on the ground, compacting all the soil like we did last year when we watered. We are using the entire width of the plot but having six foot (2 metres approx) beds. We started off marking it out from the bottom of the plot until we realised that the beds were all looking skew-wiff (is that the right spelling?). We undid all our hard work and started from the top. Tim wouldn't let us have a cup of tea until the measuring was all done. Slave-driver! We also tied string to all the markers so that we could more clearly see the beds we had measured out. It was looking fantastic and we were both really excited at the prospect of growing vegetables again.

  
                       
 
                                             
We had both made the trip to a local DIY superstore and bought a total of 600 litres of compost and 5 bags of sharp sand. The ground we were planning to dig today was very clay-based. We had planted the maincrop potatoes in this part of the ground last year and this could have contributed to our spuds being smaller than they should have been. The clay soil doesn't have much give and wouldn't let the water get to the tubers as well as sandier soils. We can't use manure as a soil conditioner on this patch either because we want to grow carrots and don't want them to fork. We emptied 300 litres of compost and 4 bags of sharp sand onto the patch and started digging it in. Tim did the initial digging with his trusty spade and I followed behind, smacking the clay lumps into smithereens using my fork. We worked well as a team and had the ground looking like it had been rotavated in no time (1 ½ hours).
                                             
 
                                             
  We did the same with a patch we had marked out near the plum tree and this was really hard-going. The soil was very clay-based and it was also quite wet. We only had one bag of sand left but used 150 litres of compost and a growbag. We had also put loads of horse muck on this patch as well. It took about an hour to get this ground into shape. We planted up the Gem lettuce that we had growing in a seed tray. They looked great as soon as they were out in the ground. Instant gratification!

We returned to the first patch we'd dug today and started planting up some of the many onion sets that Tim had bought. His maxim in life is “you can never have enough onions”; looking at the box of sets he'd bought from the allotment shop I would have to dispute this. We probably had around 150 sets, plus we have the over-wintering onions and Japanese onions at the bottom of the plot. I also have some onions growing from seed, which are the huge Kelsae onions and some elongated salad onions. Tims thinks we will have just enough.

We also planted some carrots in between the onion rows to hopefully confuse the onion fly and the carrot fly. We dug a small trench, filled it with compost and sprinkled some carrot seeds on top. This should hopefully encourage the carrots to use the available space below them. We also planted the shallots and managed to fill the patch with row upon row of stupid onions! We left a few spaces for carrots for further succession sowings as we don't want a glut.

We agreed to buy Ann's tiller from her as this will help our plight to get the soil more manageable sooner. We harvested some leeks and purple-sprouting broccoli and went home with our backs aching and generally feeling tired out. What a fantastic feeling!