I picked up some strawberries the other week and this weekend I was going to plant them in the raised beds, until the weather forecast suggested frost, snow, and strong winds.  A bit of a reminder that while it has been quite warm with clear skies for a couple of days, it is still winter.

It will be Easter in a couple of weeks and I expect the allotments to be full of people over that time busy planting and sorting things out.  Before that happens, I still had a last raised bed that needed emptying and re-positioning, I had to stop last week when the amount of sticky mud was just everywhere in the cold and wet.   While snow and wind was forecast, I got up early to get this last bit done.  It wasn’t cold and strangely at the top of the hill on the plot it wasn’t too windy either.

I moved the raised bed, lining it with the millions of newspapers that we still have and putting down a bit of soil to stop the paper flying about.  It didn’t take long, and while there were two bucket fulls of weeds, it was a lot less than the previous bed.   All this has gone into the incinerator for burning hopefully next week.   I did a bit of hoeing around the raspberries and gooseberries to get rid of weeds that were starting to appear.  In doing so I discovered a third rhubarb crown starting to show, which is really good news.

Each week I keep thinking everything is done and now it is just waiting for warmer times (on Tuesday they say) to uncover everything and do some planting.  Each week I find yet another job to do, but I really do think this time it is now all ready to go – apart from some burning of further cuttings and weeds.

Suddenly the plot is looking a lot larger and less cluttered.    The snow did eventually come, but nothing set and it didn’t get in the way.