I feel like I am not on top of the allotment, visits have not been much this year and those made seem to be rushed and doing just the specific jobs to keep things ticking over. Both ends of the plot at a bit of a mess at the moment and the weeds and brambles from the field next to us are coming through, even though we spent time cutting them back just the other week. Part of this feeling is of course due to half the allotment being at home where you can just pop out to fill five minutes of time with small jobs, pottering about and watching the plants grow.

Today I thought I would put everything right with an early morning visit and a list of things to tick off. This list included a lot of planting:

• celeriac
• celebrese
• red cabbage
• courgettes
• strawberries

I had to pull up both some of the rogue garlic and some of this year’s in order to make room. Rogue garlic was lifted and replaced with rather a lot of celeriac plants grown in pots at home. I’m not too sure if we will be able to eat them all or if we will even enjoy doing so.

I dug the soil over a bit and mixed it in with some of the horse manure that we got back in March. It had turned to concrete with all the dry weather which if you think of all the mushroom compost piled onto it last year it makes you wonder where it all went to?!

There are four pallet collars which are good for cabbages and starting other brasicas off in as it makes it easy to cover them just by placing netting over them. I’ve not got three of them setup, the forth one will go where the rest of the garlic is and will house winter cabbage.

I’ve nearly completed bring up the strawberry plants from home and adding to the strawberry patch which I extended in March but didn’t complete. It feels like it was our last ever time we went to a shop in an age where it could be as crowded as you like, we bought some compost and soil improver to extend this bed. The soil is still quite shallow but the strawberry plants should be fine, and the ones planted out over the previous weeks have been more than happy. We only have a small number left at home.

The other side and another new bit of planting area which was just raspberries and path before and we meant for tomoatoes and chilies this year. Instead, I planted in two of the courgette plants, the third one is planted at home.

The rest of the time was weeding and cutting bits back. The two rows of parsnip sowings are yet to appear, although bindweed doesn’t seem to be having a problem. I did find a small number of parsnip seedlings which was promising, I hope I haven’t pulled any small ones out as they look so much like weeds in their early days. In the garden however, parsnips seem more than happy and I’m glad I sowed radish seed with them (something I should had done on the plot maybe). Most of those radish we have now eaten.

Back at home, I planted out:

• new lot of radish seedlings
• runner beans
• butternut squash

The second lot of left over potatoes at home have started to show, whereas the ones planted back in the beginning of April look they will soon be flowering. Likewise, the peas have been growing upwards pretty quickly but have slowed down and now flowers are also appearing.

As it happens, I ran out of time at the plot and never did get to tidy the bits at the end, so next time…

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

•