Prepping Beds

There is not a lot going on at the plot, it’s all happening in the garden at home it seems. That’s not quite true though. Most of our food is coming from the garden at the moment, beetroot, tomatoes, beans, carrots and so on. On the plot we have cabbage which we have started picking, sprouts and parsnips which have a lot longer left until we eat those. Cucumbers (suffered from the cold and wind on the plot, liking the shelter in the garden), courgettes (lots of promising fruits that will be ready this time next week). Carrots on the plot look better than those in the garden and we shall start putting those quite soon I’m sure.

The allotment is pretty empty though, just because we have so much more room if we combine the plot and the garden. Which means we can start prepping the winter and next year at the plot a bit earlier than we would normally. So far, along with our own compost, we have put on 12 bags of rotted horse manure collected from the heap in the field down the road. Give it another six bags and we will be done I would think.

One place we need to do this is on the strawberry bed to complete what we started the other week. This will increase the depth for the strawberries and along with the overhanging branches that we have chopped down maybe next year we will have more luck with them.

The plot looks all clean and ready, has a nice earthy smell. Just need to start planting which will be next month when we put in garlic, onions and broad beans. Since I’ve got back to regular hoeing, like last week, general weeding took no time at all.

We have fennel that went to seed a while back but looks so interesting and smell nice that I have left it in there. Cabbages are ready and will be pulled up as we need them. Red cabbage will follow. Swedes have not suffered being pecked by birds as they did last year, because I have had them covered all the time to keep them off. Turnip seedlings were big enough to determine which were weeds and which were not, so able to tidy that up a bit.