I took advantage of a couple of days this week where I was working in the afternoon and evening, leaving me with the morning. As it happened, both these days had sunny and warm mornings, of which I spent both at the allotment before going to work.

I planted out two gloves of garlic, a lot less than previous years as we have had a bit of a garlic overload before. Alongside this, two rows of white and one row of red overwintering onion sets. I’ve tried to space these out a lot more than last year, I think I’ve always sown them too close which has made it harder to weed in between. I covered all these with the metal netting just to stop birds from picking them out. I am left with quite a lot spare and so these will go in the garden at some point.

I had quite a bit of time to kill, so I did a bit more tidying up of the strawberries and decided to start moving them a bit too. The bed is way too over crowded, although once I had picked off the dead leaves and the runners it didn’t look as bad. The plants near the edge, where the trees over hang and the weeds come in, has never done very well and it’s the only part on the plot where I am still trying to grow right up to this edge. In all other places I have replaced beds with a path and that’s what I started to work on. When we got the plot there was a path all the way down the middle and this is the last bit remaining.

While removing plants, I have potted some of them up to take home. I’ve used a mixture of the compost in the bed and mixed in some of the rotted down woodchip from the path that I’m moving. Hopefully there will be a delivery of woodchip to the site at some point so I can re-create the path.

At home, I planted some onion seed for overwintering. It’s about a month late and so I’ll work out what I will do with these when they are big enough to plant it. I may wait until February/March, I should have really had sown them last month to be planted out this month.

The chilie plants at home are coming to an end. A couple of them I have trimmed right back to see if they will come back to life in the spring.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

•