Getting things ready
With all the bad weather since Christmas it is hard to believe it is time to start doing…
Larger Strawberries…
I had a bit of a list to work through, it was the first non-cold, non-raining morning for…
2019 – The Stats
Everyone likes spreadsheets and numbers, here is 2019 in numbers… These figures are from the year’s worth of…
Sprouts, Swedes and Woodchip
Due to commitments and weather I have not been to the plot for a number of weeks. A…
The hop plant
Just over five years ago I was given a “grow your own beer” gift as a present, I…
Parsnips, Poo, and Frost
January can be pretty brutal when it wants to be, while at the same time it can be…
2019 Summary
A quick month-by-month summary of 2019…. January planted more garlic, possibly a bit late as quite a lot…
Broad Beans Take Two
Sowed six direct in the ground and they all came up, unfortunately mice found them and nibbled off…
Planting (more) Garlic
Traditionally on the shortest day of the year to be pulled on the longest. I planted in November…
Chopping Trees
Not quite, chopping branches off of trees instead, ones that come over from the field and shadow the…
Unexpected moving chairs
A “quick visit” to get some parsnips and things, turned out to be a couple of hours instead.…
Sprouts and Potatoes
A “quick” visit in the afternoon to fetch some bits for tea and to dig up the Christmas…
Fresh Poo
I picked up a number of bags of what looked like very fresh manure that has been delivered…
Fires and cabbages
Just quickly popping up to get some bits for tea, and how about burning some of the wood…
Broad beans and parsnips
In less than a week we have broad beans! Not quite ready to pick, infact only just showing…
Broad beans and cold weather
The main lot of winter planting is complete now with the planting of broad beans (Aquadulce Claudia). I’ve…
Planting Garlic
I have normally waited until just before Christmas to plant garlic and left it for six months. This…
Onions and Mushrooms
We use a lot of onions and so I thought I would have a go at putting in…
Soil and no more cucumbers
A random browse on Freegle and I noticed someone down the road from us was giving away a…
Slowing down
Normally I spend a good hour weeding each week but today it was done in just five minutes,…
Tidying up – autumn is coming
On Thursday you could still convince yourself it was summer, on Friday you knew that autumn would soon…
Tomatoes and Paths
They were saying it was going to be a really hot and sunny bank holiday weekend and so…
Swedes and potatoes
More wind, more rain means the runner beans have gone the same way as they did last year,…
Wind and Rain Damage?
There appears to actually be none apart from a snapped bean pole. After the load of wind and…
Pathways and weeding
It was interesting to see if there had been any damage at the plot following two days of…
Super Hot
The night time temperature was mid 20c and by the morning it was back up to 30. It…
Night of the Onions
An evening visit with Tom to pull all the onions now they had died back. This included the…
Night of the Peas
After the attack of the little black beetles the other month, the remaining carrots have survived under the…
Potatoes
We dug up the first half last week, this week we were late in the evening digging up…
Weekend of Fruit
The hot weather has helped with the soft fruit, which I had planned to pick a load off…
Garlic and rain than lots of sun
All a bit behind, I’ve had sprout and calabrese plants under cover in pots really wanting to be…
Wind, Rain, Slugs, Flea Beetles?
We had only been away for a week but since then we had gone through various extreme seasons,…
Suddenly… everything needed planting
An attempt to empty the pots and plant out anything that looked like it would rather be in…
Celeriac and strawberries
Mid week afternoon visit and surprised how dry and needing a watering everything was. I gave everything a…
Planting Out
A super sunny weekend which promised likewise for the weekend but turned out not to be. That was…
Hailstones and sun
I thought it wise to wait until the afternoon when it said it would stop looking so miserable…
Stopping Birds
Last year we had two gooseberries before the birds found them and overnight stripped the bushes of everything,…
Hannah and leeks
The day before, I left (storm) Hannah alone at the plot while I transplanted seedlings into larger pots.…
Banking up potatoes
A super early start because it was forecast to be super hot all day, and because I thought…
Sow Sow Sow
It’s it not moving then I sowed it, if it wasn’t moving fast enough then I probably had…
Broad beans and radish
After sowing and putting outside undercover, one lot in the small plastic greenhouse and the other round the…
Seeds
Not much on the plot but lots of seed sowing at home, including: turnips calabrese peas cabbage Also…
Potatoes, onions and sowing seed
An early morning planting onions and potatoes, mixed with a bit of weeding. I put in millions of…
Just Pottering
There was no need to go to the plot, apart from to pull up some leeks as we…
Early Sowing 2019
I planted chili seeds last week and today they had come up and ready to be moved from…
Mulching Gooseberries
A sunny winters day with blue skies…. I didn’t have much need to go to the allotment but…
2018 – The Good & the Bad
A lot of different to last time when we had an allotment, in 2001 we took on a…
Sprouts and Wind…
While sunny, it was windy and the forecast was that it was going to get worse throughout the…
Put off for long enough
The idea of digging up all the raspberries, deep weeding, replanting raspberries through cardboard and mulch…. I’ve been…
Changed Plans
The idea this morning was to dig up all the raspberry canes, cover with cardboard and manure, then…