Tuesday 6 March 2012

A day at the Allotment

Saturday was mostly spent at the allotment. What a good day we had too. Our allotment was much neglected last year, other priorities, other commitments  ... and other excuses meant we spent less time last year than we would and should have liked to. This year we are going to do better, spend more time and effort on it.

Alex spent the morning clearing away some rubbish that has collected over time, some glass bottles that we were recycling as edging that we are no longer allowed, and removing some tyres that have been added to the "no" list at the allotment too. After lunch we all went up and it was a lovely sunny day, occasionally a bit breezy, but otherwise lovely.

expert seed sowing assistant

Imogen and I first set ourselves the task of planting up a large bed with spring sown Broad Beans, she is such a great help on sowing things - I let her know the spacing and depth and away we went sowing the seeds on either side of the bed. Alex nipped off to get rid of some more rubbish at the rubbish tip.

beds to clear, replant and mulch

I then moved onto clearing away old plants and weeds in other beds, ably assisted by Imogen again - I just loosened some of the weeds with the fork and away she went clearing them out. I continued to clear almost 4 beds of weeds, and transplanted some plants too.

 
 
ahhh, that all looks better

When Alex returned Imogen wanted to help him clear and dig an area of the allotment we haven't really touched much - we are moving our Kiwi plants there from the back garden. While clearing the area a frog  (or toad? not sure on identification?) appeared so we got a little snap of him. We also marvelled at the amount of frogspawn on the pond, definitely frogspawn rather than toad so I guess the visitor was a frog too.

our welcome visitor or maybe resident
 frogspawn covering the pond

We saw many slow worms which are resident on our plot, under some old carpets left on the plot before us - we are shifting them all to a pile ready for the council to come and remove as they weren't brought onto the plot by us. They soon found other places to find refuge. The carpet pile became an area of much play for Imogen scrambling up and sliding down, spending many happy moments in her own world.

Perennial onions doing well and Wild garlic emerging

Very pleased with the progress of the day, lots of lovely clear beds ready to plant into. Spinach, sorrel and chard plants survive from last year, the remaining beetroots and oca were harvested as were a few small celeriac. The perennial onions - Welsh Onions, Minogues onions (variety unknown, just the name the came to me with) are doing well, probably need a little more dividing soon; and the wild garlic are coming through lovely too.

I cleared a little from the herb spiral which is definitely, definitely getting planted up much more this year. What is there is really establishing so hoping this will look good this year.

Herb spiral before tidying

Alex pruned the Apple and Pear tree - both fruited wonderfully this year but some of the overhanging branches were unstable last year under the weight of the fruit.

progress made

More tales from the allotment soon ...
 

6 comments:

  1. Wow you got a lot done! Your plot looks really good, and such a lot of wildlife too. I'm looking forward to Henry helping more this year, hopefully he'll be as much help as Imogen is to you! Looking forward to seeing how it all goes Dawn, especially your herb spiral x

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  2. Looking good...great to hear that there is a healthy population of slow worms, such beautiful creatures.xxx

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  3. Great weather for clearing the veg patch huh? Well done you! We need to get sowing too but it's raining here now so not feeling very enthused.

    Much love x

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  4. You had a really productive weekend! I'm jealous - we had snow, sleet and rain at the weekend so our broad beans are still in their paper packet. Random weather aside, its a brilliant time of year in the garden when everything gets tidied up and neat little rows of sown seeds appear in the ground. You've made a brilliant start.

    And I think its a frog - looks very much like the one in our garden when I was clearing leaves in autumn.

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  5. It is amazing what you can do when you all work together! There is just so much to do at this time of year!

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  6. wow looks like you have been busy! lots to be done and i am glad you have your gardening mo jo back. still waiting for mine to kick and and tell me where to start!!

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