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 ...