Easter weekend

What a glorious weekend...having booked a couple of days for myself to crack on with the allotment, the sun shone and loads of progress was made. I spent all of Good Friday with the father-in-law, constructing three new raised beds (there's now 7) which look really good. The rest of the day was spent weeding the open plot, which sorely needed it while f-i-l spent ages strimming all the grass margins of the plot, and marking a careful edge between the plot and the access track.
Saturday was spent with my parents, but we were back up there on Sunday morning.

Sunny Sunday morning

Popped up to the plot this morning, in bright warm sunshine. Just there to pick up my wheelbarrow, so I could shift the loads of compost I'd bought and delivered to home. Carrying them up the side path did not appeal - so the barrow was called for.
While I was at the plot I had a look around, and generally things are not looking too bad. A few of the leeks are starting to go to seed (the warm weather I guess), but the new season onions and garlic look healthy, and the winter salads are still OK (out from their cloches now).

Back at home I spent some time in the greenhouse sowing butternut squash, green beans, marrows, tomatoes - and potting on some tomatoes, aubergines, chillies and red peppers I bought yesterday. I also picked up a couple of rhubarbs this morning - which need to go in at the allotment next time I am there. There'll be (if all goes to plan) plenty of stuff to plant out at the allotment in a few weeks.

Otherwise spent much of the time in the garden at home - tidying, trying to sort the lawn out a bit, potting up the solanums for the deck - all jobs that needed doing.
Here's hoping for the decent weather to continue for a while, so I can get the allotment up and running properly for the season.

New season underway...

Went up to the plot on Sunday lunchtime for a couple of hours. I'd not been up since just after New Year, and was a bit apprehensive. Since last year both neighbouring plots have been taken, both have sheds, but very little else. Downhill has dug a little 'test' bed through the winter's covering of weeds, and Uphill has dismantled a load of edged-beds and rotovated the lot: so activity is stirring. On my plot everything has got through the winter unscathed. The shed is nice and watertight, and the raised beds are in good order. The rest is a bit of a wilderness though. If I only had the raised beds, which equates to about 12m x 1m across the four, I'd probably have enough anyway: it's looking after all the rest that's a pain when it's not got stuff growing. Maybe I should resort more readily to black plastic this year and keep things looking tidier? And I have the promise of at least four more raised beds for this season, so that brings another chunk of the plot under control.
I sowed a few rows of broad beans, a bit later than planned, but at least they're in. I'd also earlier sown some salad leaf in a leftover Growbag in the greenhouse, so they might get going. The winter salad at the plot has done OK: corn salad, winter lettuce, rocket all under cloches - I came away with a good bag full, as well as the last dozen onions from the shed. And the onions and garlic I put in November time have mostly made it through: it's pigeons rather than the weather that has uprooted some of them.
I finally felled the sunflowers, any seeds having been devoured by local birds, or dropped to the ground and self-set. There are thousands (slight exaggeration, but only slight) of nasturtium seeds about in the beds, so I won't need to sow any this year.
After a gloomy, long, dark and SAD winter, it does the soul a power of good to get up on the plot again. It's light in the morning, it's light at teatime - and the prospect of long weekend days up there really starts to feel good. S bought me a diary so I can keep all my allotment notes and records up together through the year: here's to looking back in 12 months' time at a job well done.

Barrow load of runners

A nice optical illusion - but these are not 2 ft runner beans... it is my son's junior wheelbarrow!

'Bean' there, done that...

Oh come on, there's no law against bad puns. At least I haven't suggested a podcast!
Up at the plot last night for the first time in a few days, and what a change... although it was drizzling steadily when I got up there, and has since poured it down for 12 hours or more (long overdue), the previous few days' of warm and very dry weather had wrought a sudden change in the scene.
Lots of veg suddenly looks very tired and dusty: autumn is really here.
[Question: when does Autumn really start? in the celtic/pagan calendar it starts in July - essentially as the first fruits and veg start to become edible and the harvest starts- so by now we're well into it. I have to say that's a lot better for me than the 'back to school term' definition that seems to predominate now, which makes autumn feel a rather gloomy season, rather than the ' mist & mellow fruitfulness' thing.
Mind you, it does mean that the entire 'summer' holiday season would have to be renamed...]
Enough digression... brought home two carrier bags full of runner beans, and some pak choi - which went straight into the supper stir-fry. Pulled up the last of the onions, and put them in the shed to dry.
The seeds I sowed a few days back - cabbage, rocket, lamb's lettuce - have all taken in spite of the dry, and are coming on well. Have cloched some of them to protect them from pigeons and pheasants - the resident pheasant followed me around the whole time last night, except when he was sitting imperiously on the shed roof... as I left he hurled himself up into the big tree behind the plot, which is presumably his roost.
Next door on both sides there are signs of life. Downhill the shed-builders' plot has been rotovated. It now looks like mine did this time last year, just after we took it on - and makes me realise how daft it was to let it sit over the winter, so everything needed rotovating again come the spring. Let's hope they don't make the same mistake... Uphill, some stuff's been move around, and it looks as if someone new has maybe take it on, which would be good.

I need to get up there this weekend - weather forecast is good - and start doing some serious tidying up, as well as some sowing - getting everything in order for the shorter days. I might even have a bonfire, which would be fun.

Picture the scene...

Here are a few photographs of the plot as it was on Sunday morning...
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT:

1. the shed, and the compost bins;

2. a couple of nice marrows (oo-er missus...);

3. runner beans aplenty;

4. a rather green-tinted view, with the flowering coriander in the foreground (plenty of seeds to collect in due course)

5..sunflowers - Russian Giant - have done really well, as have the nasturtiums in front of them...

I came away with a carrier load of runners, the last (I guess) of the french beans, the first lot of pak choi, some massively over-sized spring onions (which I'd overlooked - they were a bit tough, but ended up in a curry and ate well), and some beetroot.

[Automotive aside: The Corsa's not mine: it's a courtesy car, since some clown chose to run into the back of the trusty Kangoo last week (no-one hurt, thank goodness). Kangoos must be the no.1 allotmenteer car - there are 3 others on the site! Loads of room in the back for moving wood and other hardware around, and generally fairly good mpg etc so green-ish. I suppose they've replaced the old Renault 4s as the 'polytechnic lecturer-mobile' of the 21st century...]

Potatoes!

At last, a Bank Holiday weekend, and the chance to spend some decent time at the allotment.
Of course, we wake up on Monday morning to fairly persistent rain...but then it clears up, and all 3 of us are on the plot by 9am.
My main task is to get the remaining leeks weeded, and then to try to get some seeds in. Otherwise there'll be precious little to harvest once we get to the middle of September or so.
W occupies himself happily watering the pumpkins, and collecting stones in his wheelbarrow, under MP's watchful eye - until boredom sets in, and they head off home. Which leaves me to crack on with the jobs.
I get all the weeding done - slow and only rewarding in a slightly weird way - but it's done. Then B&D roll up, and we spend some time chatting about plans for the autumn/winter. I have a few:
- get another 4 raised beds built
- put a path in along the bottom edge of the plot
- finish off the main path to the shed, and tidy the area round the shed
- create a sitting/picnic/flower-growing area next to the shed
- do something to partially screen-off the 'messy' end, compost heaps etc
- put in a fruit cage
- keep the raised beds in active cultivation through as much of the cold season as possible
And what will I do the weekend after that, you ask! It's good to be ambitious, and if I end up getting half of that lot done by Easter, I will be content enough.

Not a lot of activity from the new neighbours. They've built a neat doorstep at the front of their shed, which I might copy.

Am surprised how quiet the allotments are, given it's BH Monday. Maybe everyone was up on Sunday when the weather was really hot and sunny?

I get some seeds planted: lamb's lettuce, spinach, spring greens, winter lettuce (Arctic King - the free seeds from GYO magazine months ago). And I do various tidying jobs. The sun comes out from behind the clouds every so often, and it feels good to be up there for a decent stretch. I even have time to sit and have a sandwich and a cup of coffee, watching the countryside beyond the railway line: bliss.

And there's a bit of picking to be done. I lift an experimental plant of spuds - and get a pleasant surprise: a good number of decent sized spuds. Obviously the dry weather has not nobbled them completely - and they make into a fantastic mash in the evening. MP tells me she was really thrilled to be presented with an apronful of potatoes: proper veg growing. And W gets to pull a few crrots on his own, which pleases him no end. Runners keep coming, and loads of flowers (and bees). There are loads of squashes appearing all over the place, so I spend time last night looking at recipes...