It takes an understanding wife when you spend every spare minute you have at the weekend down at the allotment and thankfully that's what I have. As we're away over Easter, I knew I'd miss 2 weekends and therefore, needed to get a few things sorted so between football, jobs around the house and church I was down at the plot trying to make as much headway as I could.
Here's what I wanted to get done;-
1. Nail/screw all the wooden slats I'd managed to saw to size during the week, in the evenings. As the clocks went forward in the US 3 weeks ago, I was finishing work at 8pm and had some spare time.
2. Fix the new latch and padlock to the door, which Karen found in Wilko's for under £3.
3. Clear the area outside the shed with the mattock and dig it over to get rid of the roots and weeds, etc.
4. Saw all the lengths of wood I had to make a raised bed area and also get some more if I needed it from Ali's plot, as she had some left over.
5. Nail/screw all these together and level it off.
6. Board up the side of the path leading to the plot and level this off so there is a proper path to walk on.
7. Plant a load of the potatoes, cover with fleece and sow some carrot seeds under the cloches.
Now it doesn't seem too bad, but it's amazing just how long these things take, with all the sawing, etc and of course the hail we had on Saturday afternoon, didn't really help matters. It took me back to the times I was there over the winter digging in the rain and freezing cold.
I spent all Saturday afternoon on the plot working away and although the weather forecast was supposed to be good in the afternoon, the hail proved that wrong and curtailed my efforts. So, after church on Sunday morning, I dashed back down to finish off the raised bed and there was even more urgency as the council had deposited a huge pile of wood shavings on the site and I knew this would be perfect for the area around the shed and the path. The huge pile was getting steadily demolished and I had to get in there fast!
Here's the rear of the shed all done.
Thankfully, I completed all of this and was back home for 1pm in time for a great Sunday lunch, before collecting up the potatoes and carrot seeds and heading back down for some planting. For the first time, I met my other neighbour, David, who was working up a sweat digging some of his plot over.
Here's the raised bed, path and area sorted by the shed, with the wood shavings on the ground.
I'd taken about half of the potatoes, partly because they were ready, but also as we needed the space in the spare room to get everything ready for our holiday. The rest have been moved to the garage until I get back. Now, not really knowing how much room they would take up, I took my new book, The Essential Allotment Guide by John Harrison, which Ali very kindly bought me as a gift and is really useful. His website is on the links on the blog. I followed his instructions on the spacing, etc, used my hoe to make the trench and then put in 2 rows each of my First Earlies(Accent), Second Earlies (Charlotte) and Maincrop (Cara)....and this took up the whole bed I had set aside for ALL of the potatoes...ooops. So I'll need to squeeze the rest in elsewhere. Ahhhh, also, bit of a problem, maybe, as I forgot to label the different potatoes when they were chitting and may have got a bit confused with the First and Second Earlies, so could be a bit of trial and error when I dig up the first one to see if they are ready. Silly me, but with luck I'll get away with it and have learnt that lesson for next year.
I was reading in the book all about the wireworm and apparently it's pretty prevalent in grassland, so with all the roots, grass and brambles that were on the plot, I'm just hoping these pesky little monkeys don't eat through all of the spuds before I get a chance to dig them up, but fingers crossed, as there isn't a lot I can do about it now.
Here's all the potatoes, nice and cosy under the fleece (thanks to my Dad for that).
Finally, under the cloches I sowed a row of Early Nantes 5 carrots, so we'll see if they do anything when we get back from our trip. A finishing touch was Ellie's rabbit plaster caste mould she had painted which nicely marked the row. Hopefully, that will be the only rabbit that gets near them!
Here's one final photo looking West down the plot. I took all of the photo's on the way home from work on Monday, as I forgot to take the camera with me on Sunday.
Well that's it until mid April when I plan to sort out the bed for the legumes, get some strawberry plants, stain the shed, make a table from an old pallet I have, fill the raised bed ready for some plants and most important of all get a chair to sit on and enjoy the sunshine with Radio 5 live on, hopefully listening to Swindon avoiding relegation......
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