It's been a year since I got my allotment

Well it's been a year this week since I got my allotment and a lot has changed!

My allotment March 2013

There is still a bit of land to dig over the the last half of the old compost heap to spread over the plot but I shall do that in stages.  I hope to use the beds I have to their maximum use this year and fully finish all the digging ready for next year.  The worst of the weeds are covered in black plastic to kill them off over the summer as this worked really well last year.

Allotment March 2014 with raised beds, dug beds and a shed!

Over the weekend I got the last of the beds dug over ready for the new season after having had broccoli in it all summer and winter and an old raspberry plant that didn't produce decent fruit.

Today I have planted 10 very early salad potatoes.  We don't like potato too much but we absolutely adore new potatoes with a salad either just boiled or as potato salad ..... I can taste it now!  Roll on the long summer days and BBQ's.

I also weeded the spring cabbages (if you can call them that after the slugs had their full when newly planted) and leeks.

I have also managed to replace the add load of sticks I had found on the site holding the mesh up for two hoops making it a lot tidier.

I have also sown a square metre of flax seed to make linen with just as something to play about with as I love to spin and have made a jumper from raw Gotland wool so going that one step more and growing the flax seems a wonderful idea.

Roll on the end of March when I shall be sowing and planting with ernest.

Raised beds are Installed!

Today we started out relatively early and we managed to get loads dome at the allotment.  The ground was rather wet and the water table was just 4 inches under the surface but with the first day of sun and no rain for weeks we carried on anyway!

Raised beds installed

We coated the raised beds in linseed oil before we constructed them to give them a bit longer life.  They were very cheap but until I am fully sure it is the way to go I didn't want to spend too much.  They went together really easily, and will un-slot easily if we want to change them.  We positioned them were the soil has been flooding to raise the planting are up above the water.

I filled them with soil and manure and then between the beds we put weed inhibiter and some free wood chips available on site.

We also did a bit more digging, brought down a few more paving stones and laid a couple in front of the shed, removed the raspberries that I inherited as they are hopelessly small fruit and hubby moved the Hotbox compost bin inline with the others.  I will have to add all the changes to my gardening program at growveg.com

All in all it's been a very productive day.  May even be the beginning of Spring!

Flooded allotment

Well I certainly wont be digging at the allotment for a while.

My newly dug over area is awash.

 I don't think I will be picking my broccoli for a while

The rain has exposed all the stones in what I thought was lovely soil!

We even have our own little stream!

At least where I started building up the adjoining path there is less flooding than I thought there would be.

It's about 20cm deep in places.

Well it looks like planning with the seed catalogues is all I can do at the moment though I may sow some onion seeds in the greenhouse later this week.