Get ready for a bumper update!!! Sorry for the delay - technical issues now fixed! :-)
Annual leave has allowed us to spend a lot of time down at the allotment this week. This began on Sunday 4th (a thoroughly miserable day) during which the heavens opened and the wind howled, however this could not discourage us from our soil preparations. This mainly took the form of rotorvating the plot (after some small repairs to the machinery after it had seized during the winter period), to incoporate the manure which had already been spread and to turn over the soil ready for crops, with some help from some senior members of the family.
'The Cracken awakes'
Another large yet important job is to finally remove (or attempt to remove) several large tree stumps which seem to straddle our plot from top to bottom. These have been known to get in the way of planting and cause problems with turning the soil over as well as spreading some disease. Unfortunately the weather was too bad for us to do much more than this on Sunday (despite the deceptively sunny picture above) so after digging and rotorvating we called it a day.
'One of many....'
Monday 5th March
Another day, seemingly another climate and another task which needed to be completed, we returned to the site today determined to get a bit more done and were blessed with warming sunshine, which is not only good for us, but also for the crops and the soil. We raked the surface of the soil across the whole plot to break down the large clumps of manure, and soil which had bound together after the rain. After this we limed areas to stop the build up of pests and referred to our planting plan to set out the rows for the crops. We marked out areas with the use of our feet and we raked the surface of the seed beds we had identified once to incorporate the lime etc. We then turned out attentions to housekeeping of the shed, this involved tidying and cleaning the debris from last year, as well as re-organising our tools and resources, as well as meeting some of the largest spiders ever known to mankind! There are still some repairs which need to be made to the roof, however, these will be completed at a later date.
'Seed beds' 'Shed in the sunshine'
The final job today was to remove one of the stumps which we failed to excavate yesterday, we therefore attacked the most rotten and 'wobbly' one which was also in one of the most inconvenient locations. Initially we sawed through as many roots as we could see and then set about it with a rather large hammer (and a pair of safety goggles). After many "thwaks" it eventually gave up the ghost and broke away from its tap root, allowing us to remove it whole and fill the crater we had created back in (only another four remain :-( )
'Victory'
Wednesday 7th March
This was our final trip to the allotment this week,and was particularly nice as we were able to meet a new tenant who had just taken on our neighbouring plot and was doing very well against the army of couch grass currently inhabiting it. We were able to get our first seeds into the ground today, these included parsnips (two varieties) shallots, red and white onions sets and some first early new potatoes. To plant the potatoes we dug a DEEP trench about a spades length down and planted the potatoes twenty centimetres apart on a bed of shredded newspaper to preserve moisture in the coming summer months. We then covered them with the soil we had excavated and built up the mounds on top to provide them with extra cover against any unexpected frosts which may come.
'Potato nests'
Also it is with great pleasure we witnessed the first signs of life after a long winter, predictably the award (as always) goes to the rhubarb who is braving the still rather chilly weather to poke its first leaves out of the ground. All five crowns have survived the frosts and look very healthy from their inital leaves and sprouts, thanks largely to the deep layer of horse manure we covered them with in the autumn.
'Here comes crumble'
Finally in this update we are pleased to announce the success of most of the seed we set to germinate indoors last week, the runner beans are already reaching for the sky, as are the broad beans leeks and cauliflower all of which are now in the cooler area of the conservatory. The celery however, is proving a little more troublesome. We have had some showings of the red variety but the Latham is proving quite unsuccessful. To chart our progress of this please see our shortly to be added page of "Seed and Cultivation Diary".