Getting Mucky

I couldn't face a full week in the office, how I long for retirement!! So as I still have a good few days holiday left I booked off what looks like the last warm day for a while to go muck hunting and get the plot manured and covered.

Our local stables has a HUGE pile of muck they are happy for people to help themselves to and it's only 5 minutes from the plot. I moved a total of 25 bags like this, that works out to about 3 bags per half bed square. I used rubble sacks to protect the car, as well as covering the interior in plastic dust sheets. . This is the point I wish I'd bought a car with a tow hook and a trailer!!

One advantage of evening up all the bed sizes is that I can now cut my covers to a standard size which means less folding, flapping in the wind and acting like a giant sail to catch the wind and pull the covers off. I like a large roll of he black covering material but that's about £65 and there are other projects in the queue first.

So apart from bits where there are still some crops growing which I'll come back to once they are finished, we are done.

Just this fruit bed to tackle now but I'm still deciding exactly what to do with it.

Happy gardening folks!!

The Covers are Coming Off!!

Once again allotment time has been difficult this week, life seems rather busy at the moment, but hopefully things will calm down soon. I did manage 3 hours on Friday after work and the plot is starting to look like things are finally on the move.

Last year we left everything covered up, having spread it with manure and run the tiller over it. Friday one of those covers finally came off. It was spud planting time!

The soil was lovely and so easy to work with, a good temperature, nice and damp and not a weed in sight. Just dig a trench, sprinkle some potato fertiliser and pop the spuds in. The digging was easy and the soil just crumbled when raked. This year should start a little more calmly.

We've planted 4 rows of Rocket earlies and 3 rows of King Edward mains. The mains may be a little close together but as the spud bed also has the asparagus this year there wasn't a lot I could do. The spuds must have liked being under the bed, good short stocky chits with side shoots, not the usual white leggy ones. Lets see what happens. Everyone posts a pic of the spud bed so here's ours.

The rest of the time was spent spreading 3 builders buckets of manure onto the areas vacated by the leeks and parsnips ready for sweetcorn and squashes, planting more radishes, spring onions and beetroot under more cloches.

The overwintering onion and garlic bed is looking a bit overrun with weeds so I made a start on weeding it. One of my good intentions for this year was to use mulch and as I'd given the grass at home its first cut of the year I made use of the clippings. There is also a hand mower on order to provide more farm grown cuttings.

At home everything I planted last week is up except the peas. I swear twice as many cabbages as I sowed have come up and the lettuces seem to prefer the new compost.

I moved on some leeks from the seed tray to a tub, hopefully these will grow on nicely, I 've kept the spares in case any don't make it. I'll probably end up giving some away. Next year a smaller seed tray me thinks. 

The Current State of Play

The best way to describe the plot at the moment is ‘ cold, soggy, boggy and foggy’. As the pictures show it all looks a bit sad down there at the moment.

 

That said, the site of the autumn planted crops slowly doing their thing while covered in frost does remind you that things are still moving along. The warm autumn here gave them a good start and the broads in particular look like they stand a good chance of a decent crop next year. Hopefully the garlic will produce a decent sized bulb too. We do get a bit of a ground frost as we are in a dip near a river.

     

There’s not a lot we can do at the moment but we pop down with compost, check the crops/covers/shed and pick a few bits and pieces. This was the first winter veggie haul. Some of the leeks are still a bit small, as are the sprouts, I’m putting that down to the hot/dry summer last year. The parsnips have done quite well when you consider these weren't planted until May, the first sowing having been washed away in heavy rains. 

We spent a long time getting the plot ready for winter, my poor old car hauled lots of boxes of manure from the local stables (much to the delight of the local valeting centre) which was tillered in before covering up for weed control over winter

Roll on the covers coming off in the spring!!