Allotment Diary Me: 44 hrs He: 40hrs

We escaped to the allotment today - we had run out of potatoes so needed to dig them up and do lots of maintenance things - like having a bonfire to get rid of six months worth of non compostable weeds and prunings etc

 

Pat had great fun, and its very rewarding when such huge piles are reduced to this

 

We were working for four hours solid, so I just didn't have the time to take before and after photos

so you are just getting the 'after' ones  - which are just for my year on year diary.

After not having any rain for so long, the lovely lawns are reduced to almost dust - but they still needed mowing as weeds had managed to pop up despite the drought. 

 

I set up some raised beds and planted a couple of butternut squash and a Jack be Little pumpkin which produces lots of 3 inch fruits, and some bush squash - yummy

 

A few rows left of early new potatoes - growing in dust.  Thank goodness I lined the trenches with 6 ins of well rotted manure or we would not have had any sort of crop at all!

We weeded the beds in this first area - and shock horror - I had to resort to using R.Up to spray the docks and creepers - hope it has been on long enough as we are now due rain overnight!

 

The broad beans, whilst small, look incredibly healthy

 

I hope to harvest them soon.  They are much tastier before the pods get too big.

 

It really wasn't worth mowing these sad paths, with the occassional weed - it would be just like mowing dust.  The potatoes are doing quite well - a few gaps despite all the manure in the trenches, but I am sure that the rain will soon work it's magic when it arrives

 

I need to harvest the rest of the gooseberries, and have black and redcurrants too - it'll be a race against time with the rain due - I was too exhausted to return tonight to do them.

Four hours hard labout is enough for me these days - particularly as I have been so very busy in the garden.

I have been potting up plants - they all seem to need doing at the same time despite my staggering the seed sowing.

I have a lean-to full of squash, pumpkin, cougettes, cucumbers, Cosmos, tomatoes, peppers, aubergine x1, chilli peppers x2, a Japanese cucumber which is totally different to ours, and things yet to sprout.

I have been digging up floral plants in the garden and potting them up ready for transplanting in a couple of months time.  I have strawberry plants in the ex banties now fruit cage with cuttings too of various currants - which I have to care for.  There are cabbages, and caulis, and brussel sprouts tucked in here there an everywhere - oh and fledgeling fruit trees too.  And of course the lawns to mow the flower beds to weed  - so I am kept pretty busy thank heavens.

I good do with a bit of help hunting down the bantam eggs in the garden - they have gone 'native' again.  They spend as long as they like freeranging so in this lovely weather are not inclined to move from whatever shady spot they have found, to go back to the nest boxes to lay eggs.  We  have a lot of hedges and bushes and this year it is proving nigh on impossible to find many!