Thursday 12th June 2014

I was hoping to get a few hours during the day down on the allotment, but work needs to be done and I picked up two more jobs and one enquiry that may turn into a job in a few days, so I really can't complain.

So an evening visit to water the last few remaining plants in the greenhouse on the allotment - my thoughts about this greenhouse have changed somewhat, since I now have the space saver at home, and I can keep an eye on it morning and night by just wondering up the garden path. I now only have peppers and two tomato plants in the greenhouse on the allotment and I'm really thinking about taking out half of the staging and setting up behind the shed and then getting some of my later toms in and out of the rain and blight.

Everything on the allotment was dry and I was there for a good hour and a half watering, as the pressure was low and my neighbour with two plots sets up his hose and then * off and tends his other plot on the site. I really feel like disconnecting his hose watering and then re attaching rather than using the splitter I provided because he is always watering. 

I spent a little time helping runner beans up their strings, they got a comfrey feed as they are looing very pale green and not the usual deep green for some reason.

I stupidly left the protection off the strawberries which not only no longer exist for the ants to eat but the plants have been pulled out by birds or squirrels and quite frankly there are not a lot left. I may have to do something like my brother in law and get them off the ground next year, if I bother with them at all.

My missing 30L bucket with handles arrived and I took the buckets to site and dug a bucked sized hole at the end of the path ready to install one of the four trees that I Intend to train as espalier trees, as the sprinkler watered the beds. I'm hoping the 30L bucket will keep the tree roots restricted and prevent the tree from growing into a full blown tree.

I harvest some of the first early potatoes from one of the flower buckets - they are a reasonable size and no slug damage which is good, so I may harvest some more over the weekend to have with a nice salad. We have eaten the first batch of lettuce so note to self, grow more lettuce early on and then so some every two weeks next year.

I'm hoping to get all the infrastructure work on the allotment completed this year so that next year I can just concentrate on growing watering and harvesting, and with the space saver greenhouse in the back garden I should be able to get lots of early sowings and I will try to overwinter onions in the greenhouse.