Clearance Works

Today was another very early start and a mixture of visiting Spencer Road to get the Greenhouse frame and other miscellaneous items reducing the stuff in the shed so that ultimately it can be dismantled and brought to Mill Green. I also got an hours extension the other end of the morning and worked up to 1:30 as Sunday Dinner was about an hour late as the wife and daughter had a lay in.

It appears that the local foxes had taken it upon themselves to dig out most of the woodchip that surround the paving stabs and on all the paths the woodchips were over the paving slabs. Next time I see one of those solar powered ultrasonic pest devices at Lidl I'm going to invest in a couple. 

Here are the potatoes in buckets that when I arrived looked practically dead, as they had dried out. My fault as I have been too busy with work and taking her ladyship to hospital appointments to get down and water them. After topping up the soil and giving them a drowning they looked a lot healthier.  

John came in and popped up for a catch up, and asked if I would like some cucumbers and Courgettes. So I walked with him to his greenhouse and picked up four long cucumbers, I can't recall the variety at the moment, and two Courgettes because lets face it who can eat the huge amount you get from a plant. 

That's one of the things I love about allotmenteers is that if one has an excess of seedlings they offer them to their neighbours rather than compost. I do have Cucumbers growing but they have been slow and germination has been really poor. 

I have no problem also growing the two additional varieties I have on the go and hopefully I may even get and extended growing and harvesting season as they look to be about a month apart in growth from the mature plants supplied by John.   

The struts bracing the climbing frame are the poles from two uplighters we used to have and I could not help but think they may be useful for something on the allotment, I didn't know what, but I had a eureka moment.  I cleared the area behind the bed and later when re visiting to water in the evening re wood chipped that area and along the Daleks whist leaving the hose to saturate the potato beds.

I know its late to be trimming the plum tree but it was taking over the path and needed trimming back and I am trying to train it along to become a living fence eventually. 

For the moment the back part can remain more natural tree like especially as I have a number of small green plums on there already 

The cabbages are doing extremely well and so far have not been attacked very much by snails and slugs 

Again very happy with the progress of the red and white onions

The two beds of spud are doing extremely well and its nice to see a number of beds in production.

What is supposed to be the Rhubarb bed has a beer slug trap in the middle and I will be making sure that as many of the blighters have been dealt with before removing the netting which is there to keep the weed seeds out as there were weeds with seeds along the path until my neighbour strimmed and effectively released them all into the air.

U gave the whole plot a sprinkle of the wildlife safe variety of blue pellets of death before leaving and I also used weed killer again on the bindweed that is crawling out from the edges of the weed membrane in the area where the shed and greenhouse will finally go.

The one disappointment has been the carrot bed as it appears that the seedling have died or have been munched by slugs and snails probably because they were in distress due to lack of watering during the last week. So next visit I will try the more traditional approach or direct sowing. 

I also made a load of soft bricks with the dried sand, and set up the next trays of sand in the greenhouse to dry off and had another tidy and brought home yet another sack of rubbish. gradually Plot 1A is returning to it's former glory and then I can crack on with clearing and installing the infrastructure in Plot 1

For next Sunday I need to sort out the planting membrane for the spring greens and get them planted and also get the beetroot bed cleared and kill off as many slugs and snails and get the beetroots in the Space Saver in the ground and direct sow the rest of the bed and time is moving on fast and if I blink I will miss the opportunity.

I finally heard back from the plot holder from plot 11 who has admitted the bit off more than they could chew and I can now offer the plot to the next person on the list. The shame is that the plot is covered in brambles and they can't have a fire until October so they are going to have to cart all the brambles away from the plot.