The Woodchip Man Commeth (Well Nearly)

The council Allotment officer let us know of a fellow allotmenteer on another site who is also a tree surgeon and can provide woodchips, so my brother-in-law Keith arranged a drop off as we both need it for paths.

So Saturday morning was spend cutting weed membrane ready to go under the area behind the Daleks, for when the woodchips were delivered between 2 - 3 in the afternoon.

I was just having lunch and Keith called to say that it would not be happening as the guy had too much rubbish on the back of the lorry and he wants to give us good quality woodchip, which we would all prefer so we are happy to delay for a week or two until he has some quality material for us.

As I had the car loaded with compost for the daleks, and other stuff that needed to go down the allotment I went anyway and started to clear the back of the plot and the weeds that are coming up along the edge of the paths and in bed 3 as the spring onions and celery were disappearing.

I cleared and strimmed the path behind the comfrey bed and in the process trimmed up the comfrey and foliage from Joes plot that was attempting to get into mine and added the contents of my labour into Daleks 1 & 2. Manure and sawdust in the small Dalek had reduced over the year to 2/3 the height of the bin and I added lt as brown material to both Daleks and watered it in as it was all added in layers.

Removing the plastic weed membrane from behind Daleks 4 - 6 I found slug city and a liberal quantity of blue pellets of death were sprinkled. 

I then harvested a large number of green cucumbers, but I also ended up with a flower buckets worth of over ripe cucumbers which I was informed by a fellow plot holder that I could make soup with, but we are not really into cucumber soup so they ended up as a green OK yellow compost layer.      

The butternut squash has gone bonkers and I have 4 reasonable size and 2 extra large size squash now sitting on the shoe rack on the shelf in the shed so they can harden off and ripen a little. The leafs are beginning to turn and I found one 50mm long squash that is starting to turn brown but not in a good way and two more smaller ones. There are still lots of flowers on the plant, but it's how much longer the weather will hold before the frost hits and kills the plant.

A fellow plot holder John who was very excited about his harvest shared two elephant garlic seed (cloves) with myself Andy and Derek our site rep who had been spending time sorting out his path and timber edging and timber staging in the new to him Greenhouse given to him by one of the allotment holders who is about to give up his plot. Then another plot holder offered a mixture of yellow, orange and red cherry tomatoes which I accepted gracefully as mine are only just turning red.

I have to say the community spirt on Spencer Road is much better than Mill Green which is crazy when you bear in mind that Mill Green is a much smaller allotment, perhaps it is just the increased numbers of people that makes it feel like that?