Spring Cleaning "Avalon"

Now that I have some time on my hands, and the fact I need a lot of Allotment Therapy at the moment, I've been playing catch up. Jobs that I have been building up on the To Be Done list are finally happening, and hopefully I will be ready for kick off this year and more on top of things allotment wise. 

The storage areas behind both of the sheds and to the side and behind the greenhouse have been blitzed, and I have been forced to put my squirrel tendencies to one side, and have given up on saving items that may be useful one day. 

The cast iron and timber seats have been taken apart and the timber put in the burn Dalek to keep it dry ready for burning. The timber on the bench has had its day and I will be de-constructing that, but I will keep the cast iron table, I may replace the timber around the outside edge. This garden furniture was originally my parents and I did replace most of the timber 10 years ago.

My daughters, have said that the patio and table on plot 1A would be a nice spot to have a BBQ during the summer, and I have to agree and would love that, especially if they have come to help me on the Sunday which they do from time to time.

The Storage area to the left of the shed and behind the shed has been spring cleaned, as has the pallet store in the photo below. 

I have a dump run Booked for 9am this morning, and for the moment all the sacks of rubbish and dross are in the plot 1A greenhouse so that they are dry for putting in the car. There are a couple of other bags covered up and there are also 2 Daleks of weeds that can't be composted, that I'm also going to try and get to the dump, this morning.

The rear of the plot 1 shed is now clear and so spacious, and I will be installing some hooks into the wall to support the blue and black water pipe hoops, when not in use. 

Plot 1 Layout for 2023 

The three beds 12, 13 & 16 that had green manure growing have all been turned in and covered in the Winter black weed membrane, so that the green manure now decays and the worms and critters in the soil take the vegetation into the soil.

The two blue, debris netted beds 14 & 15 need clearing of weeds, the one to the front 14 was a beetroot bed following the onions last year, and this year is going to grow sweetcorn. The blue hopped bed in the back of the picture is the asparagus bed 15, and I need to weed and mulch this bed and then keep it clear from weeds as they grow this year.   

The sweetcorn needs pulling out of bed 16 and given some TLC, and then being covered so the sun can warm up the soil.   

The bag of farmyard manure that was laying on the path between beds 17 & H2 had degraded due to the exposure to the elements, so I had to shovel it up into a flower bucket and take it to the three Rhubarb beds. They will be hungry this year, and being their third year, I will be able to harvest much more from each plant.  

It's nice to start getting the bricks off the pathways and back on top of the blank weed membrane bed sheets. Less chance of me falling arse over elbow!

The beds in plot 1A all need some TLC and getting prepped ready for the season. 

Bed 1 still has buckets of potatoes on it, and I have no idea what they may be like now after the extreme weather and minus temperatures we have had. The spent compost from the potatoes in buckets will go into this bed as carrots are planned for this bed this year. 

Beds 2,3 & 4 are going to be onion beds this year, so the Debris netting and large hoops need to be removed and the shallow black hoops and narrow debris netting will be used to stop the birds from plucking out the onion sets. 

Bed 5 is going to be Celery so a larger Hoop and debris netting will be used there  

Bed 7 - 10 will be Brassicas this year so they, will all have large hoops and wide netting on them  

Bed 10 had green manure on it, over winter, this needs digging in and the 3 bags of soil conditioner need to be added to the bed before it is covered so the worms can do their magic.  

   

Bed 11 is to be Swede and Turnips, and just appears to need de-cluttering

The car got filled to capacity and then some!