Just dug up the rest of the spuds as some were starting to pick up some rot in the wet weather. Still we have harvested two big sacks full, should see us well into the winter.
Also just picked our first sweetcorn cobs and boiled them for two mins, fantastic
Sweetcorn
Mmmmmmmm
Me and Anna did a spate of hard digging and rooting on Sat morning and finished off our first potato bed. We got bucket loads of marestail roots out and have planted a row of Jeruselam Artichokes. We also planted out the runner beans that we have been growing in the green house next to the netting that I erected during the week, 
the mange tout seem to have been scoffed by the birds despite my efforts to protect them with twigs. We have planted up some in pots which we will put out when they are a bit bigger and stronger.
We paid a visit to our potato adviser (cheers Andy) on Sun and came a way with three bags of seed potatoes which I’d like to get in the ground as soon as pos. Accord, Peer and Estima. Just hoping for a bit of dry weather so We can finish digging our potato beds and get them in.
Anna was delighted to see the first florets of Broccoli have started to sprout, will get some pictures soon.
And finally the council have started to construct the new fence around the site, I saw it on my way home tonight and had a little look. Should be good when finished.
The evil Horsetail/Pipeweed/Marestail, whatever you may call it had been rearing its ugly head in the potato bed. We pulled back the black plastic last week to find a field of it poking its little heads through the soil. Its a case of digging as much out as we can before planting in the bed and we’ve also been told that they don’t like competition so hopefully the potato foliage will keep them down a bit.
It was a great night for digging tonight after work, very stress relieving in the warm sun. Dug over the potato plot again and pulled out more roots. Must persevere without getting too demoralised.
Good luck to MIriam who has just got herself a boggy plot in Levenshulme!
BEWARE THE EVIL WEED!
Wasnt sure we’d get to the allotment this weekend as the weather started out so bad on Sat, but the sun was shining on Sun morning and we were ready to go.
We had put the felt on the roof of the new shed the other week and it was still standing so that was a big bonus. Paul has demolished his garage so we used the roof beams to create a raised bed to go near the new ‘patio’ that we had put down near the shed, looks a bit crooked from a distance but it will do the job.
We also pulled back some of the black plastic that has been covering a large part of the plot for some time, we were greeted by a carpet of mares tail that has started to sprout up. Got some advise from the allotmenteers next door which was that we were going to have to dig it all up bit by bit. A bit demorilising but good to know that the others had been through the same and with a bit of hard work we’d at least knock it back enough to get planting on the plot. We had a good bash at it and managed to clear a couple of sq metres between us, it will be a case of a little at a time I think.
everything that we have planted is coming on well, garlic especially. No sign of any leeks, carrots or parsnips poking through yet but I think it’s still early. The corn and runer beans I’ve got going in the greenhouse are coming on great.
Anna has also put a small pond in to attract some friendly frogs to the plot with some nice water plants in to keep it clean.
Many thanks to Andy who laid his hands on a big roll of silage plastic and kindly donated some to the cause. Went down today and cut a very large piece to cover the plots that we wont be using untill spring. Hopefully most of the grass and weeds will be killed off.
Finally took delivery of the oriental leaf collection this evening. The first delivery should have come weeks ago but Royal Mail seem to have lost it for a while and the first lot arrived dead. Dobies to their credit sent out another batch which only took a week to come so we set about getting them in the ground straight away.
The brassicas are coming along really well apart from a couple of slug casualties and are easy to maintain thanks to the weed suppressing fabric we used. We decided to use more of the fabric for the orientals so got ourselves a big roll. Three of us spent an hour down there tonight and now have seven new rows to tend.
Update to first patch. Have now added a row of radish in between the broccoli and cauliflower as a bit of an experiment. Just used half of the seeds and will sow the other half under cloches in a few weeks when we have cleared more patches.
Have also successfully installed the water butt next to the shed and have rigged up some guttering and pipework, just need to wait for it to fill.
Yesterday also saw the acquisition of a key to the storage container at the end of the allotment site. It is good and secure and be very useful for storing our equipment in.
Weve been having a long hard think over the past few months over weather to have an organic allotment or not. I think it finally came to the crunch yesterday as we started to clear some of the weed mass from the site.
To start of with, due to the sheer scale of the clearing job, we are going to use a chemical weed killer to get us going. Hopefully this will break the back of most of the work and then we can go on from there using only organic methods. I could do with finding out how long after using chemicals you have to wait before being able to have an organic claim? possibly a few seasons?
Ive built a makeshift compost heap where we can break down some of the smaller bits that we are pulling up but the remainder will have to be lugged to the tip. I also need to find out if we can burn waste in a drum on the site. This will certainly make things much easier and give us some ash to chuck on the compost.
