More preparation work!

It was bitterly cold today, but the sun kept on threatening to come out, so I did the same and went out myself, to the allotment, with the intention of a tidy up and nothing much more than that really, but it was so cold when I arrived, that I locked myself in the greenhouse, out of the wind and ended up sowing a load of peas.....

After a while I braved the cold and re dug over a piece of ground close to the shed & greenhouse - this is where the onions and garlic where last year.  I then had a lesson in raking - I needed one as I never ever get my ground level!!

So a couple of hours - including chatting to the boys,  or I should really say men, well spent!



More Digging, weeding, tea drinking.....

....tidying up, chatting, raking and planning!

It is a beautifully sunny day today.  After this morning's frost, I put layers on before braving the allotment this morning, but they soon came off and got hung up on my shed door.  After a few minutes digging I was down to a long sleeved tea shirt!  It was lovely in the sun, just lovely!

I dug and weeded the old swede and beetroot bed and tidied up all the leaves that had accumulated there over the winter and I re dug and raked last years onion bed too.  Both these pictures show a little of the work done today, as I did continue to dig just to the other side of the leeks that you can see. 

It was hard to take pictures in the bright sunshine!  I also had a go at weeding the back area where the scarecrows are but it's full of brambles and needs some heavy duty work there.  Derek our Allotment Angel has kindly offered to come along with his mattock and give it a good "seeing too" for me this year which will be great as that will really tidy up the plot for good.

So another good 2 hours spent there this morning.  My only problem today was changing the gas cylinder on the camping stove.  You need massive hands and some brut force to extract the old cylinder and then put the new one back in place, but I got there in the end!! (I have small hands and the strength of a sparrow)

More little bits here and there!

I had arranged to meet Derek on site at 10am as he insisted on earthing up my 1st earlies for me, so here we are, forking over the rows in between the little tufts of green, and yes I did help!

There are only 2 rows of 1st's so it didn't take us long.

He then got to work with his Ridger, and "Voila" a hard job made easy peasy lemon squeezy!

I then got stuck in with raking the last of plot 144 - it took me about 2 hours of hard labour to remove as many of the stones as possible - I think it must rain stones on our site, as the more you rake and remove the more turn up the next day!!

Isn't this the cutest picture?  It's Laddie, Derek's dog.  I have promised him that I will get it printed off for him so that he can treasure it forever.

Little bits here and there.....

A view looking down 144 from the mid way fruit trees

 The Plum Tree with pond in the  background

 The Apple Tree blossom

 The raked area just in front of the fruit trees (with stone piles)!

The Spinach and Beetroot sunbathing

The Earlies enjoying a soaking in the hot weather

 A baby Parsnip

Another baby Parsnip

The Radishes are germinating

Potting on the Savoy Cabbages

From here, to there!

Down at the allotment today....

It was a lovely morning, hubby was going to play golf, the dogs were with their favourite person (the mother in law) and I had a free day, so I decided that at day at the allotment was in order!

Am I mad?  Shouldn't I be going shopping?? Nah!

So I started by raking over what I had previously dug over....

I then prepared some rows for spinach, which I protected with a fleecy poly tunnel, as the nights are still a tad cold

and then I prepared some nursery beds which I dressed with a 75ltr pack of Multi Purpose & protected with 2 x plastic poly tunnels, so that the soil warms up ready for the seedlings.

Talking of seedlings, I have some good ones in the GH!

Peas

Broad Beans sprouting at the back & Cos lettuce (just sown)

I also sowed some sweetcorn in those tub things, as this worked well last year.