Half decent weather for a Bank Holiday.....

I woke up to a sunny morning - could I be seeing things? Was the sun really out???? YES - WOW - AMAZING - the question was, would it last?

It was Saturday morning so I ran down to the Lotty shop for some supplies, brassica collars, organic slug pellets and some seaweed extract plant feed, which I was told is a "must have."

I was told to put 1 cap to a gallon - but my watering can is in litres, so the next 15 minutes was spent by all in earshot, converting litres to gallons or gallons to litres. Once that was done I was all set.

I poodled down to my plot, where I was only planning on spending a few minutes as we had planned a trip to Ferring to go and see the ARMCHAIR GARDENER & Co.

I quickly applied the brassica collars to the brussels and broccoli - and very smart they looked too! I then watered the pumpkins and courgettes and replaced their cloches, checked on the peppers and chilli's under the polytunnel and headed home.

1 hour and 20 minutes later and we were in Ferring.

My lovely mother in law gave me another 2 scarecrows - Daisy & Mo which are perfect - just perfect.

Here she is with Biz & Letty the most adorable whippets in the world and much loved

I put them - Daisy & Mo, not Biz & Letty, in my potato plot as soon as I got back. That was, I should say, after the most lovely beef bourguignon lunch with wine and cheese & biscuits and strawberries and cream - yummy.

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I spent 1 hour + down at the Lotty that evening - which was lovely in the last of the sunshine for that day. I did a lot of weeding in bed one and made a small start on weeding bed 2 which I plan to continue on Sunday 3rd. I had a lovely cuppa with Mavis and a good chat too - a well deserved break for us both.

Pictures from around the allotment

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Rain, Rain Go AWAY Come again in another 6 months!

I don't believe it! (Say it like Victor Meldrew w0uld - go on - you know you want too!)

There I am, all prepared - wax jacket on - check, boots on - check, gardening jeans with yesterdays mud on - check, fully equiped bag on arm - check, barbour base ball cap (kindly bought for me by my Armchair Gardener aka mother in law for my birthday) on head - check, kissed husband good bye and off out the door when the heavens opened! I carried on walking - allotment bound and got there - still raining. I stood in the rain & ate a gluten free chocolate chip cookie to cheer myself up - still raining. I thought "sod it!" and got on with putting in my final batch of Main Crop potatoes - Mayan Gold (the 2nd lot I put in yesterday by the way, are called Swift - the 1st lot are Vivaldi's) OK so I only had 5 tubers to plant, but I got there in the end.

I also watered my courgettes/zucchini's & pumpkins as they are under bell cloches and would not be benefitting from the downpour, that was still going on!

I noticed that the shop door was open, so I abandoned the plot (probably quite literally at this stage as I was soaking wet) and went for shelter. Nigel was just packing up, but stayed the extra 5 minutes - well long enough to let me stop dripping! Thank you Nigel. He told me that the shop took a good amount over the weekend and that we had 5 new members for the Garden / Allotment Society too - maybe one of those leaflets that I posted through someones door yesterday worked??

Now - this could be the shed I was telling you about. I did say it was a bit wonky didn't I? Well, I, along with Hubby Ian and the current sheds' owner Paul, all think that it will be ok with a bit of TLC, some bits of wood and about 10,000 nails! I think it will look GRAND - all old and full of character on Plot 142.

What do you think?

Making the most of todays' SUNSHINE

I left for the lotty on the sunny day of Saturday 26th April at around 10am, thinking I would only be there for about 2 hours. 4 hours later and I was still finding things to do!

Well, can you imagine my surprise when I spotted my first potato plant showing through? This is one of about 5 of my first earlies! At least I could now identify the difference between my potato plants and the brambles that were starting to rear their ugly heads again - they came out "extra quick" I can tell you!!

I went on to weed around one of my raised beds. I think Susan plans to phone a local timber company to see if we can get some free wood chips - I must remember to ask her about that!

My next job was planting the Dwarf French Beans, but first I stopped to chat to Perry. Soon 15 minutes had passed and as soon as Perry had gone - with his spinach in Sainsburys' plastic bag (recycling - the possibilities are endless) I realised that I had forgotton my courgettes and pumpkin plants.

Well I was not surprised really - the strain of the wheel barrow that morning was huge - it was so heavy because I had a full bag of mulch & the reason I had this mulch with me was because I had read over breakfast, that courgettes and pumpkins like to be mulched in (and are very thirsty too) so I was immediately on the phone to hubby, who said he was going to pop down to see me later, asking him to bring my forgotten plants.

Back to the Dwarf French Beans - these were grown in pots at home. I had, about 1 week ago, also directly sown some of the same at the base of the sweet pea wigwam, but nothing was showing from them yet, so inside the wigwam, went the Dwarf French Beans.

Next to go in were the Main Crop Potatoes - I put in 2 varieties, one of which is Vivaldi, the other I cant remember right now!! I put these into holes, using my bulb planter contraption, which is the method I used for my Earlies & Late Earlies, and as this method had worked so far, what was the point of digging a trench? I soon realised that I had enough space in that row to plant my 3rd variety, Mayan Gold, so I will go back there today and put those in & get the name of the other variety at the same time.

Following the potato planting came the Chilli plants and Peppers which had both been in the cold frame for the last couple of nights, so a row each of these in Bed 2 in front of the Sweet Pea Wigwam.......

As you can see, this bed is looking quite full up now, but there is still room for more - it's just my plan (above) that is looking full!

So, under the watchfull eye of Dibble, the Chilli plants and peppers were watered well and then covered with an open ended plastic polytunnel, which I will check later today (Sunday). Olga from Plot 138, kindly gave me some onion sets, so I put in a row of these. My other onions grown from seed and my onion sets which are interplanted with my carrots (bed 1) are both doing well, so another lot won't hurt!

Next to go in were the Courgettes (Zucchini) and Pumpkins which hubby Ian kindly brought down to the lotty for me. My fellow allotmenteers couldn't believe their eyes when he turned up in his Porsche Turbo and lifted the bonnet - as this is the boot (storage area) and brought the plants out!!!! Ha ha ha. Anyway, these went into the bottom of the potato plot (bed 4) which I had put some horse manure compost on. I put in 2 x pumpkins and 4 x courgettes, mulched them in and then covered them with plastic bell cloches.

So, nearly 4 hours later, 2 mugs of freshly brewed tea, a long chat with Mavis, a visit & delivery from Ian and having negotiated the old delapidated shed which is currently just about standing on Paul's Plot, I was ready for home. Once there however, I got stuck into washing out pots and seed trays etc. as the weather was so nice, it was actually a joy to do this outside.

I then looked at my "left over" carrots that were still sitting in modules. I decided to pot these remaining 4 plants into a patio pot to see what happened. As I was lifting one of the plants out, the compost fell away, and I was amazed to see a tiny baby carrot in my hand! I had to call hubby Ian quickly, to take a picture......

So, into the pot it has gone, along with the other 3 plants and I will let you know what happens!

Today is Sunday, and the weather forecast is not great, cloud cover is prominent, but it does look as though it is trying to "cheer" up a bit. I will go to the lotty later to check on my newly planted veggies and to put in the final lot of maincrops.

Experiments - Update 1

This is an extremely quick entry as I am working my socks off this week - it's been manic - anyways the exciting update is that one of the Butternut Squash seeds has germinated and so have all the sunflowers! I am still waiting for signs of life from the carrots, but another sowing that I didn't mention earlier, well I don't think I did, was coriander - that has started to show signs of life too!
Tomorrow is due to be a nice day weather wise, so I will go and put in the french beans that I have grown from seed - it will be interesting to see if the ones that I sowed direct last week have done anything? I will also put in my maincrop potatoes, but as too how many will depend on the room I have as I have to remember to leave room for the courgettes & pumpkins which are doing nicely in the utility / greenhouse room!
Oh! I forgot to mention - I have been very greedy and I have taken on another plot - all to myself - Plot 144. It's quite overgrown and has about 10 baby trees - very young ones on it, but I will just have to work around them.
Pictures will be taken either later today and / or tomorrow and this post will be updated with them later .
Please don't loose interest - I really HAVE been busy this week.
Ali x

p.s. As promised the pictures of Plot 144