Rabbit!

The lettuce has been growing nicely, but the tops have all been nibbled off. We spotted a rabbit retreating into the brambles... Have replaced the cloches to give them some more protection. Maybe we should investigate the boundaries and make them more rabbit proof - the current theory is that it got in under part of the gate.

Nat & I went up to the allotment this afternoon. The potatoes are continuing to grow well, so we mounded them a bit more. The onions are also looking good, as is the sweetcorn. We mostly did weeding and chopping back the weeds near the beds and the edges of the allotment.

Unfortunately, something seems to have eaten almost all the dwarf bean leaves, leaving some very sorry-looking stems. I'm not sure if they'll recover from that.

When we got back, I potted out the brussels sprout and carrot seedlings into bigger pots, to let them get a bit bigger before the go in the allotment.

Watering Weds 14th May

Went down this evening and gave everything a quick water (now it'll definitely rain tomorrow!), under the watchful eyes of 4 robins, numerous rooks and I think a jay though the light was too poor to be sure. Pictures show a potato flower (several of them are flowering- are they supposed to do that?) and the beans looking slightly happier than they were last Saturday.

There were four of us today - me, Nat, Simon & Ellie. We managed to get a surprising amount done in the time. Here's Simon & Ellie earthing up the potatoes. We've got another lot of potatoes to go in some time soon as well, but the first lot had suddenly reached the point where they needed some earthing.



Ellie & Nat also set to with the shears on the weeds in the orchard area, so you can now get through to the soft fruit cage again!


The final main achievement of the day was creating a double compost heap from some wood that the hospice were clearing out last weekend. Why double? So that you've got one side rotting down nicely and one side that you're actively adding to...

Other odds & ends: I finally planted out a couple of rows of broad beans, next to the dwarf beans. The sweetcorn is now out as well - I read that it doesn't like being handled, so I hope it's not too unhappy!

One final thing: we now have a shared Google calendar to co-ordinate activity: ask M-A for details if you haven't had an email already.

We've now planted out the dwarf beans in the middle bed, near the artichokes that various other allotmenters have given us. The cougettes also went out this weekend, near the onions. The onion sets and potatoes seem to be happy, although the leeks and spring onions aren't showing many signs of life just yet.

One tomato seed seems to have sprouted, although no guarantees that it's not a weed as yet! The tarragon and second batch of sweetcorn haven't done much, though, so we've just got the 6 sweetcorn plants in the end. They seem to have survived being put into larger pots, despite all the warnings I read on the internet about them objecting to their roots being disturbed.

We've put the cabbage seedlings into pots in the back garden, and they seem to be coming along fine - we'll plant them out in a few weeks or so, I reckon.

Nat's taken the shears to some of the low-level weeds around the apple trees, which has tidied that up a bit. Still a long way to go, though - the weeds are doing terribly well!

Final thing - I planted some garlic last autumn, which is looking, well, OK. Not exactly flourishing, but hopefully we might get one or two bulbs out of it.