Bank Holiday Weekend (2)

We spent 6 hours up at the allotment today (me, Nat & Jeremy), and got loads done. The potatoes that we had already planted had really started to produce leaves, so we set to with earthing them up. We used the ridger to great effect, both for the earthing up and also for planting out the early potatoes that had finally chitted in our shed (Pink Fir Apple in the main potato plot, and Maris Pier in a borrow section of Lin's plot).


Here's the best-looking ridge of the day (for the potatoes being planted). Jeremy & Nat discovered that the trick with the ridger was to think like a horse, and have 2 people on it at once (4 legs good, 2 legs bad, and all that). I did take a photo of them, but have been told that it's "not very flattering"!



Other achievements for the day were to plant out a load more peas - out of the first lot, only about 5 came up, no idea why. I re-used the same rows, as they were already marked out! Next time we go up, we'll need to start constructing supports for them with canes and string, as one of them is about 4" high already. In the first large bed (pictured), we also planted out 4 rows of carrots, 2 of the 'specially for clay soil' variety and 2 of normal maincrop. They are planted in between the onions and garlic, as that apparently wards off carrot fly. Finally in this bed, I removed lots of spent flower heads from the bulbs, to encourage the bulbs to bulk up ready for lifting later in the year.

In the 2nd large bed, there was some more deadheading among the tulips, among which I've planted 10 sunflower seeds that came free from a shop that has recently opened in Cambridge. I also sowed another half-row of spinach and a row of rocket, all in the salad area (with the wheels around). The salad leaves have come up quite well there, but not the rocket or spinach so far. It could be that I've been mistaking it for weeds and hoed it away, of course!

In the 3rd large bed, we planted out the first 4 courgette plants, as they had started to look unhappy on the kitchen windowsill. In case they don't thrive, I've got another 2 just started in the kitchen. I've also sowed a load of the 'mixed pumpkins and squashes' this afternoon, so hopefully they'll be ready to go in at the end of the month.

Tha far end of the 3rd bed is the final bit that we haven't fully dug over yet, but that's for the pumpkins, squashes and sweetcorn, so no huge rush. I've just started some purple sprouting broccoli in the cold frame, re-using the seed tray which had the tarragon seeds (which failed to germinate).

Here's the overview of the whole allotment as it looked today. It's *so* much better than this time last year! Now we just need to keep on top of the hoeing, netting, watering and so on, and we should have quite a decent crop this year!

...and here's the spot Nat took the above photo from! We've used a fair amount of the manure from the heap, but there's still enough left to get a good vantage point.

Finally, we've starting on the fruit cage. We took all the netting off it earlier in the year, so that we could do some structural maintenance. That's going to have to go back on fairly soon, as the fruit start developing. We know we have loads of raspberries in there, as well as strawberries, red currants and backberries. We think there's also a couple of gooseberry bushes and a blackcurrant, but time will tell.