It’s been a quiet year on the allotment. Due to one thing or another the plot has been neglected. In fact, if it wasn’t for the fact me and Rob ‘keep in’ with the neighbours we’d have probably lost it by now.
However, we are still here and now working on the plot to get it ready for a full onslaught next season. Had a pretty poor onion crop this time round and nothing much else to shout about.
Got some sprouts and leeks. Made a chicken and leek pie.
Made some onion soup. You can’t see it for the cheese on top but trust me it was nice. My Aunty Anne bought me some tomatoes which have turned into mutants.
Cider has an amazing capacity to tear the fabric of time. I was at a mates BBQ yesterday and I drank 2 litres of liquid apples while consuming half a tonne of meat. I then fell asleep drunk, woke up, had another round from the BBQ and cracked into the lagers. Two days for the price of one.
Anyway, got down the allotment today to be told that our cabbages are the best on the allotment and everyone wants to know what variety we used. Apparently I am the king of the cabbage. After last nights drunken shenanigans I would say I’m the king of getting cabbaged.
The onions were ready to be pulled so I took ‘em up and boy, what a haul. Sixty six onions out of 100 sets planted. Not bad. I think the ratio was higher last year but these ones were monsters. Cheers mum for getting those.
The usual suspects.
Right, well we are both still alive and working the allotment. After a bit of a slow start things are starting to shape up. About 1/3 of the plot is lying fallow but we’ve packed in stuff to the other part.
We’ve not had the mega crop of peas we did last year, mainly due to not sowing them properly and early enough. However, we have made up for that with loads of onions, broad beans, sweetcorn, leeks, potatoes, sprouts and cabbages.
Not had much luck with courgettes, squash or pumpkin which we sowed and the salad crop has been a bit rubbish. The mega successes have been cabbage and strawberries.
A few pics …
Just haven’t been bothered to update the blog. After a slow start things are starting to look good. Will be back soon with pics and rambles.
Well, another couple of weekends digging and the old girl is starting to look her old self. About a third of the plot is now dug over, hurray. Some of it will need digging over a few more times and weeding more closely but at least we’ve made a start.
We are keeping the plot to small squares this year, rather than longer strips, as it is easier to manouevre round them and manage the plot as a whole. It also makes digging it over slightly easier cos you can leave the walkways untouched.
I was down this weekend and dug over some more, added manure to the better dug parts and also prepared the onion patch for planting by raking it smooth and adding some topsoil from our mega pile of turf.
The turf pile, like my waist, is beginning to spread out so I removed the carpets, finding a surprised frog inside and re-positioned some of it. I also used the carpets to cover the rest of the undug plot, something we ought to have done earlier to speed the weeding process.
Mum and dad were up this weekend and brought this years onion sets and also some rhubarb crowns from the neighbour across the road, Mr Marsh. No one messes with Mr Marsh when it comes to gardening, so I expect to have rhubarb coming out of our ears within minutes of planting them. In fact I think I can hear the crowns growing in the bag outside.
Yep, we’re still here and still digging, though we let the allotment go to seed later last year due to bad weather, bike breakages and of course, booze.
We got a good haul last year, so we hope to beat that again. However, there’s lots of digging work to be done before planting starts.
We’ve been down today and dug about a fifth of the plot over. Luckily as the plot matures under our stewardship, the soil is getting easier to work. The only bugger was the huge amount of weeds, but we’re on our way again.
No piccies yet. I took a few with a pinhole camera I got for Christmas, but it’ll be a while before I get the pictures developed and they are probably all white anyway.
Oh yeh a nice surprise was hiding under the weeds in the onion patch. Four onions, begging to be taken home and scoffed.
