Incredibly Hard Work

I've been on the allotment both today and yesterday and it doesn't get any easier. Not having had the chance to dig the whole plot over in the autumn and also the earth being quite dry now, has made the task of digging very difficult. this has not been helped either by the sequellae to the vandalism earlier on. As I have said in the previous post Terry has now fixed the greenhouse, but as a result of this my nicely dug bed next to the greenhouse has been well and truly trampled, and is now as hard as a rock! I have put a couple of barrow loads of municipal compost onto it and I will re-dig it completely next week. I am not sure if I have mentioned this in previous posts but the whole site is principally London clay and therefore heavy and impossible to dig in the winter and baked to rock in the summer. Really hard to work as there are only about two weeks of the year when you can dig. In addition to this my allotment is at the bottom of the hill and at the lowest point on the whole site. Every bit of water gravitates to my plot. This is good in the Summer as watering is usually only necessary once per week but in the Winter it is often submerged. Nutrients don't stay in the soil and I need to add copious chicken pellets throughout the growing season as well as feeding with maxi-grow and maxi-tom liquid feeds when the crops are in.


The picture added today shows the repaired greenhouse and my bed of broad beans and radish, in the foreground. So far so good with the broad beans; up to date I have never been able to grow a successful crop of broad beans as they have always succumbed to black fly and chocolate spot. There is a way to go yet but things look promising, and I pulled my first radishes today. I have been giving everything a weekly feed of maxi-grow, which is based on seaweed.

This next picture shows the brassicas that Melanie and I have grown. They are really ready to plant out but we are having difficulty keeping up with everything so they will have to wait until next week.





The Society greenhouses are now nearly full and by the time of the Plant Sale, on the 17th, all the plants will be a good size and healthy. I have been busy laminating seed packets to display with the plants to show people what they will look like in flower. This is what the main poly tunnel looks like at the moment:














This morning I went to see my friend who has recently had a foot op. It is her husband who is opening their garden to the public for the National Garden Scheme in two weeks time, on the same day as our plant sale at the allotments. I had the opportunity of having a sneak preview and of inspecting the veg plot he has created with a bit of input from yours truly. Things are looking good. He was just planting things out today. They should be well established by the Open Day, but maybe not quite in flower. However, the plants were really good sized; I am not sure he has hardened them off sufficiently, but the weather is good and they are in a sheltered position so it may not matter too much.

The exciting news in my garden is that the peach seems to have fruitlets, unlike last year and the year before. The bad news is that the peach leaf curl is starting. I will need to pick off every affected leaf and feed the tree very well so that the fruit doesn't fall off.

Next week I will really need to make up my mind in which beds I will put all the different veg. But the most pressing thing to do next week is to sow my parsnip seed; otherwise I will not have a ready supply of my most favourite vegetable.