A new princess and a pea plant

It was lovely to hear the great news about the safe arrival of the new princess. Congratulations to Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge. A lovely little sister for Prince George.

We have some exciting news of our own as well. Our very first peas have appeared. We were really pleased to see them coming through. Jack couldn't quite believe it. So satisfying .

Everything is growing fast now, including the weeds. Our broad beans are doing well and seem to like their new surroundings.

We managed to get an hour of weeding done in between the rain showers. It was really muddy so not that practical but we were passing and couldn't resist a visit. The boys were in their element . Rain, mud, spades and clean clothes. Not a good combination.

Due to all the rain we have been having we had a nice full water butt. We have started to save the water as we do not have a water supply other than our water butt. We will need lots of it come the summer. These old recycled milk bottles do the trick nicely.

On our way home we noticed that the apple trees in the allotments are just starting to flower. How lovely they look. Should have some nice apples soon.

Sunshine and a nice surprise

What a glorious week it has been. The weather has been fabulous and the sunshine always makes things better.

Easter Sunday brought lots of chocolate eggs and some broad bean plants. Dan's dad had kindly potted us up some plants for our allotment. In only a couple of days they had gone from seedlings to a nice sturdy plant. We are going to let them  grow a bit bigger before we plant them in plot 5.

Dan went up to the plot after work this week and planted our early potatoes, chard, and sweet corn.

We have bought our main crop potatoes and have opted for Albert Bartlett Rooster. We bought a 2kg bag for £2.50 from Wilkinson's. The beetroot we are planting is called boltardy it is supposed to be a very popular bolt resistant variety. We will soon see.

We also bought some herb garden mix from Aldi for £1.49 it includes common dill, chervil, black mustard, caraway, coriander, rocket, fennel, parsley and lastly sweet basil large leaved and fenugreek. It says it contains over 10,000 seeds and covers an area of up to 25m2. Not bad we thought for the price. We have planted some next to our strawberries and Jack planted some in his patch. All we need now is a good mixture of sunshine and showers.

Talking about strawberries. Our allotment neighbour kindly gave us a few more plants . we had some that we found in the undergrowth last year but we were glad to receive some more. We weeded around the plants and put the new ones in place. Dan put a dressing of manure around them.

One of our other neighbours gave us some lovely purple sprouting broccoli which dan used today  in our lovely roast dinner. It was enough for two adults a small boy and an even smaller boy. It was really delicious and tasted even better knowing that it had only been picked ten minutes earlier.

Dan cleared out the old compost bin today. Nearly all of the wood was rotten apart from one piece, which we are going to use for shelving in the shed. We used our old water tank that had been left on the plot for burning the rest of it. We found that this really did a good job and also found out that it gave off a lot of heat. Dan is going to use a metal grid on the top so we can cook or boil our kettle on it. Maybe we could use it for a nice summer evenings BBQ.

The nice surprise that we found was another rhubarb plant which had been hidden under our wheelbarrow. It looks a good plant and will be ready in a few weeks. Any one for some crumble?

The last job of the weekend was to plant some peas. A little late but fingers crossed they will be ok. Jack really enjoyed helping put the peas in the holes. Think he may of put two in some of them as we seemed to have misplaced a few. All in all we had a really productive and enjoyable weekend.

Tears and tiredness

We had to visit the plot in shifts today due to having two very tired and irritable children. We didn't think that tears and tiredness would mix well with dirt and digging.

Dan took the first shift and planted two rows of hard neck garlic. We are hoping that we are still in time for it to develop bulbs. The weather has become quite warm and we know that it has to have colder spells for this to happen. We will wait and see.

I took the second shift of the day and made the most of the drier weather by just having a tidy round. I weeded some of the beds but the ground was very wet so no digging today. The allotment is a very peaceful place and we are looking forward to spending lots of time there this year.

The seeds are coming along and Jack's radish that he planted in his plot are emerging . He is very excited and can't wait to see what they will be like. He is looking forward to planting lots of other things as well .

 

We bought Jack  two new tools today for his patch. He was very pleased. we loved the price as well. Two for £5. Good old Lidl.

The potatoes have started to chit so that's a great start. Sunday roasters here we come!!

Although the visits are quite short at the moment it is really nice to be spending time on plot 5. The fresh air really clears your head and the surroundings really make you feel good. The clocks changing this weekend will also mean that we will be able to go to the allotment in the evenings. This will be especially nice for Dan after working all day in the office. I'm sure that there will be a few nights spent their till dusk.

sunset view of the allotment. Painted by Dan.

Spring into action

Sunday morning brought us some lovely sunshine so we packed up our things and walked to plot number 5.

Dan loaded up the wheelbarrow with some good old organic Devon fertiliser, otherwise known as cow manure. Our local farmer kindly dumps a massive tractor load over the fence at the end of our allotments for us to use. We all pay £10  a year to the farmer  which he then donates to the Devon air ambulance. We always have an unlimited supply. 

Our local farm shop gave us these fruit crates. Dan has put them up in our shed. Think they make great storage, and the best thing is they are being recycled!!!

Our seedlings have started to grow and are enjoying a lovely view at the same time.

Our onions that we planted are established now and doing well. we weeded between them and they look a lot happier.

Our rhubarb is growing well and we are going to cover it up next week.

Our bushes that we pruned are now showing signs of new growth.

What a lovely way to finish off the morning. Saw these lovely little ladies on the way home.

Sow it begins !!!

The 1st of March brought a beautiful sunny morning with it. We decided to take advantage of the sunshine and ventured off to plot no5.

The first job was to uncover all the ground that we had covered last year with weed suppressant. This had certainly done its job of helping keeping the weeds at bay.

We had a bit of a general tidy round. We cleared the brambles, dug an edge of our bed  and Jack planted some radishes in his plot. Dan has planted some sweet peppers and spinach seeds in pots and put them in the shed under the window. Hopefully they will be nice and warm in there and start to grow soon.

We found this lonely daffodil which had survived the winter. This is how it looked.

After a week of being away from the allotment we went back up to plot 5 and what a difference a Week makes. This is our lovely daffodil now.

We cleared out the cold frame which was full of rubbish that had been left. Its very fragile and we did have a breakage but nothing that Dan can't mend. We have positioned it next to the shed and it is ready to use. We uncovered our onions which have been all snuggly and warm all winter. They seem to have done well and hopefully will now continue to grow.

We are really looking forward to the year ahead to see what will grow and what may not. We can't wait to try our home grown veg.

I think  a trip to the recycling centre is needed tomorrow to recycle all the rubbish.

The first sowing

Being a lovely October morning we thought we would visit the allotment. We hadn't been for a while as we had been away on holiday. On the way Jack managed to stand in some dog dollop that someone had left on the pavement. Luckily he had his wellies on. When we got to the allotment we found that water had gotten inside the shed but thanks to our lino all was OK. Dan managed to find out where it had been coming in and was able to repair it. Hopefully it will be water tight now .

While we have been away there was a shed broken into on next door's allotment, nothing was taken though. The police think that the people were looking for things they could sell. Also pumpkins on another plot had been used as a football. Very sad.

We decided that we would try to plant some things before the year is out. We bought some onion sets. We are starting with a variety called Radar. They are a good over wintering variety. We made the drills and have planted three rows to begin with. We will see how they get on. We watered them in and have protected them with a cloche to give them the best possible start.

As we won't be planting on the large bed until next year we dug it over and have covered it. We will plant garlic in a couple of weeks and also spinach and over wintering peas. It was lovely at the allotment today and as I was digging a little robin red breast came and sat on our fence.

Fence posts and cow sh*t

Well! It's been a while. It has been quite quiet up on plot number 5 recently, not a lot going on so haven't written since the end of August. The shed is still coming on and Dan has made the potting table under the window and added some more wood to the inside. We are yet to put up the hooks and other shelves as we are waiting to source more recycled wood. As you can see the potting table comes in handy. We have some chairs in the shed, which again are recycled from a neighbour who was just going to throw them away. Good for when you need a sit down after all that digging and weeding. All we need now is to get the kettle and stove up here. Noticed that we seem to have a bit of a red theme going on, not intentional.

The tools that Dad gave us are really good and the spade has made it easy to dig the ground. Both Dan and I have had a go with it and even Jack tried to dig with it, although it was a little big for him. The beds are looking good now and it is just a matter of keeping the weeds down until we are ready to plant some things. We have covered some of the beds and will probably cover the others as well soon.

We thinned out our strawberry plants and found out that we have two varieties, one of which is an alpine. The raspberries are still producing and doing well. There are also a few blackberries left.

We have put in some new posts along the fence to reinforce it. Think we will add a line of wire In between them to prevent people from climbing over. Dan said he is going to electrify it, that'll stop any drunks hopping over to help themselves on a Summer evening next year.

These lovely cows are in the field next to our allotment and we hope to utilise their poo. The farmer kindly gives our allotment the manure, we all pay £5.00 for the year and he donates this to a charity. Last year it was the Devon air ambulance.

So the next couple of months will just be spent keeping the plot tidy. We want to make a new compost bin as the other one has rotted. We have a small patch that we still need to clear and dig and of course there is the on going shed project. See you all soon.