Last year I farted about trying to start seeds early in pots at home. It never seemed that successful and involved more farting about hardening the plants off to the outdoor elements. So this year I just waited until the weather warmed up enough that they could go straight in the ground.
There’s more onions, leeks, broad beans, parsnip, carrots and a bunch of sunflowers that I kept standing on. Hopefully they’ll grow and not get eaten by things. Dropping tiny seeds into vast expanses of soil and hoping they grow before the weeds take over always seems quite a risky process.
Next door’s zoo watched on with interest and enjoyed the free greenery and the odd grub that I found hiding in the soil.
And in what will become a weekly chore, the grass needed mowing. Was a bit easier this time, almost as if mowers are designed to cut shorter grass.
Some things I’d forgotten about are still growing. There’s a forgotten about leek or onion and some rhubarb. I moved and split the rhubarb a few years ago and thought I’d killed it. I guess not. Keep going rhubarb, you’ll smother out that grass!
Due to the weather being quite rubbish I didn’t get over to the allotment much in the past month. And it seems things are now starting to grow! A lot! Before I could even start I needed to mow the space my car parks on.
The knackered petrol mower I’ve had for years did actually start up, which was surprising. It got rewarded by being made to chew through thigh high wet grass.
On the right hand side is a patch of ground that used to be clear and had beans on it. Now it also has grass. Some more vigorous mowing and then a chewing over with the rotavator soon turned it into usable ground. There’s two rows of potatoes in it now.
Since that took up most of the time I had, all I managed to actually do on the main plot was plant some onions and remove some new weeds that had sprouted up.
The trees are flowering nicely. Maybe the cherry tree will give us more than a small handful of fruit this year. I did mean to prune it, but that’ll now have to wait.
Poundland sells cheap fruit bushes, and if you pick the ones with leaves on, they tend to grow fairly well and make a nice hedge type thing. If you pick the ones with no leaves on… they’re dead, you’re buying a dead plant… They’re also not a pound each, but never mind.
I’ve put them along the edge of the plot to make a sort of fruity hedge. I had a few spaere, so they’ve gone at the end of the plot next to a new rhubarb plant.
The other job this week was to turn a big grassy part of the plot back into land I can grow things in. It’s an area of the plot that’s always been a messy lump of grass and rubbish. And not little tufts of grass, but great big mounds of the stuff. Clearing this has always been hard work and takes weeks of effort. It’s usually summer by the time I get parts cleared.
However since I now own a rotavator, it was about half an hour’s work to get it all nicely turned over. The rotavator gets clogged easily on mounds of grass so the trick is to sneak up on them from the side. After a while the blades rip the grass clump out the ground.
BeforeAfter
It needs a bit more work, but the ground is more level and all the rubbish has been picked out.
Since the batteries in the rotavator weren’t dead yet, I went over the other half of the plot to give the weeds a gentle hint they weren’t supposed to grow there, and cleared some space to plant the rhubarb from earlier.
All the chopped up leaves and grass will rot down once the weather warms up. It’s between 2 and 7c during the day still, so not a lot’s going on. Except that onion, it’s already been mown over once by mistake, so I’m leaving it alone. You’ve survived my cack-handed gardening, you can live.
The other jobs I did was to move the bin store from home to the plot, it can be another shed thing to store junk in. And then I attacked the triffids multiplying around the greenhouse. I don’t mind brambles, except when they snake off across the ground, rooting as they go. If chopping at them with the strimmer doesn’t make them go away they’ll be getting sprayed with weed killer.
Yeah I know, it’s bad to spray nasty poisons on your garden, especially when you’re going to eat the produce, but you try removing brambles by hand using a shovel. Sure, you can cut them up but they’ll grow back a month later. There’s a reason they grow everywhere…
And all of this was supervised by next door’s chickens and other feathered creatures. I like next door’s little zoo, he’s done two very helpful things
Removing the weeds from his plot – chickens and ducks eat anything green looking
Building his chicken pens using my fencing. Last year the fence blew down. Now it’s part of a chicken coop, it can’t go anywhere.
It’s been pretty windy here again, so I went to the plot to see if the shed had tried to escape again…
It hasn’t quite done a Wizard of Oz this time, but did seem to have moved a bit which is surprising given it has about 30 kilos of water sat on its roof. Also the plastic box next to it has been obliterated, and the wooden cold frame clearly needs something heavier inside it.
The actual point of today wasn’t to tidy up, but to do some tidying. Grass is an annoying thing, it grows quite happily all over the plot, especially if you don’t dig it out. At home, my lawn is all thin and patchy.
Managed to get the majority of it cleared before the batteries gave out on the rotavator. It’s certainly a lot better than doing it by hand.
This bit is next, It’s full of grass and junk that has grass growing over it. I’ll need to give it a mow and attack it with the strimmer a bit first to get it short enough the rotavator can chew it up without getting tangled.
The wind wasn’t all bad though, I somehow gained a giant sheet of plastic from somewhere, and two large builders’ sacks. The plastic will keep the weeds down on the end of the plot I dug over earlier, and the sacks will be useful for gathering up rubbish.
I’ve made an attempt at tidying, I’m sure the wind will help reorganise things soon.
Got a bit of a surprise when I visited the plot yesterday, seems my shed tried to do a Wizard of Oz and take off. Didn’t get very far though…
After checking for any flattened witches I set about trying to rectify the mess. I’d only gone there to dump some kitchen waste in the compost bin. It’s been raining for the past month so the ground is too soggy to do anything in. Also it’s winter.
Can confirm, shed is not stood up correctly. Also it’s only gone and blown the bloody doors off. Those things are terrible and always need a good kicking to stay in their tracks at the best of times. Next door’s chickens were warily watching…
It’s only a light metal shed so fortunately quite easy to stand up again. I even managed to get the drain pipe back in the water butt. Even better, all of this was done without slashing my wrists and face on the insanely sharp metal edging.
In an attempt at stopping it from happening again I’ve put some plastic boxes on the roof full of water. They were originally stood on the floor full of water, so they might as well be useful. Helps increase my water storage capacity too.
Yes, at some point in the future I will securely attach the whole thing to the ground somehow.
Trying to make best of an annoying situation, I then figured the wind was hitting the big flat side of the shed, so moved the compost bins in front of it to give some shelter. It was also a good excuse to turn the contents of the compost bins over and realise thick branches don’t break down very quickly.
Moving the compost also means I have a more open and regular plot that I can go down and clear with the mower, strimmer, rotavator and a big binbag ready for planting.
Yeah that’s the next plan. Tidy up. While digging I kept finding bits of rubbish lost in the grass and weeds.
