Soil Improving and Sowing, Allotment Chat

Skip on the Plot

Down to the plot where the first thing I noticed was the skip had arrived. Despite a massive over-inflation increase in allotment rents, we don’t the trailor as often as we used to and it was pretty full when I arrived. I still managed to squeeze in my broken glass pile and some other bits of rubbish.

I did manage to rescue some heavy duty plastic netting and an old clothes horse. By stapling the netting to the clothes horse, I will create a great pea support 🙂

Sowing Carrots in the Greenhouse

First thing was to tape up the window stays in the big greenhouse to stop them getting jammed up when the vent opener shuts the window, thanks to Gianni for the sticky film. Then gave the border a thorough watering and sowed a couple of rows of Early Nantes carrots at the front of one border. I’ve not tried this before but they say they are suitable for cold frames and so I hope to get a fast crop of clean carrots but still have room in the border for the tomatoes later. Maybe a daft idea, but if you don’t try these things, you don’t know.

Cloche out of the Shed

Next I set up the cloche tent I got last year. Took a few minutes to figure out the poles, I was never good with tents either, but I got it together and moved the broad beans and onions from the greenhouse into there. I’m intending to plant out over the weekend and want to avoid shocking them. It’s a really good cloche, one person on the site has had two left up all winter and they’re still good.

The photo is from last year, I didn’t take my camera down with me today.

After this I scattered a few handfuls of pelleted chicken manure onto the onion beds. They’ve got a high proportion of the compost in and I wanted to make sure there was plenty of nitrogen available since the compost may be a little deficient in available nitrogen.

Next I moved down to plot 5 and started moving compost onto the top patch which I will rotovate in. I’m working on about a barrow load per large square yard. Yes my usual exact scientific measurement system.

New People on the Site & More Compost

We’ve got a new couple on the site, they seem very nice and she has some experience of allotmenting so I think they’ll do well. I must admit to some concern when they drove up to the plot in their car. More drive-in gardeners, I muttered. However, they had a load of bags of green waste and kit so I stopped being Mr Grumpy and smiled. I mentioned that I understood we were getting some loads of compost delivered tomorrow and we agreed to split a load. When I got home, I rang Steve Bloor and asked for a load but he’s delivering a week on Saturday not tomorrow. Bound to be raining!