More Digging & Some Shredding & Earthquake

 

Spring seems to have sprung, yet another fine day so dropped down for an hours exercise in the afternoon on Tuesday

I know spring has sprung because Val’s erecting staging in the lounge by the patio doors and sowing flowery things. I know people think we’re a bit strange, turning our lounge into a bit of a nursery, but we otherwise we’re quite normal. Honestly.

Anyhoo, as the young and trendy say, there’s been another delivery of wood chippings onto the site. Actually seems we have enough to go round everybody this year, which is great. I pinched another barrow load to cover the path by the last raised bed on plot 5.

Before I could do that, I had to clear the compost so filled the bed with that. It doesn’t sound much but shovelling around 5 cubic yards of compost left me in need of a break, thank goodness for my bench.

The compost will settle and mix with the rough dug soil below and I think this bed will have carrots and parsnips. Fingers crossed, they’ll do well. I can fleece the bad to keep those blessed flies off as well.

Having got my second wind, I took the fleece off the garlic bed. Those blessed pigeons have had about a fifth of them. Not actually eaten them, they just pulled them up as they began to shoot. I suppose they thought they looked tasty and changed their mind when they’d pulled them out. I think the rest will be OK now, they’re about 6 inches tall and looking fairly good.

Next I did a bit more digging over. Just a couple of square yards, but something is better than nothing. I’m afraid this soil is still heavy and if I just tried to run the Merry Tiller over it, the tiller would just bounce along. The large bed on plot 29 is different, it had so much organic matter that it’s lovely to work. I’ll just tiller that this year.

Back home and the potatoes are looking well in the front bedroom – they’re chitting nicely with small green sprouts. I’ll see about planting out three tubers of first earlies in the raised bed with fixed coldframe next week.

We’re busy doing an upgrade to the web site allotment shop. Big thanks to Val who has been checking all 769 product links still work. The suppliers have a habit of moving things and deleting things but not telling me, which results in dead links.

When she’s done that we’ve a few things to add and we’re taking the opportunity to re-do the sections on there. Should be easier for people to find things when I’ve done.

The book should be leaving the printers on March 7^th so hopefully available to buy from here on the 10^th March. Don’t hold me to it, I’m a great believer in not making promises when things outside of my control can stop me fulfilling them.

They say fresh air and exercise are good for you, but I must admit to falling fast asleep on the settee when I got back from the plot. Of course, this meant I was quite awake at 1.00am on Wednesday morning when the earthquake struck.

That was really weird, here it was just a big bang as if something large had fallen down. My first thought was Val had fallen down the stairs (not that she’s large), so ran into the lounge where she was looking bemused but unhurt, thank goodness. The poor cat was terrified, he was convinced I’d done it so after hissing at me ran out of the house.

We then spent half an hour checking the roof hadn’t fallen off or something and trying to convince the cat that he could come back in. I think he forgave me in the end as he was on my bed when I awoke in the morning. It should settle the compost in the deep bed a bit, if nothing else..

Back down to the plot on Wednesday and yet more digging over. Boring to describe, tiring to do.

Thursday was another nice day but I’ve a got a bit of job on that’s not going well at all. Come the afternoon as I approached the “throw the computer through the window stage”, Val tempted me into the garden for an hour with promises of compost material.

She’s been trimming and tidying so a rather large pile of woody clippings, Russian vine etc were sat awaiting my attention. When my father-in-law moved into a flat with no garden, we acquired his shredder so a happy hour turning a huge pile into a large bag of compost material that will rot down pretty quickly. Not a bad bit of a break.