Spring is in the air

Finally, the weather has improved enough for some serious allotmenting.

On Monday, I met up with the allotment manager and he showed me where the boundaries are for the new plot. It is all a bit hit and miss, but when we did some digging this weekend, we did find several posts hidden the grass that were probably the original boundary markers. I started doing some digging, but I have to say it is very hard work. There is a horrible amount of bindweed in the ground, but most of it is large whitish roots quite near ground level so not too hard to see and remove. The one advantage of digging at this stage is that there is nothing in the ground to get in the way - you can just dig and not worry about other plants being disturbed.

This weekend the tame photographer joined me and together we managed a goodly chunk of digging - about half of the area we want to cultivate this year. I must say, without the tame photographer, the digging would take forever - once he gets going, he is a real power horse! This is only a preliminary dig - just turning the ground over. I will do a finer dig and weed removal later on.

The only other major work was planting two gooseberry bushes I got for Christmas. They have been installed at Home Farm as the ground at Lakey Hill (new plot) is not quite ready - also there is already one gooseberry bush at Home Farm so it seems sensible to keep them all in the same place. The existing gooseberry is showing some good buds and I hope the new ones will follow this one's excellent example and produce buds soon. I also managed quite a bit of weeding during the week. Home Farm is looking very spruce at the moment. We are still eating January King cabbages; they are delicous and I shall be growing them again next year. We still have leeks and it won't be long before we start on the sprouting broccoli. I really need to get the onions and shallots in, but it will have to wait until next week. We bought the onions and shallots from the allotment shop a couple of weeks ago.We also got our seed potatoes from the shop - which we didn't last year. Also, I think I need to sow a row of broad beans to go with the aqua dulce broad beans that are just beginning to grow. The garlic is growing nicely now after a winter of very little action.The tame photographer brought me home a large bag of compost so that I can get started on sowing seeds ready to plant out as soon as the weather improves. I can't wait to start using my new lean-to greenhouse - it will be a treat not having seed trays all over the house this year. I have just checked the potatoes and they are all beginning to chit nicely.

I have just realised that I never posted any pictures of the great snow we had at the beginning of February. The pics are mine and not the tame photographers - so please excuse them!The rest of the photos of this week's work will follow as soon as they arrive.