Allotment Update week ending Sunday 19 October 2014

Blogging has starting again after Moira’s holiday but the other volunteers have been hard at work finishing the weeding and starting to clear the communal area and especially attempting to remove the couch grass from around the fruit trees.

This week the Japanese onion sets, Senshyu Yellow, were planted out in a sunny corner. They will get established over the winter and put on a lot of growth once spring arrives so you get onions several weeks earlier than spring planted sets. The green manure, buckwheat. has flowered so it was cut down and put on the compost heap and when the ground is drier the remaining shoots will be dug in.

The wetter weather means the slugs are more active so time to take up the remaining carrots and beetroot. The beetroot especially has done very well this year.

We noticed that the new shoots of the pear and cooking apple bushes have been growing through the netting which has been in place for quite a while there. These shoots were too thick now to pull back so the netting was carefully cut away and removed and something for us to watch out for when we do net the fruit. Generally the fruit is netted only when the fruit is ripening but netting can damage the new shoots even in the few weeks we do use it.

No photographs this week, as the camera is out of action.

Jobs for next week

Clear the runner beans
Prepare the ground for propagating the soft fruit
Weeding on the communal area

See you on Thursday