Bright but nippy

Allotment Tales 30-01-2025:  A bright but nippy day

Much of Thursday’s work was focused on repairing damage from last week’s Storm Eowyn. Compared to the devastation wreaked across Northern Ireland and Scotland’s beautiful gardens, our problems were minimal.

No disasters, but several posts down and netting dislodged. We played a game of “How many long-handled implements can you use to manoeuvre the plum tree’s netting back into place?”

We attempted to strengthen the arch that our cooker, “Grenadier” likes to splay over and shored up the strawberry bed’s perimeter netting.

More rotten wood was replaced with fresh timber – this week around the brassica bed and we continued to coppice the willow and hazel. Smallest hazel branches and twigs were cut up, and piled, ready for the first bonfire of the year. We couldn’t do planned labelling as the machine was out of batteries, and no-one had a pen!

As the sun crept onto the plot, the more sun-seeking amongst us managed a bit of Winter weeding as the soil defrosted – annuals for composting, perennials (like couch grass) for the “Nasty Weeds” bag.

We harvested a few leeks and dug up some fat Jerusalem Artichoke tubers, possibly for roasting and whizzing into spicey soup with a few Adam’s Pearmain apples. These are storing quite well in our shed. We scattered a few for the birds too before leaving for the day.

 

Jobs for next week: continue replacing bed surrounds as necessary; check beds for clear labelling in advance of the Winter Pruning Workshop; weeding if ground is not frosted – with particular attention for returning alkanet