Tales from the allotment

A beautiful, bright day to celebrate the Spring Equinox. Some of us even removed our woolly bunnets at break time!

Weeding continues as ever. The hazel windbreak is (temporarily) free of couch grass – for the first time in a few years, down to the good number of volunteers attending weekly.  Our plan is to add pollinating plants to uncultivated nooks and crannies to encourage more bees, moths and other pollinating insects.

The tubs earmarked for carrots got a layer of small stones to help with drainage, then a mix of soil, sand and compost was sifted over this. We ran out of mixture so will continue next week.

Old netting from around the currant bushes was patiently untangled and rolled up for future use. We steeled ourselves over lunch to perform the operation of unrolling the enormous fruit cage net and manoeuvring it into place. Turns out we’re a crack team, and the process was perfectly choreographed. We did have to peg up several holes to prevent birds from getting stuck and may attempt some fancier netting repair work next week.

The temperature of the soil under plastic is now a balmy 7 degrees centigrade. We may begin planting early seed potatoes next week, depending on how temperatures pan out. This could give us salad potatoes by the end of June. Very exciting!
Sprigs of kale and purple sprouting broccoli were harvested. We were all able to take a handful home – a lovely tender treat this time of year.

Jobs for next week: possible potato planting; adding manure to drills before planting and around all fruit bushes; finish filling the carrot tubs; repair the fruit cage netting; scatter wildflower seed between the hazel wind break and compost bins; weeding as usual.