I don’t think I did very much at the allotment during
September for lots of reasons. Work was very busy and stressful, money was
short, and the weather was (mostly) beautiful. I have done very well for yellow
raspberries throughout the month, and we picked the first pumpkin from Plot 4.
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| Holes bodged (with a finger) ready for carrot seeds. |
I cleared out the brassica bed – removing the red cabbage
plants and harvesting the only red cabbage. I then planted some plug plants of
cabbage in the brassica bed but they have since been eaten / lost to the
nasturtium monster, so that hasn’t worked too well. I sowed more radish and
carrot seeds in the big square foot bed, and I have been doing very well for
fresh salad still.
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| Allotment salad, except the bell pepper. Very nice with a jacket potato! |
Another big project has been ticked off the list; I have
wanted to sort out the bulb bed for a few years now and I have finally done it!
You can read about it in this blog post. I am very much looking forward to seeing
this in the spring!
I have decided I want another fruit tree, so that means I need
to buy two now. I am having an almond but I don't know what the second one will be. One already has a raised bed box built (no compost in it
though!) and the other will need a raised bed frame. The list is just never
ending. I might take out shares in the timber department of Wickes.
We had the first allotment flood of the season. Some of my
beds closer to the bottom of the plot, and thus at the bottom of the slope,
were under a few inches of water. This is the sole reason why I am trying to
build my beds up above ground level. I cannot grow potatoes on my plot and I love
growing my own spuds!
Next on my to do list is to get the blue tree bed filled
with muck and compost, plant loads of bulbs in it, then buy an almond tree to go in the
middle.
I need to completely overhaul the herb bed – remove plants,
weed, build the next tier of timber frame, put cardboard down, loads of fresh
compost, put herbs back in, then 20mm pebbles in the gaps (for decoration, mostly).
After that, I (read: David) really need to figure out what I’m
doing with the paving slabs near the shed. The grass roots are pushing the
slabs up so it is getting harder to open the shed door, so I need to lift the
slabs, de-weed, dig down a bit, level off, put sand down, then re-bed the slabs
and add three new ones so that it is two slabs wide at the front of the shed where it gets really muddy squishy in winter. I
have the slabs and the sand, but not the motivation.
Other good things from this month:
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| Apples and golden raspberries |
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| Aforementioned golden rasperries with some red brethren in a dollop of greek yoghurt |
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| Mommas cosmo bush on Plot 4 |
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| Some of the harvest from Plot 4 |
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| A wee froggo |
