I’ve had time for a few trips to the plot in June as I was
still full time furloughed. The weather was a bit all over the place –
sometimes far too hot to move and watering was relegated to 7pm onwards, or
massive thunderstorms directly over the plot (I literally fell out of my chair
in the shed), or hail storms. The plants don’t seem to mind though. There wasn’t
very much weather damage apart from wilting, so that’s ok.
David laid some more paving slabs for me in front of the shed so I now have a double slab layer. This bit gets so boggy in the winter. This is also the start of a larger project for this area – I want more paving so I can have a small picnic bench between the shed & compost bins, and also a paved path in front of the compost bins so that access is easier. I told David this, and he isn’t as excited as I am.
It’s been a good month I think. I was regularly taking trips to the plot mainly to take the kitchen food waste to dump onto the compost heap, but would stay for a couple of hours just pottering around. I have two new allotment neighbours, they have taken on the two plots next to mine and have been super busy clearing and tidying and de-brambling and de-plum tree-ing. Much to the sadness of the sparrows who used the bramble as cover. And much to the sadness of me as I now have no privacy when I piss behind the shed!!
Big jobs this month were filling the new beds with compost
and planting them up, and weeding out the quince bed. I have now finally
decided that I am going to split this bed over winter and make it into two
raised beds instead.
In June the allotment seems to have really come alive. Lots of growth, lots of harvesting, lots of pruning and tidying and tying things in. Lots of critters eating my French beans as soon as they emerged – little gits. I have some growing at home which I will transplant in a few weeks time (beans, not gits).
The sweetcorns are looking really good, really thick and healthy. Lots of tomato flowers are open – I have nine plants on the plot. There are also bazillions of baby courgettes coming, and the loofah is setting fruit!! I am so excited, even if I only get one. I have three loofah plants but the other two look quite sad. One of them is directly under where the pigeons have started to shit (they sit on the growing structure) so the poor plant is covered in doodoo.
I harvested the garlic and although it was good and probably my best harvest, I was still a bit disappointed. I grew elephant garlic so I was expecting huge bulbs, but it didn’t happen. They are still in the mini greenhouse at home, drying nicely. I pulled a couple of onions and they are so small, barely bigger than when I planted them as sets, so I’ve decided to leave them to flower for wildlife.
This month I have spent some time on Plot 4 doing some physical labour for Momma P who wanted a patch de-turfed and dug over so that she could plant the pumpkins. I took the turf to my plot and it is now piled grass side down, rotting down so that I can use it as backfill for when I sort the quince bed out. We planted 21 squash plants in the new patch – far too many for the space but there is literally nowhere else to put them.
David and I rebuilt the compost bins a while ago and he incorporated a raised bed in it for me. It’s only a narrow strip in between the two bins but I have sown flower seed into it, and they are starting to come up. It has red & white clover, nasturtium, heartsease, and other stuff. The mesh is arched up over the top so that the birds can’t land on it, or get to the seedlings to pull them out.
