We always seem to be up at the plot at the right time. Yesterday morning a man in a flatbed van arrived with manure for some of the plot tennants. After a few trips I asked him how we could get some of it and he said he had a couple more loads and came back and dumped a HUGE pile on our plot for us - what a result!! All for the price of a bottle of wine! We then spent the rest of the afternoon shifting it into a hastily made pallet bin (or rather hubby did most of it as we only had one fork. I was on wheelbarrow duty though!). It still needs to rot down a bit and has a fair bit of straw in it, but it will be perfect for in the beds in prep for spring and the rest can just stay where it is!Hubby made a start on the beds for my fruit bushes, both newly ordered and those I'm going to move from my back garden. The soil seems to be getting harder to work the further back we move, but still, Hubby's strong :o) ! It's here in the pic in front of the greenhouse.
  We've picked our first cabbage AND I actually ate a lot of it (was quite nice)!! I'm very impressed with myself (not a cabbage fan) and proud that I've grown such beauties since July.

I picked a small bowl of chillies that have finally started to ripen. I chopped them in half, de-seeded them and popped them in a small jar with some olive oil and pepper corns to make chilli oil. Looks good and will infuse over time. I think I'll make a few of these if they can keep turning red before the first frosts kill the plant off. I must say I'm much less impressed with the peppers though, none of them are ripening!!!! Arrgh! And a few are even starting to rot - what's going on there?
My lovely butternut decided to split :o( - so we chopped it off and roasted it. Nice enough but I think it would have been even better fully ripe. A shame! My pumpkin is going nowhere, lots of babies but none maturing - not looking good for halloween. Slug are big baddies here too!

 
Few other bits and pieces done too. Tried sowing some more (now very late) kale in cells in the greenhouse as something has eaten all the seedlings I put in. Weeded my smashing salad bed, moved the swing to the back, planted all my onion sets, marked out the fruit beds for Hubby and even experimented with 5 Christmas spuds!! It's all still busy, busy with no signs of slowing down yet. The yellow squash Sunburst F1 are happy as anything, can't wait to try them, they're supposed to taste smashing!

What a productive day!

We had a great day today, the weather was perfect - not too hot, not cold, not raining or windy (our plot seems really sheltered - our allotments are on a slope with us at the bottom but when we walked up the hill today you could really feel the wind!).

We did loads:

• Hoed a few paths



• Put straw beds under the butternut and pumpkins



• Weeded Bed 5 and was about to fill it with garlic and onion sets when someone gave me loads of leek seedlings to put in (45 in fact). Them in, I then had just enough room for one type of garlic so planted my Cristo



• Hubby put up the next compost bin & finished weeding Bed 10
  

THEN, a man came over and asked if we wanted a shed and said we can go pick it up from his plot if we do. FANTASTIC! It's a bit woodwormy on the base, so we'd need to replace that and a few other planks/beams, but overall is great (our car can be our car again instead of our shed! :oD ), and best of all it's FREE! We had been in the process of collecting a shed from Freecycle, but I was finding it hard to get up the enthusiasm for hiring a van to move it - plus it's really a bit too big (6x10)! This is great! Anyway, we moved it down to our plot a bit at a time (it was SO heavy - and I'm such a weaking!! took us 7 trips and my arms and backside (for some bizarre reason??!) are killing.

A tractor turned up today too to chop off all the growth at the end of the plot that meets the boundry. The chap said he was also going to be back to dig out the ground and level it - which is fantastic as it was a job we'd have needed to do to to put the shed on. We've ALSO been told that there is someone giving away slabs that we could have.

It's all looking good and I've even got mini yellow Sunburst F1 squash growing and sweetcorn lady flowers. Love it all!

It's all starting to take shape now. We've dug and prepared Beds 1-6, 7 has been turned over, and weeded, just needs fine weeding and preparing to plant winter veg (kale, cauli(?) and brocolli) into, bed 11 had been prepared and sown with various salad types (and a packet of unspecified meadow flowers from the library given to my youngest).

Above is a wide shot of our allotment. All the sleepers in the front are going to become a community garden for the site, should be good. My plot basically runs from one side of the photo to the other and from just beyond the sleepers to where my hubby is standing.

This is Beds 1-6 looking up towards the hill.

Bed 1 (furthest) - Pumpkin & B-Nut Bed 3 - Cabbage & brussels Bed 5 - Leeks (so far)

Bed 2 (nearest) - carrots Bed 4 - sweetcorn, peas, toms & chard Bed 6 - Squash (sunburst F1), sweetpeas & cucumber

The frame for the kids is up and getting masses of use, and they are enjoying making their own fun. We go to the allotment about three times a week at the moment and it's enough to keep on top of what we are doing and keep making progress with the digging. All in all, we're feeling chuffed with how things are going!

Beds 5 and 11 have now been weeded thanks to hubby and I think I'm going to move my poor leeks from home into one of them. I sowed some more Rondo peas in Bed 4 - probably too late but I'll give it a go. Sowed more carrots in Bed 2 and they've started to come up, and this time I sowed LOADS, hopefully enough for me AND the slugs.

My greenhouse now has all the panes in it, I needed to buy 9 new pieces of glass and tape a load more, but looks great - just need some staging now!

The swing/slide combo for the kids is up, and getting loads of use. We initially had it in the middle of the allotment as it was the flattest place, but I just didn't like it there - it was out of place on an allotment and just not right. We moved it to the side and it's more out of the way - much better!

It's been rainy for the last few days so haven't been, but hopefully get there tonight or tomorrow.

At home, we've got baby butternut squash growing and our first toms are ripe - yippee! Hubby had first taste (I don't like uncooked toms) and he said it was smashing!

This is the little fella on the right of the top piccy going a lovely shade of orange!

The rest of the garden is a little sad looking, as the stuff is coming out and not being replaced (it's going back to space for the kids to play in since we've got the allotment now). But beans are doing well (even though they're not climbing very well for climbing french beans!) as are my onions if they can survive the constant attack from kid's feet!

It's been AGES since I last blogged, I've been to the allotment a fair few time though and feel like we've done loads. It's actually beginning to look like an allotment now rather than just a plot of land. We bought a greenhouse and put it up (I broke loads of panes of glass getting it there though :o() and have made a den and bought a swing/slide thing off ebay for the kids as they need something else to do (they're pretty good at entertaining themselves, but somewhere to play is going to help I think!).

The plot's really coming on now, 5 beds have been properly dug over (beds 1-4 & 6) and beds 5, 7 and 11 have been roughly dug. We've put a compost bin and the greenhouse up and and arch to grow sweetpeas over (if there is enough time left this summer). I planted some Sunburst squash seedlings (hopefully the slugs won't get them and I still want to get some late peas in if poss.
The bed plan so far!

We've still got loads to do, but it's really taking shape now!

A Masterpiece!

Such a busy week last week so didn't get to Plot 6 as much as I would've liked. Did get there on Saturday with the kids for a few hours, then back again with Hubby in the evening when he finished work (braving the nasty nibbling flying critters that LOVE the taste of me!). We dug over the 4th bed and I've got half the bed filled with 18 sweetcorn plantlets (did have a little runt too - sweetcorn number 19, but slugs got him - probably for the best!). They look great! I went and checked out how others had planted their's and copied them (spacing etc.). Leeks are going to go in the other half I think. I've had two seperate offers for leeks so I'm hoping I will be able to fill it.

Rained ALL day on Sunday, and only popped in on my way home to drop off some pallets today. I'm itching to get back, but don't really like digging on my own. Need to get Hubby there too!

Sowed a few other bits and pieces to hopefully get in this year. They are happily germinating on the windowsill.

Up the garden:

The tomatoes are doing well, lots of babies now and looking healthy, a baby chilli pepper, peas have toppled over and do not taste that great now (though they were lovely with the pie we had last night), kids went mad pulling up my carrots (eekkkk!), but at least they did eat them! I've only 2 potato plants left now (so sad - mind you they've done well to last as the slugs and snails have stripped them to skeletons!) and beans, onions, garlic, butternut squash, cucumber, and lettuce are still doing well. My raspberries are not fruiting so much now, and strawbs seem to have stopped fruiting altogether. Courgettes are not really that happy in a tub I think and manky fruit flies keep attacking the end of the courg so I have to chop it off before it's really big enough. I'll have to make sure it's well away from the compost bin next year!

All in all I'm proud of what I have achieved up my garden. Even if I can't wait for the next year on my allotment!

I GOT ONE!

Hooray!!!

At last I am the proud tennant of an allotment!

It's not on the site I was originally looking at (I'm too impatient, I just can't wait for something without any idea of how long I will be on a list, when there are plots free on other sites). Last weekend I went for a look at the site that is next nearest to me and it looked great. I went to see the two plots that were available on Tuesday and really liked Plot 6. I decided to go for it, picked up the keys at lunchtime on Friday and set to work with the hubby that evening.

We've just spend a fair few hours there in the sunshine this weekend and already feel like we've got loads done! I LOVE it! I was humming away as I weeded the beds, and we've cleared, weeded, sowed and planted in them already. Smashing!

Plot 6 when I first saw it on Tuesday.

From the other end looking up the hill.

Hubby making a start on the first bed in the rain.

End of day two and glorious sunshine. We did really well, 2 beds completely weeded, another bed turned over. I managed to get some butternut squash, something I did think was a squash, but now think is a cucumber and pumpkins.

End of day 3. Bed 2 thoroughly weeded and raked finely and some Autumn King Carrots put in 3/4 of the bed and Chantenay Red-core in the the other 1/4 . French marigolds are surrounding and crossing through them for the carrot fly. In true allotment style I salvaged some posts from the big pile of rubbish on the next plot to us and used it in the corners, firstly to keep the kids off and also hopefully to put fleece around also to keep off the carrot fly.

A nice lady from up the hill gave us 2 brussel sprouts and loads of baby cabbage and the site manager said that if I put up some canes he'll let me have some kidney beans as well as some leeks. Such nice people you find on allotments!

I went to the garden centre on the way home to see what other seeds I can sow now and bought my canes. I can't wait to go back!