A few days of plotting

I have had a few days off work this week and have been keeping myself busy up at the plot. The weather has been beautiful and it has been wonderful to be able to wear a T shirt and feel the sun on my arms. The sunshine has also brought out plenty of bare chested men, unfortunately some of these really ought to remain covered up! There area few specimens however that really are a sight to behold and can carry on wearing no shirts as far as I am concerned - Vegetables are lovely to look at but it is nice to have a bit of variety!

I have been to collect a couple of trailer loads of free council compost, which is great for lightening up the clay soil and for mulching. I put a load into the front flower bed, & will mix some topsoil in with it before planting anything in there. I put a thick mulch onto the long Rhubarb bed and I am hoping to grow sweet peas over the arch.

I also mulched the strawberry beds. If you put this stuff on thickly it helps suppress the weeds, conditions the soil, helps retain moisture and provides some nutrients.

I covered the potato bed with clear plastic in order to warm it up in readiness for planting the potatoes this coming weekend.

I met my new plot neighbours this week - Juliet & Stephen. They have been hard at work clearing their plot, and managed this much in one day.

Today I have been working on the fruit cage, and have nearly finished it. I just need to fix the braces to make it sturdier, and get a few more lengths of wood to complete the top rails. All that will then be required is the netting, which I will order via the internet.

I also thickly mulched all the fruit bushes & trees.

The view down the plot

Ready for rotorvator

Did not do that much at the plot today apart from taking the veg waste to the compost bin and then cleared all the carpet off the bottom of the plot, as I wanted to dry out the soil a bit and it was quite damp where the carpet had been. I will probably not put carpet down once I have rotorvated, instead what I have decided to do is to mulch round the bushes and trees and let the grass grow in between, then I will mow it & with any luck make a grassed area where I can also put bulbs in. I also tidied up all the polytunnel hoops and put them out of the way, so now everything is ready to rotorvate next week.

a little while later......

Sun was shining so off to the plot I went. Started digging over the second long bed. This had been covered in plastic so it was dry enough to dig. The soil was pretty compacted though and I managed about 1/4 before my back had had enough.

Dug up last gooseberry bush (I thought) but found the stumps of one that I had inadvertently strimmed. On closer inspection I saw that it had started to sprout again so dug that one up also. Potted up both of them & they are now in the greenhouse. I now have 6 gooseberry bushes, 1 redcurrant & 1 blackcurrant. I also sowed some carrot (Paris Market) into a tray for hopefully early carrots.

Once I had finished that I pricked out the lettuce (little gem) into modules, and sowed some more into a tray.

The first batch of broad beans I sowed into loo rolls are starting to germinate.

All the seedlings in my greenhouse looking perky!

Coffee break..... it's a dogs life!

I have not had flowers on the plot before, but I have decided to put in a flower bed at the front, The edges are in & I have laid cardboard on the base. I will add topsoil & council compost when I have collected it.

View down the plot

I met some more new people at the site today, one of whom (Lois) lives just round the corner to me - I realised that I had only just picked up some 'freecycle' root trainers from her the day before.