14th August – Allotment: gaining ground

Maybe a bit of an optimistic title. But I’ve taken some of the first earlies out of the ground (to bring to friends we’re visiting over the weekend). And I’ve weeded 3 beds: onions, shallots and carrots and a quick go over the sunflower and marrow bed and tried to salvage the cucumbers (I think one’s still going).

Oh, and we picked about 2 and a half kilos of blackberries for Jam and bought some jam sugar and some lemons: I’ll let you know how that goes…

So, some photos so show what I mean:

Onions before

Onions after the effort

Shallot update

Carrots

Sunflowers and marrows

And again from another angle

Cucumbers: plant on left has fruited but is struggling

10th July 2010 – Allotment

Oops: a bit of a gap…some photos of it not looking its best. I did do some work after these were taken (honest). Especially around the onion beds…

Gooseberry (no fruit, not a leaf...mystery)

Finally some random lettuce on the big bed

Gooseberries with asparagus on the end

Whole of the lower level. Spuds in the distance

Blackfly on the peas (Lady birds are a bit disinterested)

Upper level

Shallot bed

Onions

Cucmber

I’ve be manually removing the blackfly: squishing as many as possible. They seem to have ants associated with them…hmmm

May 23rd- feels like summer

Wow! What a day! I discovered that the bird that has been wakening me up at 5 in the morning since the start of spring is a Chiff chaff. Which is a made up name if ever I heard one. So when he woke me up this morning, I took my breakfast and some fresh brewed coffee out into the back garden and joined my little chiff chaff friend in his salutes to the sun: well, he saluted and I ate. It seemed fair.

I spent an hour planning my allotment day- I get so distracted when I get there, that I have to have a ‘must, should, could’ style list. I finally made it to the allotment early enough to make the site shop – so I bought a couple of cucumber plants, 2 aubergines, a pumpkin, a marrow and 2 rhubarb. A fiver all in. Not too shabby. They all look pretty good too.

I then finished one of my top beds from last year- reclaiming it from the couch grass. It needs to be extended and I pulled back the cover on the slope end and was raking away the grass below it that’s died back it the last year and uncovered some bee/wasp nest. Didn’t hang around for a good look! Not sure what to do. The hive is about 10cm across and was in the dead grass rather than in the ground. Any ideas on what to do? None of my neighbours were about (and it was 1230 and I was in danger of melting into the ground, so I came home for lunch and a cold shower).

I’m about to head back now and see what it all looks like and try and guage if these insects have calmed down any!

From the afternoon: the wasps (and they were wasps, I was finally able to dicide) had calmed down and seemed to be moving on: I really disturbed the nest with one stroke of the rake. It was lying exposed, so I moved it about 3m just off the plot, but I don’t know it they’ll re-group or save the larvae, or what.