Compost Day

We had a great day today as we had a communal compost day to sort out the compost bins. We emptied all of the bins and made different piles of compost, perennials, nettles, left overs and rubbish. It was amazing what we found in some of them, polystyrene, plastic cassette tape, shrew and toads the mind boggles. We had lots of compost at the end and I have enough to finish my plot which is great as that means I haven't had to pay for any compost to get the plot finished. We are going to now have 8 compost bins along with a perennial bin and nettle bin to make nettle feed. It was a fab day, I got to meet everyone and it was great to be up there with lots of people and pass information and stories. Here's some pictures from the day...

Baby Chilli

Earlier this week I noticed that one of my flowers on my chilli plants is starting to turn into a baby chilli. It's amazing how you can plant a seed, a plant will grow, flowers will bloom, flowers die off and a vegetable starts to grow, WOW!

I have also planted some more leeks, carrots and onions in my root bed. I am not sure if it's too late to sow some things but I am going to give it a go and see what happens.

Meeting

Just come back from my allotment meeting. I have been officially put in charge of compost, compostwoman's information helped, so if you are reading this thankyou! There was a lady from BTCV there and she informed us that she wants to arrange an event for all local organisations and allotments to get together for a social along with some training, they will even arrange a mini bus to the event for us. The event will probably be in a local environment centre Moelyci as they have a lot of good practice going on there for us to see along with a lot of knowledgeable people.She also said she would try and arrange a group visit to Centre of Alternative Technology for us to get information from there. We also agreed it would be good to get rainwater harvesting so are going to try and get B&Q to donate some equipment to us. We are also going to try and get a bit of funding to allow us to put a roof on one of the out buildings so we can turn it into a potting shed. It's all very exciting and inspiring.

Beans and Squash are in

Risked it and went up the lottie this morning. The skies were blue by the time I left the house and I had to change into a vest top in the shed when I got up there because it was so warm. I managed to get the new bean bed finished and planted some runner beans and squashes. I got caught in a shower but it was really refreshing so I didn't bother with my coat I just enjoyed the downpour. I picked some potatoes, broad beans and peas to have for tea tonight and a bought a tub of local oak smoked sea salt made by Halen Mon on Anglesey, I think this will be lovely to go with the fresh vegetables from the lottie.

Bean a good day..

Went up the allotment yesterday and got 80% of the bean bed dug over. The squirrels are still attacking my strawberries so I am thinking of putting a caged strawberry bed down the middle of the first half of the plot.







I have recently tried out an oyster mushroom straw kit at home. I didn't get that much of a harvest from it, I think this was because I left the spores for too long in the fridge and they were a solid mass before I used them. Anyway after I finished with the kit some of the straw still had spores on it so I decided to lay the straw on a shaded bit of the patch up the lottie and just see what happens. Worse case scenario it will just mulch the soil.

A step further

Sunday evening was really nice so we decided to go up the allotment for a couple of hours and get the bed sorted that my OH made the day before. While I was planting the tomatoes, courgettes and aubergines my OH started digging the new ground in the second half of the plot. It hasn't been dug over for years so it is very tough with some well established weed roots. Hopefully I we will get it ready in the next week and I can get some late beans and squash in there. Then there's only two more beds to dig!!