Weeds aghhh!!!

As you can see from my last posts I haven't been up the lottie recently due to illness and then I had to go away examining work for a bit but my Summer Holidays are finally here and after looking at the allotment today I think it's going to take me until September to sort it out.....

I spent three hours manually trying to cut through all the weeds and grass and it still looked like I hadn't touched it as you can see from the images.
Left - Before
Right - After


The amazing thing is that the plants are surviving. I'm going to have trouble in the root bed telling the difference between weed and plant but it will be a learning curve. I could clearly see me broad beans, peas and strawberries fighting through the weeds.



It was really tiring today but I can't wait to get up there and do more and to cheer me up I harvested the first of my potatoes and we are going to have them tonight for tea!!!!

Me vs My Body

I went up the allotment yesterday and after putting all my plants in the wheel barrow and getting them up the allotment I felt like I was going to pass out and had a very bad hot flush! The doctors are still trying to find out the cause!!

Anyway I went home after not feeling to good and tried again today.....

Take 2

I managed to get up the allotment today, still feeling rough but I was determined to do something. When I got up there I almost had that oh no so much to do feeling but I had a good word with myself and realised I can do it and most of all I will enjoy doing it.


When I took over the second half of the plot I inherited two boxes so I decided to use the deepest one to protect my beans and tomatoes until I have more time and energy to sort them out. I also noticed that I have inherited a number of potato plants. It's really strange seeing things appearing when you didn't plant them.






I got given a number of kohl rabi seedlings this week. They have managed to survive in my house all week so I had to get them out today. I found an area in the new half of the patch that had some strawberries already growing in it so I decided that looks like the least amount of work, so they went in there. I had some mulch mats for the first couple and I then used some slate for the rest, hopefully this will stop the slugs!

Me vs Nettles

The lady that I was supposed to be sharing my plot with decided to give it up as she didn't have time to do anything with it so I have now taken on that half so my plot has now doubled in size!!

The downside is it is waist heigh in stingy nettles, so today I went out there armed meaning business!! I had a pair of garden hand shearers (I think that's the technical term). I got through half the plot and my arms are now offcially hating me.



I did still have enough steam left in me to do a bit of weeding on my the better half and I planted sowed some carrots and leeks. Here's a few pics of the plot so far...

What I've Been Up To

Well haven't been able to get on here for a while, been to busy digging and planting. Here's a run down of what's been happening.


My seedlings grew really quickly buy come became to leggy as I made the mistake of feeding them. I afraid I was being a typical first time mum and wrapping them in too much cotton wool. Some made it but others were placed in the compost heap to be born again next year!!


The first bed was completed so I warmed up the soil and got my broad beans in but then the damn wind and hail stones decided to behead the one poor baby. But to my amazment within a couple of weeks a new shoot appeared and it has now caught up with its brother and sisters!


My landlord managed to get me 6 bags of compost from where he works. It was a real struggle to get it up to allotments, luckily he was with me as I got half way up the hill and my legs were going like mad but the wheel barrow wasn't moving an inch!! Note to self: Get Fit!

The compost came in handy when my partner finished the second raised bed and I planted my potatoes. The compost is lovely and black and mixes well with the clay soil.

The third bed is now also completed although it was a real challenge as my partner discovered that I could not dig and flatten the earth. Anyway it got made and as it was a bit deeper than the other beds it will be christened with my root vegetables. One more bed to go, although this might take some time as my partner has an exam coming up.





The chairman has made a huge pond right next to my plot, frogs gallore! Although the downside was during the build my a couple of my raspberry canes and asparagus plants got trampled on, fingers crossed they will recover.

My Rescued Bike

My allotments just keep getting better. The Chairman of my allotments fixes up bikes as a hobby. He collects the bikes from the tip and does them up and sells them for £10 as £10 covers the £5 cost to buy them from the tip and he donates £5 to the Siberian Tigers. He also helps collect the bikes for Rotary as they send them to coutries less fortunate than ours.

My bike was finally completed, I am now a proud owner of an original 1970's Raleigh Shopper. This bike is going to be ideal to go to the allotments especially with the removable basket. It also reminds me of the wicked witches bike in the 'Wizard of Oz' so I will have to give the bike a new image and be known as the white witch of the allotments!



The bike's dynamo light is also still working it looks like it was bought and hardly used and has being sitting very bored in someone's shed for a long time.

The First Raised Bed Take 2

After the OH trusting my theory on how to make the first raised bed and it all going wrong we went back up the allotments on the 7th Of March to try and fix it using the man theory, extra posts!

The OH had to dig around all of the bed and take the middle bits apart and put a post in between all of the corners. I think it looks much better now and if the OH is looking THANK YOU xx

We even had time to think about the construction of the next bed, I was sent to sit on the naughty stool while the OH came up with a theory of banging the posts in first. Hopefully we can get the second bed completed by Good Friday as this bed will be for my potatoes.

Making the First Bed

My OH kindly offered to help make me some raised beds from wood. Our landlord kindly brought home a pile of pallets from work for us. I don't think my OH realised how difficult the pallets would be to dismantle and when he offered he didn't realise how many I wanted but hey hoo he carried on and we had enough wood to make the one bed. Although he made the vital mistake of trusting my womans intuition on how to make it so the first attempt looked like I made had made it!!
Women's intuition is good but don't trust it when it comes to DIY! I also had a another good theory of digging around it and banging it hard with a mallet to straighten it out and as I had this theory when I was at the allotment on my own I tried it out which resulted in me cutting myself on a few rogue screw ends. I think I should stick to the planting! and that is what I did.



On the 6th of March I planted a Loch Ness thornless blackberry bush as it has promised to listen and not hurt me. I also planted five Galanate raspberry canes again because they promised not to hurt me and if I look after them they will crop twice a year!!


I also planted three different varieties of strawberries to give me an extended crop, I planted one Florence, Alice and Honeoye, I hope these ladies behave although I am a bit worried about them with the weather today, fingers crossed!






And last but not least I planted a bay leaf tree as I go through loads of these when I am making a vegan lasagne yum!

It's a good start to a prosperous year.