Alive!!!!!!

Its Alive!!!!!

seeing as its been almost a year since a post, and I've had time down the allotment recently, i took a moment to write a bit about it since I last was here.

Last year saw only 3 posts i think, and the plot was also a disappointment generally.
After a frenzy of seed sowing in march/april time everything was set back by a failure of everything to germinate. The only common denominator was the seed compost i used, that'll teach me to buy cheep stuff.

From then on there was some success, strawberries, raspberries, onions and potatoes, but alot of other crops were mediocre to poor at best. Normally excellent producers like my beans, runner and french, both failed badly, peas too, chard, carrots...  The first time I've properly got to grips with leeks, seed bed and transplanting 70 ish plants, they were struck down with leek moth (the first time any of the others remember it happening here) which destroyed pretty much the whole sites leeks for everyone.

Anyway, last October I did alot of tidying and left it until this year to start again. A combination of work on the house, decorating etc.. meant i only got down this week to start making things ready for the start of the growing season.

This photo shows the plot before I started. 2/3'rds of the soil is actually dug over from last autumn so that's a help. I seemed to have acquired a another blue water butt from someone!!???



I started by adding a centre post to the pea wiring to help support more. I noticed that the seeds last year also were struggling at first to reach the bottom of the wiring so using the contents of 4 of last years greenhouse grow-bags I have raised the ground level there.
The blackberry canes sprung into life last autumn also, showing signs of growth, so I added in a post to start training the canes,
Last years strawberries were brilliant, in fact we had too many. Combined with the fact i had let the plants multiply to much in the rows themselves in meant fruit was going rotten quickly due to lack of air movement, crowding. So I've thinned out the plants again, in fact I removed one row which had gone a bit silly, weeds we're well established in there, plus it was in an awkward position. SO we will have to get by with just the two rows this year.
Raspberry canes were cut down and tidied, old chard plants removed, a barrel of stinking comfrey liquid feed was tipped over to drain into the soil, the rotting leaves put back into the compost bin. That was fixed and screwed back together to make solid.

I bought some planks of wood and did some path repairs, and noted that the wood dividing my plot and the next had disintegrated so started replacing that too.

Seed box was thinned out, plans made!