Summer?

July is here and the potatoes just keep coming.
Loads of early carrots, some of the yellow onions are ready - delicious.
The red onions are coming on - pulled one up last night.
It's been a fantastic year for strawberries so far - punnet after punnet.
The leeks are doing well and my brassica bed is filling up.
I've put some Cavolfiori green cauli in a seed tray - an experiment.
Had some lovely peas and the mange tout are nearly ready.
The kids beds are taking shape - sweet peas, sunflower, lily, sweet william, lobelia, fruits, etc.
You can't beat this allotment lark - when I started last September, little did we know how expensive food and fuel was going to be so I'm really please I took the plunge and I'm keeping fit as well - I go on my bike 9 times out of 10.

First Potatoes

Dug up 3 of my earlies yesterday and had them for Tea - marvellous. I also pulled up 3 of the onions I planted last autumn - approaching Tennis Ball size and very tasty.
I planted some sweetcorn last night that I raised from seed.

Planting, planting and construction

It's been a busy 8 weeks. I have completed 5 of my raised beds now and have just finished digging Bed 6 ready for the pallet wood sides. I woke up today expecting rain as forecast but it wasn't wet so I hopped on my bike and got to the plot for 07:00 (mad I know) and had over an hour's digging before the rain started - just enough time to get it finished. I took my mum and dad up to have a look later on in the afternoon after our barbeque as they hadn't seen it yet and the sun came out - it was glorious.
I have now got 9 earlies (Feb under glass) showing well that I've earthed up already. The other earlies (March) are also showing a couple of inches - these were under black weed suppressing fabric until 2 weeks ago. My main crop only went in 2 weeks ago so no sign yet.
I have got some 1 - 2" carrot tops showing (Early Nantes) although they took a bit of finding in all the weeds!
The onion sets and garlic that I planted in October look great and the raspberries have started shooting nicely and I've had three crops of rhubarb from under an old water butt and a pot.
The first lot of peas and mangetout under fleece haven't done much - I've got one! Maybe I was too early. Anyway, the whole plan was to put a row of each in every 2 - 3 weeks so I shall carry on. If they don't show, I'll put some more in in their place.
I've put a row of brussels in, I've also got a couple of cabbage in (freebies off another 'menteer) and on Friday I put 2 rows of leeks in my youngest daughter's bed (I'll transplant them later).
The kids have got some sweetpeas in now, some sweetwillliam, a sunflower and a lily - plenty more room for more flowers. They have also got strawberries and raspberries.
I've created my asparagus raised bed at the back and planted my seedlings (9" high) in there under glass.
In the conservatory at home, I've got loads of cauliflower seedlings, tomatoes, sweet peppers, cayenne pepper, salad leaves, etc waiting to go in.
Roll on summer...
Here's a photo from yesterday:

Peas in

I have planted my first rows of peas and mangetout under fleece in bed 2.

Spring is here!

This is my first allotment and my first ever blog.
I got my 1/2 allotment in September 2007 and it hadn't been cultivated for about 9 months - it was full of couch grass and weeds and looked a mess. The council strimmed the plot for me which improved things somewhat however I rotavated the plot before I removed the large dandelions - of course this resulted in hundreds of pieces of root.
I covered the plot with weed suppressing fabric and started to prepare the plot.
I decided early on I was going to use a series of raised beds but with the least amount of expense as possible. I have managed to get quite a few scrap pallets from where I work and although it involves some effort, I have managed to get quite a lot of 4 and 5 foot lengths of wood from these pallets which I have then treated with a water based wood preservative and used these for the raised beds. I have managed to get 4 main beds done so far - they measure 4 x 14.5 feet and I have also made a raised Strawberry bed and used the remainder of the pallets for some compost heaps and the start of a windbreak. I will need more pallets to do the next set of raised beds but I can only get so many!!
The photo above is from 11 Feb 2008 - I need to take some more!
So far I have managed to plant some strawberries, raspberries, onion sets and some garlic in October.
This was followed by some early carrots in Feb.
I have since planted some early potatoes and am preparing another bed for some maincrop potatoes.
I have loads of seedlings at home waiting to be planted and many more seeds waiting to be sown.
My trailer load of horse muck arrived yesterday and I spent a back breaking morning shifting it about.
Roll on Spring.....