Re-potting

With another trip to a garden centre Evie and me pick up some 3" square pots and a potting tray (for Evie not me). We soon make a start when we get home in the kitchen. Evie really enjoyed it, that much that she had a major paddy when we had to pack away, bless her. Her first feel for dirty hands and she loved it. Cant wait for Summer so she can happily come to the allotment with us and help out.

Germinations what you need!

Early I know but we have started to germinate some seeds. I didnt realise that within a week the seedlings were to be over 2 inches tall. Better think bout getting some larger pots. The Kelsae seeds (Onions) however are just starting to pop through.

Again with some help from Martin the shed slowly goes up. I really underestimated how long it was going to take erecting this. The cold and wind really wasnt helping but we got through it, thank god for Thermos flask coffee. Literally 7 hours late and 2 dripping wet noses the shed is sturdy and fixed to the base. I have to say my first impressions on the shed was not too good but now its up it seems solid.

Shed base

With the base down for the shed I sit and wait for the delivery of our shed. The anticipation eh! The base consists of 4 x 600mm x 900mm paving slabs with some old bricks I found on a nearby plot.

Back ache

With the start of the day being frosty the ground was all hard but workable. I got there at 8 o`clock with Paula arriving not long after. We dug away in fresh ground where the couch grass had been piled up and managed to dig right up to the farmers field. I feel i can happily say that the majority of the roots have been burnt now. As I went I left the stillage piled up high so hopefully it will keep burning through the night. We were also given some parsnips today from a chap that has a plot nearby, very nice.

After getting there at 8am I didnt leave until gone 4pm. I met another guy who had taken a fresh plot near me so was good to exchange thoughts/ideas.

A trip out!!!

We had a trip out to Baytree Nurseries today with which be brought some Potato seeds. We decided to go for the Duke of Yorks and the Rockets. Both of these are First Early crops. Amongst other items be brought various seeds, Seed tray and some weedkiller which we will be using for the plot next door to ours. Its infested with weeds and with no one cultivating on this i have no choice but to give it a couple of squirts to kill off some of the weeds.

We decided to start chitting the potatoes as soon as we got home and also sowed a few seeds in the seed trays.

I ordered some onion seeds from a well know online auction site the other night, these have now appeared. The seeds are Kelsae seeds which are basically giant exhibition onions. Only cost me a couple of quid so got nothing to lose. Tomorrow we are making our way over to a major garden centre to pick up some gardening tools/accessories.

More Couch grass

For all other fellow new allotmenteers, please do not underestimate couch grass. These were pictures when half of one plot had been dug up. Erm, now what do we do with it???

Where does it all come from?

No matter how many times you fork through the peat, more and more couch grass comes up from no where. We decide that we will do this only twice as it seems almost impossible to take it all up. Notice in the background out plot 2 with the tarpaulin sheet over. An attempt to cover this with the peat and pick out grass roots separately did not work so decided to leave it there to kill off weeds.

With a little help from my friends!!!

By this time i knew i couldnt do this job on my own so i called in the next best thing to a rotovator - Paula and Evie

Picking up the keys!

With various phone calls, emails and trips down to the allotment i finally picked up our virtual keys to what we can now call our 2 plots. Doesnt look much now but a quick trim with the lawn mower and hoe down with a couple of weeds we`ll soon be sowing. Well, maybe!!! As you can see there is plenty of couch grass which as a newbie to this we was totally ignorant to what happens to couch grass under the ground.