Slow and Steady ~ Allotments For Dummies

Well, another week at the allotment and more to contend with.

This week we have gone about the following:

Thinning out the radishes
Thinning out the sprouts
Planting out the onions, broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage
Putting some protection from birds over a couple of beds
Planting out a couple of Pumpkin plants
Potting on some Pak Choi

It's been a busy week this week and we've accomplished a fair bit. We've started another 2 beds. One for the Pumpkins (which is for a race I'm having with my daughter) and one for the cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower and onions. Our allotment neighbours Ken and Pat gave us a little tip on this bed. They handed us an ice cream container full of lime and told us to put it generously into the holes for planting our brassicas. Then to firm down the soil once they're in. Apparently the lime helps to feed the soil and to help curb club root (we shall see!)

Man points were earned this week with a brief appearance of the old hammer and nails. We'd been told that birds like to land and rip out onions when they're not fully settled in. Apparently it's a bit of fun for the birds but just an inconvenience for allotment owners. So we got an old bit of plastic garden lattice and cut it to size with our secateurs. We then nailed these over the top of our onions and our strawberry plants to minimize trouble from the inquisitive local birds (not the drunken women stumbling out of the pub next door)

The greenhouse is coming on a treat too. We finally got round to thinning our sprout plants and moving them into pots ready to go in the ground when we get some space. It was as easy as picking out the biggest strongest looking ones and putting a couple into a pot . We just used some soil from one of the back (currently unused) plots to fill the majority of the pots and topped them up with shop bought compost as our compost isn't ready for use quite yet.

Here's an arty panorama of the greenhouse. You can see (among the mess) the tomatoes coming along nicely on the right and also in the two black pots at the back left. We've just been giving them a bit of Tomorite every week when watering to give them a bit of a boost.

The radishes needed a bit of work as we'd sown them a bit close together. We just went about picking out the weaker looking (rubbish) ones and popped them in random pots in the greenhouse as spares.
They're visible below in the two rows to the right of the bed. The beetroots are there on the right but they're so tiny at the mo, you can barely see them.

The broad beans are doing pretty well too even though we've not done anything to the other than sow the seeds and water them. Should be a nice little crop as long as the slugs don't decide to stop by.