Working Hard

I uncovered one of the patches before we arrived to begin some work. We learnt so much in that one afternoon. For one we didn't buy enough compost, another is pulling weeds is bloody hard work!

That's me with the pink hair and pink gloves. Can you tell I like pink? Anyway I'm actually breaking up lumps of soil because it's actually damp even though we've had no rain for a long time, however when we did have rain it was buckets loads. We also learnt that we needed a few more tools for the job and my fiancé's boss kindly gave us some basics but we forgot to ask if he had a rake. That would have been of much use to us, but we'll use it tomorrow when we're back up there again.

We did however get to sow the seeds of parsnips and carrots. We have put some wood into the middle of the patch you can see me working on in the photograph as it was way too big for us to get into the middle to water and tend to so did what others have done and made a walkway in the middle to allow us to go over to look after them without doing any harm. The wood we're using at the moment is rotting away though so we'll need to get some better stuff soon enough.

Also I've learnt another thing to always have with you.

I look like a roast chicken, as my fiancé kindly put it. Been having cool showers and putting Sudocrem on the red skin to help soothe the pain as well as help with the healing. So yes I recommend you have some sun lotion with you during these summery days.

In other news remember in my last post how I roughly drew our a plan? Well that's scrapped. We found healthy raspberries where we were going to put the flowers and they need something to keep them upright. I'm rather excited about this find and only realised it was ours when our friendly neighbour stated they were ours and sure enough they are on our land, all over the place they may be but they are rooted on our side. He is also kindly making a bit of space in his shed for us to put our stuff in until we get given our own shed and has given us a key. He also warned us to cover the large hole at the bottom of the door as wasps enjoy coming in and nesting. Oh boy, I cannot wait(!)

Tomorrow will be tricky. Well for one I still in a fair bit of pain from the sunburn, but it's going to be mostly tricky as it'll be the first time we'll be there as a family with our two your old boy in tow. I think we're going to have to swap jobs as one of us looks after him whilst the other does some gardening, hopefully things will work out ok. We have shade from some apple trees so we can go under there when we want to cool off. Perhaps bring a picnic with us. Who knows.

Wish us luck!

My VERY Rough Plan

I couldn't sleep lastnight so grabbed my notebook and roughly drew out a plan for our plot. It's very rough and very basic but it gets the idea across.

Only a small bit there requires us digging up some grass as we want to join the two veg patches to make one long patch. Please ignore the fact the sizes are all wrong, I know that but again it was dark and fairly late and I didn't exactly have a ruler on hand (nor a pencil which is why I used a pen).

You can see some blank areas. Well one of the patches is blank as not exactly sure what we will do with it yet, the top area has stuff growing there already but need to figure out what is what and if any of it is still alive. We will also get a bin to collect any rainfall by the compost area until we are given our new shed and then we'll probably move it to the side of the shed.

The patch that says "Alex's Area" is a place for our son to play on our plot. I'm not totally sure what we will do there as of yet but perhaps we can build a small sand pit, we shall see what we are allowed to do first as I have several ideas but rather not put them into place without knowing if any of them are okay to do or not.

You will also see two small lists. This was just me trying to think of produce we want to grow. I actually cannot eat sweetcorn as it makes me sick but I am happy to grow it for my partner to enjoy eating. We also love to make home-made chips so potatoes are certainly a must-have in our household and will probably be in our veg patch as often as possible. About the only fruit on that list which isn't on the plot already is strawberries. Again a must-have for our family as our growing boy just loves these, he can eat a packet of strawberries from the supermarket in one day and this is a bit too expensive for us to keep up, I mean it's great he loves fruit but it's not cheap!

I've not got any ideas for flowers yet, I'm fan of Spring flowers but now it's almost Summer time and ask me what flowers are in bloom in Summer I'd have a blank look on my face as I reply with "errrr..." so I need to do a bit of research in the flower department of gardening. I can tell you what my favourite flowers look like but that's about it. I'm sure I'll learn soon enough!

Starting Out With Our Allotment

We have been waiting for an allotment plot for just over a year now and amazed to have gotten a half plot in that time space. Admittedly we were the first to be called once two half plots were available and we had the options between a bedded plot and a fruit plot. I picked the fruit plot as I knew that the ones already one the plot were what we'd like and would have taken years to have grown to the size they were now so already we have black and red currants growing on our plot.

Our allotment is in a newly independent area with very friendly and helpful committee who have done a fantastic job in having everything a gardener needs as well as helping local charities (if we have any spare fruit or veg they collect them and take them to a children's hospice for them to make fresh food for the kid's to enjoy) but due to the high demand for allotments all plots are becoming half plots. This is fine for us as we are new to it all and a half plot is more than enough for us to work on.

I don't know the full story of the previous owner but from the way the Chairman spoke it sounded as if he was very ill or passed away. The gentleman's wife also has a plot next to ours and has done her best to care for his land as well and as you can see she has tried to stop growth in some areas. The big busy patch at the front of the photograph is the flower bed which is mostly daffodil's that no longer have any flower heads, shame because I love spring flowers but their time has past now. At the back are a bunch of fruit bushes. Two of these are gooseberries. Neither myself or my partner like gooseberries so sadly these are going to go. I shall probably ask the chairman when I next pop round if he could ask around see if anyone is willing to take them from us as seems a shame to rip them out and compost the whole two bushes.

You probably can't see very well but at the back on the left is our compost heap. It's made of wooden fencing and one thing wood will do is decompose over time as well and that's exactly what has happened, plus rain and such has damaged it badly. We will probably get a compost bin instead to replace these.

Also you may notice we have no shed or greenhouse. We are getting our own shed in a few months time (as is our new neighbour) but we are sharing with the gentleman behind our plot who has kindly been making space for us and organised a brand new lock to be put on the shed as the old one has rusted badly. As for a greenhouse we aren't fussed at the moment and any greenhouse has to be discussed by the committee first beforehand and right now we're just content with what we have.

Our plans? Well we have inspected it so far and lots of weeding and removing dead plants is required. We will be sowing carrots at first and organising a little flower area where the current raspberries have been and passed on. It will give us a sort of fencing between our plot and the one behind ours as currently they look like part of the same plot. But right now we need to get rid of all the weeds and then we can move on to organising the fruit and veg patches. Wish us luck!