Busy Day down 'lottie

Sun's out birds are singing, and I spent most of my time digging.

But before that got a few more seeds in the propagator, Pumpkin, Courgettes, and Squash all sown and nice and warm in the Brewshed.

 Then a walk in the sunshine down to the allotment. To start the harder part of the day.

Dug over the bed ready for the Pumpkin,Squash, & Courgettes, smashed up the lumps of earth and raked it over. Planted two rows of early direct sown Courgettes (All Green Bush) two seeds to a hole and watered them in.

Then onto the Hop plants, they are doing quite well, winding their way up the strings. I have now pruned the hops back to 2 bines per line, so 6 bines per plant. I hope that 2 bines for each line is not going to be too crowded.



Gave them a good watering with added Super Tomato food (Free with a Sutton's catalogue) after a good old weeding.

Weeded around all of the plot 119's paths, all around all of the fruit, felt like I was working on a hectare not a standard allotment plot. Seemed to take forever.

Greenhouse next, check on the ol' Chillies after a cold snap last night. The Telimena sweet peppers didn't like the cold and are looking a bit sorry for themselves but all the others are doing fine, even with a -2.5'c cold snap.  I have now covered the Telimena's with a layer of fleece to try and save them.



Weeded and watered the Elephant garlic and Solent Whites.

They seem to be holding up okay after all the floods and now a very dry spell. I really hope we get a good crop from these as I would like to keep hold of quite a few of the cloves for replanting next year if possible. We will save a few quid if they do, always a bonus, mind you, we ended up eating all of last years crop.

Back to the digging!! Where the digger compacted the area on plot 120 the whole section is now like concrete.

Started digging a new veg bed, very hard going indeed and it is also a bit stinky from all the rotting material that was plowed in. Should be good for Jane's runners when they get planted.

It's all looking a lot better now on 120, I still need to rake and smash quite a few more clumps of solid earth, but it's almost ready for the climbing beans that Jane is going to direct sow.

Finished my 5 hour allotment session with a bit of hoeing and weeding around the onions, got a good chunk of it all done, I've got about a third of the onion patch do finish, but I had to call it a day due to running out of fluids and getting a little sunburnt.

The allotment is looking loads better, and I feel better being down there again after all the troubles, my enthusiasm has returned.