At least we got something done

It didn't rain on Saturday and it wasn't really cold so we decided on an afternoon at the allotment to try and get a couple of jobs done.

Almost two months ago, Martyn chopped back a couple of cobnut bushes and was left with a pile of debris to sort out.

The pile was still sitting there waiting for a day when, both the weather and the pile were dry enough to make the task possible.

On Saturday, the two required elements at last aligned, so, Martyn sorted the pile into twiggy bits for pea sticks and long straight poles for bean or sweet peas supports. 

The leaves had all dropped from the branches so when the twigs were removed we were left with quite a large pile of leaves which will compost nicely.

Gales were forecast for Sunday and so the pile of leaves were covered to stop them from being scattered across the plot.

Jan, one of our plot neighbours had acquired lots of bags of leaves and he offered us some, so these too will be composted in due course.

Whilst, Martyn was busy trimming and sorting, I decided to tidy up the pear bed. Regular readers may remember that we let various plants self seed under the pear trees. The annual plants had now died down and any seeds shed so I could now  pull out all the dead plants. 

Once I had done this I found that one side of the bed was covered with moss. It was an indicator of how wet and dull the conditions have been. I scraped away the moss and removed a few weeds taking care not to disturb small plants that were already emerging.

It doesn't exactly look tidy but it's an improvement.

We also cut out a branch of one of the pear trees that was obstructing one of the paths. This tree produces more than enough pears for us so we won't miss one branch.

We didn't need lots of fresh vegetables but we gathered a small harvest.

We picked a small helping of purple sprouting broccoli which is always a treat.

We pulled a few leeks as I wanted to make a batch of Wensleydale patties which are basically a mixture of leeks, Wensleydale cheese, breadcrumbs and egg formed into a patty and coated with breadcrumbs. It's an adaptation of a Glamorgan sausage recipe.

We also needed some carrots, although were not expecting to dig up a monster, like the one pictured above. It's like four large carrots fused into one.

By the time we had finished, it was  almost four o' clock and already becoming dark, however we both felt better for having actually got some work done. It looks like this week's weather is going to prevent any more allotment activity.

We also put together a video of our afternoon which can be viewed here

Copyright: Original post from Our Plot at Green Lane Allotments http://glallotments.blogspot.co.uk/ author S Garrett