We have been ‘attending’ our allotment

I missed posting an update last week for all sorts of reasons - I was busy doing lots of other things that didn't leave much time for blogging. Being subject to lockdown seems to make life more hectic rather than less so.

All in all 2020 so far has been a year that we are certainly not enjoying. 

One problem, that would have been a major one in previous years but this year, in light of everything else that has happened, has been relegated to the annoyance category, is that Adobe in their wisdom has pulled the plug on the application that Martyn and I use for our websites. Those are the sites that the links on the top of our blogs go to. It means that we can no longer update the pages, so the sites will have dead ends and out of date content. Visitors who end up on the websites using a direct search will have no way of knowing that we are setting up another area for new information as we have no way of linking up. This is the third time we have had similar problems and we thought choosing an application from such a large company would be a safer bet. Not so and Adobe's customer service left a lot to be desired.

Anyway let's try to look on the bright side, even though the lockdown continues for at least another three weeks, we are still allowed to garden on the allotment. This time allotments even have a mention in the list of permitted exercise. The wording states that we can 'attend an allotment' which seems an odd phrase to use. 

Over the past couple of weeks whilst we have been attending our plot we have managed to get quite a lot done. We are still working on the principle that we need to get as much done whilst we can.

We have also been working in the garden at home.

This year we are renovating another section of garden. The border above housed several overgrown shrubs which we have severely cut back. The consequence was that the ancient fence along our boundary with the garden next door needed replacing.

Whilst, Martyn was on fencing duties I cleared the cold frames and generally tidied the area at the top of the garden.

Last week also was the start of seed sowing in earnest. The full list of our seed sowing activity is here.

On the plot I tidied and fed the strawberry plants.

The plants in one half of the bed look much healthier that this in the other half but I'm hoping this is just that they are an earlier variety.

We've been busy sowing and planting. The beds all needs preparing first. Covers were removed and the soil cultivated and fertilised before weed control fabric was reinstalled.

We sowed carrots - Autumn King, Flakee and Romance and parsnip - Gladiator seeds. The seeds were sown in shallow trenches of multipurpose compost. Once sown and given a good watering, the carrot bed was covered with enviromesh to offer some protection against carrot fly.

We finished planting onion - Sturon, Hercules, Centurion, French Pink and Red Karmen and shallot sets - Red Sun, Golden Gourmet, Longor and Meloine. We're still using last year's onions.

Our autumn planted onions are now starting to grow away and so hopefully we will have only a short onion hungry gap.

I sowed the first two rows of peas - Onward. We buy a large bag of seeds and sow a generous amount in each trench. This method seems to work well for us.

Our final planting for the week on the allotment were three rows of potatoes - Osprey, Apaches and Elfe. These are also grown through weed control fabric. We don't dig deep trenches rather dig a hole as deep as we can with a trowel into which we sprinkle a small amount of 6x fertiliser before popping in a seed potato. 

Martyn, managed to strim all our grass paths and other grassy areas. He also edged the beds that have been planted up.

The last fortnight has also provided a bounty for the bees and other pollinators,

as the plum and greengage blossom fell, the pear blossom took up the baton. They were followed by the cherry blossom and at the end of last week the apple blossom joined in the display.

The last of the fruit trees to flower is the quince which is now clothed in buds.

For those pollinators that prefer more diminutive flowers the jostaberries and blueberries are providing for them.

We did come home with a small harvest. The rhubarb continues to provide generous pickings. 

One surprise addition to our harvest were some very small parsnips that had been sown in a crate late last season. As expected they didn't do much but when the crate was tipped out we found some baby specimens. We took them home and surprisingly they tasted just as parsnips should.

Our final token harvest came from the garden greenhouse. You may remember that, in a crate, I sowed radish seeds between rows of carrot seeds. The radishes are now maturing so we pulled our first two. 

The purple sprouting broccoli has been amazing this year but now their buds are bursting into flower along with other remaining brassica plants. The bees love these flowers too. When I cleared the Brussels sprouts I had to dodge the bumble bees that were browsing. They even followed me as I carried the plants to the compost heap. As for the PSB, I'm having a go at deadheading and cutting off the bits that are flowering just to see whether it will work in the same way as deadheading ornamentals. I'm hoping it will extend the harvest. Probably a vain hope but what have I to lose?

That's all from me for now - in the meantime stay safe.

This week I am linking to harvest Monday hosted on 

Dave's blog Our Happy Acres

You don't have to have your own blog in order to join in conversations. It may seem that everyone who comments knows one another but bloggers always welcome new commenters, after all that is how we all started. 

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