a sunny monday morning spent building fortresses for our treasure,

rabbits have been spotted nibbling at the rye and the pigeons will soon be hungry

tess has very kindly offered us some of her jerusalem artichokes, either to plant or eat, thank you tess.

and hello to isobel who who'll be joining us from this weekend, it's lovely to have you.

sprouts!

sprouts #1
ta dah !
the rye we sowed last week as a green manure

it's lovely and red. we sowed the other half of the bed yesterday.

sprouts #2
colin made me be in this photo, but check out those brassicas, and hardly a nibbled leaf amongst them. we are totally convinced of the magical powers of the rosemary plant that we installed at the end of the patch.
we won't be spraying for nasties, oh no, not us.

and here's the two eastern european builders we got in to do the greenhouse base.
they did a very good job indeed, thanks jules and mark.
can we pay you in broccoli in march please ... ?

it was a beautiful day on sunday and i had been looking forward to getting to the allotment all week. it was so lovely to see akram, begona, isabel and aysha again, and with such enthusiasm!


we all worked together to clear the first bed ready for a green manure crop of rye grass.
kim and i were thrilled to find that the beds we weeded last week had remained pretty much weed free, hurrah ! this feels like a real achievement .


here's ashley sowing the rye over the beautifully clear and raked soil.
he's also expressed an interest in sowing some oats (!) watch out ladies :)

the girls were drawn to the beauty of this allium, we've picked it and will see if it'll be our first bit of seed saving ... kim took it home to investigate

the brassicas are comtinuing to astound us, despite no ground preparation at all they appear amongst the most handsome of all the plots. the purple sprouting broc should be ready to harvest feb - may and the brussels sprouts - hopefully ready for christmas.

hope to see you next week !

xx

so kim and i made a tactical decision to meet for tea in the rain this sunday and go to the allotment on monday instead. it proved to be a good decision.

we got to see the poo that jules has kindly delivered, it looks mighty fine.

we lifted a LOT of comfrey ( comfrey is good for composts and making fertilizer ) and so perhaps fortunately we have tonnes of it.

we weeded around the brassicas, which are now looking magnificent, in preparation for sowing a green manure crop sometime in the next few weeks.

then we dug up the last of the treasure.

now we'd like to think about what to grow next year and we'd like there to be a good variety of interesting and unusual crops. and most importantly there must be something that even the fussiest eater ( that's you mr. may ) will want to greedily devour.

please take a minute to vote in the poll to the right here ............................................................. ta

Victor Veghead

kim and i met at the allotment for the second, very pleasant, friday afternoon in a row yesterday. it was sunny, and calm and just what we both needed.

we enlarged the brassica enclosures,

fed the tomatoes

weeded a little

dug up potatoes and onions

stuffed ourselves on raspberries and blackberries

generally shot the breeze

we think one of the bext big things to tackle must be removing as much bindweed as we can from the softfruit, before it's too late !

and i'd like to get a pond in somewhere soon.

then it was home and roast tatties for tea.

back on track

making good progress, this weekend we cleared the space for the greenhouse:

built compost bins

and felt good that we've done so much so soon

free food

now harvesting at the allotment