Broad Beans and Asparagus Bed

The first thing I noticed when I arrived at the allotment on Saturday was that the council have finally given every plot a brand new number plate. As you can see from the photo above, my first plot (No.21B) is still mainly covered in black polythene sheets and a mulch of manure. My first job of the day was to sow some Broad Beans (Feligreen). I put them into an area that has been manured and warmed up with the black polythene for the past few weeks. I also removed the fleece from the Broad Bean plants that I sowed in the Autumn and put it over the new seeds. The Autumn Broad Beans are looking very diseased so I'm not expecting much to come from them - but they were just an experiment, with the Spring sowing to be my main supply.

The Onions that I sowed in February and Shallots that I sowed in January have all finally started to shoot (see right) which I'm quite relieved about. The Garlic continues to grow incredibly well too. I picked another dozen leeks, just down to the thin ones now, and there's probably another 20 or so left in the ground. I also had to rearrange some of the black polythene as it had got blown out of position by the wind. Ideally I'd like to have planted my potatoes and peas this weekend as well, but I didn't have time. So next it was over to the new plot to get on with a few jobs there.


Using a few pieces of timber that used to reside in the loft at home, and some left over fence paint, I made a very simple raised bed on the new plot (see above). It measures 1.8m x 1.2m and will be home to my 10 Asparagus crowns which are due to be delivered this week. Apparently an Asparagus bed can last for 10 years, so I thought it would be a good idea to house it within a border to keep it as a well defined bed. I also dug in pleanty of manure so hopefully this will be a great spot for the Asparagus. The rest of my time was spent covering a few areas of the new plot with some black polythene (£3 per sheet from Asda, approx 10m x 1.5m) and continuing the digging and manuring. (I came up with a fantastic way of holding the sheeting in place - weighed down in each corner with an old empty tin of 'SMA Gold formula' filled up with soil - I knew they'd come in useful one day!) As you can see from the photo below I'm gradually making progress with the new plot.