First dig on the new plot

I only had a short time available to go to the allotment last weekend, but I made a start on digging and manuring the new plot. After raking off the few weeds that were on the surface, I forked it over to break it up a bit because it is very compacted soil. There are hardly any roots under the surface, so it shouldn't be too much of a difficult task. Then I spread several barrow loads of manure over the surface, as you can see in the above photo. It'll take a fair few sessions, but I'll gradually get the whole of the new plot done in this way.

Taking on a new plot

On Friday I took on a second allotment. The council office gave me the numbers of a couple of available plots near my current one. The one I choose was the best of the lot and had the added bonus of being easily accessible (right next to the car park area) and having a water trough right at the edge of it. It's slightly smaller than my other plot, 4 rods instead of 5, and is square as opposed to long and thin like the other one. I didn't want a particularly large plot, just a bit of extra space so I can grow more squashes and pumpkins etc that take up a lot of space. It looks as though the plot has been sprayed with weed killer at some point, which isn't ideal, but at least it means all the weeds and grass are dead and should be pretty easy to just rake off the surface allowing me to start from scratch. Here is a photo of the plot before I start any work on it.


As soon as I'd paid for the plot I phoned the local farmer who delivered my load of manure for the other plot and amazingly he was able to deliver another trailer load of manure the very next day. So on Saturday afternoon a huge pile of manure arrived on my new plot.


My plan is to just rake the weeds off, dump them and then cover the whole plot in a mulch of manure. Almost a no-dig kind of system. I'm hoping that will be enough to let me put some squash plants in later in the year without having to dig the entire plot over. Thankfully my other plot is very much under control at the moment, all dug, manured and mostly covered. So over the next few weeks I'll be trying to clear the new plot and spread the manure. Here are before and after shots of the manure delivery!

Planting Onions and Tidying

I planted out the onion sets last Thursday (during a week off work). There are two rows each of Stuttgarter and Red Baron, planted into manured soil. Since I'd forgotten to take any netting down with me, I used some chicken wire to cover the sets to prevent the cats/birds from disturbing them (see above left). No sign of the shallots I planted a month ago showing through the soil yet, but the garlic (planted last Autumn) is all growing nicely (see above right). I also removed the final weed-pile from the back of the allotment (as shown below right) so that the plot is now completely tidied up. The only job left to do in the next few weeks is to think about sowing the next lot of Broad Beans. Still picking parsnips and leeks.