There’s not been a huge amount of plot activity this week #slacker.
Whilst I love being outside, I’m a fair-weather gardener. Cold winds are really not my thing, and it’s been a rather cold and windy week with a bit of heavy rain thrown in for good measure. Saying that, I have been fairly busy at home. I’ve taken delivery of a new flat packed wooden bench; it’s been transformed into something wondrous. I have also potted on many of the seedlings. Giant Bulgarian leeks (they grow a metre tall… I know!!), Amposta Sweet red onions, Bleu De Solaise leeks and various kales and spinach. However, I promptly killed the kale and spinach seedlings. I thought I would harden the little fella’s off but I didn’t anticipate the murderous coastal gale force winds. Borlotti bean and Moonlight runner bean seedlings suffered the same fate. Within hours my lovely healthy plants looked as if they had melted. Disaster! So I’ve been busy re-sowing all of the above! Talk about make extra work for myself.
So, on the few occasions I’ve made it to the allotment this week, I’ve concentrated my time on the orchard plot. Here’s what I did.
Earthed up potatoes
Hoorah, the potatoes are leaping into action. With lots of foliage appearing (As you can see the seed potatoes were planted in a lovely straight line!) it was time to start earthing them up….. rather hoping many little potatoes are beginning to form underground.
As the quality of the soil is so poor we are using compost to earth up the potatoes. This will not only provide the potatoes with lots of extra nutrition but the addition of organic matter will help improve the soil structure.
A bit random, but I built some ‘wigwams’ so I could plant out some more sweet peas…
Last year we bought loads of twisted willow bean poles. Rather than using the traditional bamboo sticks I decided to make use of these bean poles. I tied them together at the top with tarred twine and used ordinary twine around the structure to give the plants tendrils something to grab hold of as they go skyward. The end result, things of beauty, I thought.
Just as I was about to leave a fellow allotmenteer wandered by and offered me some runner bean plants, 14 plants in total. The exact number of poles I had just constructed. How could I refuse such kindness? Especially as mine had ‘melted’ from severe wind burn the day before… hoping these are a wind resistant variety.
So in they went.
The orchard plot is now looking like this. Still so much to do, we need to clear the remaining couch weed and the final compost mound, but we are getting there slowly….
And most importantly, I’m thinking it’s missing something, a bench so we can sit under the fruit trees and enjoy a cup of tea, or in my case, a diet coke.
welovegrowingstuff 
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