A long absence

We had some pretty bad weather which had prevented us from going down to the allotment for about three weeks. When we finally went up there the previous Friday we were in for a shock. The weeds came back and then because we had a heatwave after the bad weather the ground was like rock.
You can see the dry ground luckily the driest bits were not the cultivated parts. It did make a pretty pattern so I guess that was nice.

What we did is put in some planting boxes so that it is easier to plant and set out you can see it in the first picture above. In the first three boxes we have Leeks, Carrots and Parsnips in the biggest box. Spring onion and radishes in the second and the third is Brussels sprouts. Yuck I really hate sprouts but everyone else likes them.

The next time we went up there we installed two more boxes one of them was twice the size as the others we have not planted in this one but the other has swede. The potatoes that we had planted previously straight into the ground in a row. They have come up tremendously. as well as the other onions that we have put down.

In our garden we have had to get a large green house as our smaller ones could not house the amount of tomato plants we acquired we also put in our strawberries and our rhubarb.

Last year we planted this rhubarb and it died so we left it in the pot and put a bag of dirt on top. we had just totally forgot about it. a year later we needed the dirt so we took the bag off and what do we see... our rhubarb growing its amazing. so now that too is in the green house.

 It really is a shame but we have slugs coming and eating our strawberries so far out of four strawberries that have grown and turned red, all four have been eaten. but we may have some hope in the form of slug eating frogs. we have a pond next to the greenhouse. When I say pond I mean a car tire that has swimming pool liner in it. But here are the lil critters.

So far that is it from our lil gardening escapades hopefully the next time we go there i will have my larger camera that takes much better photos. 

Visible Progress

Although when we started this week it did not look like we have accomplished much. Only by looking at the photos that I have taken can you really see what we have achieved. The trees that are at the base of our plot where cut back and we have dug almost half of the plot over. As of Thursday we have planted our first crop although I was not their at the time since I have a lot of college work to do. [I still need to finish it]. but we are starting to feel like we are achieving something. So here are some pics of the progress.

This is before we started digging/burning. You can see the amount of dry grass in the corner of the left picture.

Burning the sticks and all the dry grass. When we put the grass in it created yellow smoke making it look like mustard gas. It burned yours eyes and no matter where I stood it kept finding my eyes. 

 

Our kitchen away from home. All we had to eat that day was hot dogs and onion it wasn't much but it filled us up and it was warm. 

Digging the first bit. I was planning to just dig small areas first and clearing it of grass and roots but then everyone else decided to dig everywhere first and then go back to take out all grass and that.

So now it is just one big muddy patch or rather half of it is dug up muddy patch, the other is just mud. 

Since I was not there for the first planting I have no pictures. I was thinking that the next time I go down that I take my big camera instead of relying on my phone camera but at the moment I can not complain about the picture quality.

The start

We went straight up to the allotment after picking everyone up and getting changed into some old clothes.

Once there we started the work. My mother cleared out the pig shed. She found a lot of gloves plant pots and loads of spiders. Rather her than me I hate spiders. I get squeamish because you can see a lot of spiders running through the grass but so far i have been very brave.

 I tried to get through the grass that had dried up and turned into straw. Just by raking it up but I kept hitting carpet.  Which was annoying since at the top of our do's and do not's list that was given to us was NO CARPET. So we had to keep stopping to rip carpet, mesh and black liner.
Not only were we finding all that fabric we found some lil critters. Feisty frogs and slow worms. It was a good break just playing with them all.

 We have also found out that our plot is bigger than we thought instead of a rectangle shape. Ours goes into a point at one end.

So here is the overall progress of our time.

You can see the trash pile over the other side where we are putting all the carpet etc. The exposed dirt where we ripped the carpet up. All though it does not seem that I have 'raked' the dry grass at all, I have removed quite a bit.


27/03/2012
We went there again this time we went just after 1:30 I was still in my nice work jeans and not my holey ones as well as my nice dolly shoes. We did the same as yesterday except this time we only had 1hr30 and only me my mum and my brother, who might I add is always on the go and wants to do everything. He spent all the time just standing around not doing a thing.
I tried to do more of the grass but it did not look like i have done a thing still. I left my phone in the car so no photo update maybe next time.

The real good life begins

Hello, this is my new blog. It will hopefully be all about gardening. vegetable gardening to be exact. we have just recently gotten an allotment. It is about 8rods. It is quite a good size. So far it has a pig shed shelter. Some bean frames, a wooden frame and orange plastic netting which could be used later on.
The day my mum signed for it (Friday) I was in a first aid training course for work. As soon as that was finished we went up there for 30 mins before schools kicked out as we had to get my sister.
When we arrived we saw a fox and it was only 2:30pm. Way early for foxes to be out. it was a shame it was too far for the camera on my phone to pic it out. There will always be next time. 


Before:

The first photo

 After:

 

As you can see the orange netting is put away in the shed some of the shed stuff was binned. The black plastic was picked up. It had a lot of wood on top of it I guess to keep it flat. But that is going in the bin. All the bricks were gathered and put in a pile. Bamboo sticks and other pieces of wood were picked up. Lastly some of the netting was picked up. It kind of shredded as there was dirt piled up on it but once we have longer down there it will be gone. 

At the moment I think we are just focusing on getting the earth ready. We do have some ideas of what we are planting. The usual potatoes cabbage lettuce etc. I am kind of annoyed that I cant use tires as that is how I grew my potatoes last year in some tires. I guess that the rubber might leak chemicals. so we will have to find a different way to do it this year. 

 

I think I  will try and update this every time I go down there and I hope to have photos of the progress we have made.