Week 5

Wow what a weekend! The sun was shining, the birds were singing, and the allotment was swimming with new people checking out their plot for the first time this year. Invariably, they would shake their heads and tut loudly, and curse the soil that mocked them with a brand new batch of weeds. Not so […]

Die Die Die

Couch grass is EVIL. Accept it…! It must be burnt, it must die, die, die, die, die, die. And then die some more. Couch grass die with all its family, its cousins, distant aunts, uncles, its nieces, nephews, and step-sisters (if it has any). Goodbye!

The 25% Rule

A wise man (David Hepworth) once said that you are always 25% worse than you think you are and your competition are always 25% better than you think they are. He was talking about magazines but I reckon you can apply that rule to just about anything you want. For example, at the end of […]

I have a problem…

I have a problem, and the problem is this – I don’t like killing things! As head gardener at mtp I know it is my duty to rid the area of bugs, slugs, snails, grubs and caterpillars but I find it really hard to kill them. I was chatting to one of my neighbours the […]

Week 4

The weather was gorgeous this weekend – perfect gardening weather you might say, if a bit misty in the mornings as you can see here. Ryan and I were up at my tiny plot by 10am on Saturday and hard at work digging over the last of the lower beds. Then we made a start […]

Seeds are growing!

The seeds that I planted in the propagator at the weekend are growing already (well some of them are). The cucumber seeds have shot up to an unhealthy three or four centimetres, and the tomatoes are just popping their heads up. No show from the aubergines yet but maybe they’re late starters. It’s the first […]

Can’t wait for the weekend

It’s only Tuesday and I can’t wait for the weekend to do more work on the allotment. Is that sad? Ryan’s getting excited too. I’ve decided to give over part of the fruit patch to a seed bed. There is already an area that looks like it might have been used for that. The plan […]

The Master Plan

Here’s the plan. I’m not sure I’ve got enough room to do all of this in one year but I’ll have a go. There will be a lot of trial and error I think! In the second year bed one will move to bed two, and bed two will move to bed three – anyway […]

Week 3

Seeds have arrived. Hooray! Planted some tomato, aubergine and cucumber seed and put them in the airing cupboard in a propagator. We’ll see if they germinate. Did lots of digging on the plot this week. Back-breaking work. Getting rid of the grass clumps is the hardest, Ryan did that bit. Meanwhile, I got on with […]

Week 2

This week I discovered that my tiny plot is actually twice the size I thought it was. I thought our next door neighbour’s had a lot of fruit bushes that they weren’t looking after, but then I found that they are my fruit bushes! Ordered some seeds from www.alanromans.com – waiting for them to arrive. […]