The shed has started to rise from the dust.

Now that we've got the spuds in the ground, time to make a start on the pallet shed.

I ve got the base done and a little of the walls put together so far. ore tomorrow if the rain stays off.....you watch, the one day I want it to stay fine and the drought will break...lol !

First spuds in the ground on the allotment.

I spent one of the last set of days down on the plot , mainly digging, rotovating and moving pallets until I was about broken. Then a day attacking the garage at home, which after a winter of neglect was in a right old state. I was pleased to get back to work for a rest !

With the weather still being too dry but at least sunny, we decided to dash back down to the allotment after work tonight and see if we could get some of the spuds into the ground.

The little Mantis tiller made short work of making the trenches and in about an hour we got 6 rows in. 3 rows of  "Swift" first earlies and 3 rows of  "Pink fir apple" a vintage maincrop.....supposedly producing lovely knobbly pink skinned spuds.

Well that's it tea time now. Just a few snaps of our first efforts at spuds in the ground growing.....last year we only grew them in bags, so a whole new challenge growing on a little larger scale.

 

The boys watched over to make sure everything went to plan........well more like they remained captive to make sure everything went to plan !

This weekend we start on the great pallet mountain and try to turn them into an allotment shed !

Q. " What did you do on your days off ? " A. " Shovel 3 ton of horse muck ! "

That is what we've done, shovel and shovel and shovel....muck,muck...glorious muck ! The allotment muck man Malcolm finally delivered our trailer load of manure.....and boy did he air on the generous side ! We'll have enough manure for the next three years let alone this year.

I ve been begging and scrounging pallets from here there and everywhere, with the plan of building a shed from recycled wood, so we ve used a few pallets to start making the compost bin to house the manure. We only got it half built before we were both completely pooped ! I got the second bed boarded off as well and finally next door have moved the caravan off our side. Mind you they also pilfered most of the paving slabs before we got round the other night...cheeky sods ! Still at least that caravan is now just their problem and not ours.

That is about it as far as the lotty goes.

I've had a good few hours in the veg garden at home today though. Last year we got plagued by rootfly in the turnips. So tis year plans have been laid to hopefully combat them. The answer is an insect busting mesh cover over the bed that the carrots and turnips are going into.

    So a pack of roofing laths and a box of screws later...oh and few blisters on these office hands...and this is the result. The mesh was from ebay and is very fine so it should keep most of the airborne pests at bay.

Now the weather has finally started to break from those howling Easterlies we can finally start to get some crops sown and planted out. Onions and shallots will be the first into the ground in the home garden. Potatoes being the first things into the allotment.

Oh and to try to save a bit of fuel and get my legs working I ve also invested in a trailer for my bike to take the tools and things round to the allotment.

  I ve had one test run up to now and it does the job nicely.

That's all for now.........some more muck  moving is on the cards next visit to the plot so I ll probably post an update when we ve got a bit more done.

Clearing is coming along.

We ve spent a good bit of time on our days off clearing the rubbish and have made a start on the digging.....back knows that alright !

The neighbours have a rotten caravan that we think would be better off cremated and so do the other old hands nearby, but our neighbours think that it is a great shed ! It's not.....its part rotten no doubt mouse riddled and generally in very poor order. The worst part though is that it is encrouching on our plot by about 6-7ft.......so it needs to be moved.
We all tried to pull and push it across the other day to no avail....hopefully they'll see sense and it will be given a decent send off soon !

Not a lot else to add only a quick picture of the plot slowly starting to something like, the path has been mowed (lawnmower now dead though !) and the first bed has been turned over. Hopefully we'll have the first part ready for planting out this week and then bit by bit it will come together.

This is looking from the back to the front before any clearing.

The second pic shows that we've removed the gorse bush, all the old rotten sprouts are gone, the compost bins at the front are no more....we did 6 van loads to the tip but at least now we've a reasonably clear plot to dig over.

The white poles mark the boundry between our plot and the neighbours.....next up is a low fence just to mark it out and keep any weeds at bay from next door.
We ve got a caravan on order so next door will have to get their finger out and move the heap of a van out of the way soon. God forbid a bonfire spreading and burning it down !

Well it s that time of year again.

I can t believe how quickly the first year of the veg garden has flown by ! Nearly to the day we started the veg patch off.....now I ve got the beds all ready to be planted out when the frosts have gone that is.

We not only acquired a new puppy...Buster, well I say new , he's 5 moths old now and an absolute nightmare.....very spirited compared to good old Duke, who is just the perfect pet now, lovely and calm and very soft...bless him. Oh the "not only" referred to the fact that we are now the proud tenants of our first allotment plot. Only a half plot but it is a good size and needs a lot of work....watch this space.

I got the seeds sown into trays and the house window sills are full again....I ve been really looking forward to the garden this year and I m so pleased to be getting things started.

I ll try to put some pics up of the allotment when I can.  

First year nearly up !

I can t believe how the year has flown by, we ve gone from a patch of grass that was extra to mow, to creating the veg garden then the chickens arrived not long after.
The ladies are still laying but are getting less happy at being confined to the run.....we don t want to risk losing another to a fox as happened sadly to Babs.

The garden has been without doubt a real success, the only real problem being that we didn t plan very well this year....not knowing what we were doing and just muddling through planting as much as we could....hee hee !

Successes : beans,carrots,spuds,cabbages,courgettes,strawberrys,rhubarb, shalots, chillies,peppers,tomatoes.parsnips,pumpkins,Leeks

Failures : Radishes,turnips,sweetcorn, cauliflowers,sprouts,broccolli

The main problems we had with the crops were pest based........cabbage root in the turnips and caterpillars by the bus load.......so next year some netting is going to be employed.

It s been great eating our own crops and hopefully next year with some better planning we'll also have some Autumn and winter crops....at the moment all we have left is Leeks and parsnips....the rest is ready for working over and seeing what we can get in as early as possible.I m really looking forward to nurturing the seedlings on again....window sills full to busting inside with all our new little babies.......Plus I m going to add a speckled hen to the flock as well in the spring .

I ll add some photo's when I ve sorted out the beds outside and got all the cut down crop remains into the compost bins.

How things are coming along.

It s been some time since the last update , we ve both been busy with the lounge and also with work so little time has been free for the blog.

Anyway the crops are coming along nicely, we ve had a couple of bags of spuds so far from the first earlies. They are superb, really creamy and very very tasty.
The strawberries have been pure heaven and we had our first handful of rhubarb yesterday , put together with the strawberries in a decadent crumble.

A few pics of how things have come along , seems ages since the veg garden was just a patch of grass !

 salad leaves pots

The strawberries needed a bit of protection so we knocked up a little frame to keep the birds off and it seems to be doing the job.,

At least we can sit down now so a few hours in the garden at least has some light at the end now we have a lounge back.

 So that's about all for now, can t wait for the sweetcorn and garlic to be ready to see if they have been a success.

Adios for now.
Kim David and Duke.......oh and Babs,Patsy,Frankie and Dolly. xxx.