You can do a lot in half an hour.

As alluded to in the last post, time is of the essence these days at the allotment.
It is productive - look radish! ( Don't you just love the pained expression? "But why do you want a photo of me holding radishes?"). It is also still very weedy.  Grass paths were definitely a mistake and at some point this year they will go.
So the plan for managing an allotment in half hour slots?
1. 10 minutes weed what is already planted. Most important.
2. 10 minutes water. Else it will die. Hopefully a higher authority will help me out on this soon, otherwise OH will have to fix the hose.
3. 10 minutes harvest. Radish & rhubarb - savings to be made here my girl!
4 10 minutes sow/plant new crops. Ahhh...

Wait a minute my bean counting makes that 40? That'll be why I'm still behind then.
Maybe tommorrow?

The covers are on

OS signed up for another season of cricket on Friday. Tonight a ground frost is forecast - is it just me but is the start of the cricket season always bad news for the garden?
Anyway, armed with the weather forecast I rushed to the allotment, earthed up the potatoes, covered the courgettes, cloched the lettuce and fleeced the strawberries, and depressed a plot neighbour who had just finished watering. All in a world record time of 27.5 minutes.
I once read a book called " The Half-hour Allotment" (here should you be interested).
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Half-hour-Allotment-Royal-Horticultural-Society/dp/0711226059/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1304448700&sr=8-1
Half and hour is for softies...

Where the green woods laugh, and cry

We live in a lovely part of the country and in bluebell time it becomes even more beautiful. So after the boys had tolerated a good amount of Royal Wedding watching, we hot-tailed it to the woods where they could collect sticks, drop stones down holes and bury dead frogs. This is an ancient woodland, part of a mediaeval deer park and linked to Lady Jane Grey (the 9 day queen more famously associated with nearby Bradgate).
The boys of course are oblivious to the history of today and yesterday.

And so to the present.
We took the cucumbers and squash outside for a watering - they will be going in again though - it has got awfully nippy in the evenings lately. A reminder it is not summer yet.

The crying? Eldest was investigating a ditch looking for an old fence.  He found it, unfortunately by tripping over it, and landed in a patch of nettles. OUCH!

I'll have a pea please!

Was very short of time (again) this weekend. It's a dilema, the garden is crying out for attention now! But so are the family, the housework, the olds, you get the picture...
So the sum total of my gardening achivements for the 4 days I have not been at work are:

1. Installed Mum's new compost bin - more complicated than it sounds - a sorry tale involving a barrowload of twitch (couch grass) I hate that stuff.
2. Mow both of Mum's lawns.
3. Prune some of Mum's shrubs
4. Fill Mum's new compost bin with a mix from old composter - now deceased in a fallen to bits and on pile to go to dump kind of way - prunings and grass clippings.
5. Fill garden dustbin with twitch - ha! good riddance!
6. Mow our lawn
7. Install our new compost bin - much less complicated (thank goodness)
8. Fill our new compost bin with kitchen waste and grass clippings
9. Only then arrive at allotment for a scant 1 hour time slot - planted two rows of peas which were escaping their toilet roll root trainers.
10. Picked some more rhubarb.

I need more time at the allotment. Please stay fine tommorrow amd no more family crisis so I can go after work tommorrow.  Pretty peas!

How do they know?

We were up at the allotment briefly this morning and chatted to some of the old boys, after harvesting the rhubarb and getting some chives for lunch.
"It'll rain later" says one,
"How do you know said OH-what signs are you looking for?" (hoping for some old country saying I think)
"I listened to the weather forecast!" was the reply.
"Ah!" says OH

I'm late! I'm late!

I booked an appointment in at work yesterday. "See you next week then - that's the 6th April".
6th April next week? How did that happen?

We haven't made many visits to the allotment this year in fact when we visited two weeks ago it looked like this,

Oh dear!

We cleared a bit

but didn't make much of an impression.

So as I had a day off today I thought I 'd better get the season under way.  

I dug and planted and composted and emptied compost (it was lovely stuff!) and dug some more. I had done some gardening so I had things to plant, chitted parsnips, beetroot plants, broad beans, garlic, onions, shallots and chitted potatoes. Oh and a yellow raspberry another blackcurrent and a thornless blackberry.

I also sowed seeds of radish and spinach. After that little lot it looked like this,

Still plenty of work to be done but at least I have made a start. The old boys enjoyed it enormously they kept coming over and admiring my soil - now they could see it.
I pulled some  rhubarb and dug some Jerusalem artichokes - hurrah for first harvests!
Then it was home for a cup of tea and a quick bath before getting the kids from school. A most satisfactory day.

It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas!

Not much action at the plot lately.
Well to be honest no visits to the plot for quite some time but in my defence this happened.

I managed to salvage my Christmas potatoes - but we've eaten them - oops!

Now we are spending our time visiting polar bears

and that man in the red suit - oh well there's always next year.

We will be digging the bean trench on Boxing Day (providing I can get the spade in the ground).
In the meantime hope you and yours have a Happy Christmas. Here's to good gardening in 2011.