Mike's Allotment Diary: May 2006

Sue did a lot more good work today (Wednesday 31st May), cutting the hedge & digging the horsetail out of the old compost & manure heaps whilst I planted the beans and potted up a few more tomatoes.

Cora still seems to think going home is the best time of all - probably because we often take her for a walk on the beach on the way.

Here are the Runner Beans in their carpet holes...

...and here I am putting in the Climbing French Beans.

This bed now has 6 bags of manure in it ready for the Courgettes & Crown Prince.

I potted up a few more tomatoes today. The ones in the "Rooster" pots are Tigerella.

The girls went to Manchester today so I was on my own at the lottie this afternoon. My main job was to finish what was to be the new strawberry bed and get the old compost heap into it. I am going to use it for courgettes and other squashes as I think it is a bit wide to comfortably harvest strawberries from. I will use one of the new beds near where the coping stone bed was for strawbs, as they will be 4ft not 5ft beds.

Here it is again with the compost yet to be spread.

I potted up some more tomatoes today in builders' buckets. The four far ones are elsanta if I remember rightly. The nearest two I did the other day and I've no idea what they are!

I tied the bean strings together until required as they were getting a little tangled.

I started pruning the base of the self seeded goosebury I transplanted 2 (?) years ago and it has turned into a standard!

Is this a record?! When I dug the purple sprouting which has been leaning over the butterfly protection cage for months I was amazed to see it was taller than me...is this unusual or have mine normally been stunted through caterpillary action?

Sue and I had a really good afternoon down at the allotment on Sunday. I concentrated mainly on preparing beds to plant into as the conditions were perfect for digging. This is the sweetcorn bed from last year. I am finding the groundcover is really making a difference to the condition of the beds and the weeds etc. Sue got up to all sorts of things as you will see below...