Another glorious day, we really are being spoilt. I’m not complaining, just making the most of it whilst it lasts. Today I left the kids at home and popped to the allotment for just over 2 hours. The aim was to plant the Garlic and sow some more Carrots. I wasn’t sure how much I would get done, but I was hoping enough to be proud of. So I decided on a bed, which is about 8 foot square or so and started.

The bed before I got to work!!

Firstly I pulled up all the Groundsel, which I remember my Nan saying she used to feed to their Canary who was called Henry!! Even he would have trouble eating all that was in this bed. The soil is still crumbly, so it was very easy to pull it all up. I then got to work with my big fork and started turing over the soil and removing all the other weeds and grass that had grown over the winter. It’s very satisfying to pull all the weeds up, and an added bonus was finding some rogue Potatoes that I’d missed last year. I dug about half of the bed and then my back had had enough, so I then started to sow and plant. I planted a row of Garlic and then a row of Carrots. Garlic works just as well as the Onions do with detering the carrot fly. When I’d got as far as I could, I then dug the rest and then planted some more rows. The final row was a line of Onions as I’d run out of Garlic. Well I had planted 45 Garlic cloves. Hopefully that’ll be enough to last us for a while. I’ve still got more Onions to sow, but today I managed to get in the following varieties of carrot “Red Samurai F1”, “Yellowstone F1” and some “Autumn King 2”, which I’ve sown before and they grew huge. I’ll sow the rest of this variety another time. But after 2 hours and 15 minutes I’d done all I came to do, so went home and the kids and I had lunch.

Yes, it’s the same bed, just 2 hours and 15 minutes later!!

As Julius Caesar said, “I came, I saw, I conquered!!” Now onto tomorrow!! Well he didn’t say the last bit, and it definitely had nothing to do with planting vegetables on an allotment, but I’m going to use it anyway.