Clairesallotment's Blog

Popped to the allotment this afternoon and spread all the manure I’d got on Friday. Oh and by the way the car didn’t smell, thank goodness. I’ve managed to cover about a quarter of my plot, so at least another 3 trips to the stables if not more. I can’t go again this week, so I’ll have to find a day at the beginning of the following week to go. I’ve got plenty to keep me occupied with though, more weeding and strimming. I must go and get more rubble bags for the manure as many of them are getting a little thin and have got holes in them.

I finally christened the newish car with a manure trip. We’ve had it since June last year, but this is the first time it’s stood side by side with a huge pile of poo! It took about an hour and a half, but I managed to get 24 bags of the lovely stuff in the boot of the car. Some of the bags were rather heavy, especially the multi purpose 120 litre bags. I rested every now and then to ease my back and have a drink of water and watched the traffic go by. One lorry driver glanced over and gave me a rather puzzled look. Maybe it was the pink wellies or the fact that I was perched on the end of the boot of the car drinking water I’ll never know. I was tempted to wave, but didn’t want him to crash. Anyway, I loaded up and took it all to the allotment. The car felt very low on the journey. I dumped the bags on my plot and then came home for some well earned lunch. I’ll spread on Monday. I don’t think the car smells, but I’ll find out tomorrow when I get in it.

Remembered to take the strimmer with me today. The grass hasn’t been cut for a while and is getting quite long. The shovel’s in the car along with the blue plastic sheet, gloves and wellies as tomorrow is manure day!! I’ve managed to weed quite a few beds and have strimmed the grass round the edges and they’re ready for some good old horse manure. Let’s hope tomorrow doesn’t rain too hard and I can get in and out the field.

What a breezy day today! Spent the time weeding, and was thinking about what I could write about. Just weeding wasn’t very interesting, but then I met another plot holder Ruth, she’s been on the site for over 30 years and in 88 I think. She’s a lovely lady, always cycles down and potters away. We were talking about the wind and both of us at the same time and in the same tone said “Oh I know”. We sounded like Sybil Fawlty.

It’s that time of year when all the hard work starts again. Time to dig each bed as it gets cleared of veg, weed and manure. I dug up the last of the potatoes today, picked my one and only pumpkin which was very small and nothing to write home about, big enough to carve though. Picked the last of the courgettes and pulled a few swede. I’ve hand weeded so much today, that I’ve got a sore right palm. I think if I went on any longer I’d get a blister, I’ve done it before. I also picked a sweetcorn and had it for my lunch. It was very yummy, and all I added was salt and pepper.

Had a great morning harvesting on the allotment. I pulled up all the kohl rabi, I’ll cut them in 1 inch cubes and freeze and take out when needed. Picked all the rest of the tomatoes, so more to go on the top of the kitchen cupboards. I also noticed that some of the tomatoes at home are showing signs of blight, so that’ll be my job this weekend to sort those out. The tomatoes in the greenhouse seem to be fine, but I’ll keep watching. Pulled the rest of the rainbow carrots, so that’s all the carrots up now. I think I’ve got enough carrots to keep us going for quite a while now, I may freeze some to use in casseroles. And of course the obligatory weeding, there’s always that to do.

What a wonderful sunny day. Popped to the allotment this morning, and wasn’t surprised to find blight on some of the tomatoes. I spend most of the morning pulling up the tomatoes and taking off the uninfected fruit. Blight likes humid and damp conditions and that has been in abundance the last week or so. I made a little video when I got home about blight, so hopefully it’ll be up this weekend. I found a couple of very bizarre shaped tomatoes. You’d never find that in a shop. I’ll pick the rest tomorrow. So far I’ve got 7 trays above the kitchen cupboards. The ones in the greenhouse are slowly changing colour.

Didn’t go to the allotment until the afternoon because of the weather, but once I got there I had loads of fun. I’m in the process of digging all the potatoes up. This could take a while as I think I planted 80 seed potatoes in March. I managed to dig a fair few up, lots of bending, pulling and generally working your back. Try explaining that on your new life insurance form. They do ask some very silly question.

Went up to the allotment today, wasn’t sure if the rain would hold, but it did all day and we’ve not had a drop of rain. It did get very grey and there were 2 rather large rumbles of thunder which I wasn’t too impressed about. An allotment isn’t the place you want to be in a thunder storm, much like a golf course. I manages to tidy quite a few beds. I’m working through them systematically. Need to get some horse manure soon. Lovely.

Kids went back to school today. Yipee!! So I was straight down the allotment to have some fun. I pulled up all my onions and all the orange carrots. The rainbow and purple carrots are still in the ground. Some of the orange carrots were huge. I made a video about storing onions and all the carrots I dug up, hopefully Mark’ll be able to get those up at the weekend.