Pea Shoots & Potting

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May To-Do List

Jobs for the allotment this May

Cabbages enjoying the spring sunshine At long last May is here! Days are longer, temperatures are higher (hopefully) and if we all keep our fingers crossed it might just start to feel like summer in the next weeks. This is the month when I’ll begin sowing and planting outdoors in earnest, but still keeping an eye on the weather as the risk of frost hasn’t completely passed yet. My top five tasks…

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Unboxing: The Really Good Cut Flower Seed Collection by Sarah Raven

Unboxing: The Really Good Cut Flower Seed Collection by Sarah Raven

Happy Sunday and happy bank holiday weekend! I recently subscribed to Garden News Magazine and, as a gift for subscribing, received the Really Good Cut Flower Seed Collection by Sarah Raven. I spend more time than I care to admit to browsing on the Sarah Raven website so was more than excited to receive this free gift. The collection includes 13 packets of seeds in a reusable tin, sowing…

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Planning the Plot: Legume Bed 2016

Planning the Plot: Legume Bed 2016

The legumes for this year are to  be situated in what has come to be known as bed number 1. This is the bed closest to ‘front’ of the allotment and which runs the full width of the allotment. It is the longest bed on the plot, beating the other three by a good six foot. It’s situated in between, and divides, what I like to think of as the two industrial areas of the plot, these being the shed…

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Coughs, Colds and Clematis

Coughs, Colds and Clematis

Well, what a horrible week I’ve had! While the rest of the UK was revelling in the first flushes of Spring and sowing madly, I spent four days last week curled in bed full of the most horrid cold/flu type bug. Suffice to say that very little was achieved in terms of planting, potting or pricking out. One thing I did manage to get done however was to pot up some clematis plug plants that I got…

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Planning the Plot: The Fruit Cage

Planning the Plot: The Fruit Cage

Following on from Monday’s post about the newly built strawberry cage I thought I would share the other plans for fruit on the allotment. I would quite like to have a variety of soft fruit available on the allotment as it’s not something I buy from shops very often due to the price. I object to paying two, three or even four pounds for 100 grams of watery, tasteless fruit that’s often been frozen…

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Building Project: Raised and Caged Strawberry Bed

Building Project: Raised and Caged Strawberry Bed

Strawberries have been my favourite fruit since I was little and I cannot envisage this changing any time soon. This is more than likely because their arrival heralds in turn the arrival of my birthday, a day that I am fond of purely for narcissistic reasons (it is for this same reason that I love Wimbledon and become fanatical about tennis for two weeks each year). Being the highest fruit on my…

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Planting First Early Potatoes

Planting First Early Potatoes

It’s been a working week since Easter Monday which means that’s been five days since my first early potatoes went into the bags that will be their home until Summer. At the minute they are in our garden at home as I am a bit worried that the weather is still a bit inhospitable for tiny spuds. Our garden at home is a yard that is almost entirely enclosed by walls, shrubbery and fences therefore…

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Planning the Plot: 2016 Varieties

Planning the Plot: 2016 Varieties

The months since I got the keys to plot 23b have been spent steadily collecting packets of seeds from various sources, some of these were bought because they were reduced, some came free from magazines and some from friends and family. A few have been researched more thoroughly than is probably necessary, whilst others were bought on a whim. There are a few that ended up in the stash simply…

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March To-Do List

Allotment jobs I'll be up to this March

Happy March and happy spring! Days are getting longer, the weather is getting warmer and it’s finally starting to feel like we’re leaving the deep dark of winter behind us. This is the month that my patiently chitted potatoes will be planted out and I can finally reclaim my windowsills, though I doubt they’ll stay empty for long as I want to get a head start sowing all those seeds that will need…

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March To-Do List

Allotment jobs I'll be up to this March

Happy March and happy spring! Days are getting longer, the weather is getting warmer and it’s finally starting to feel like we’re leaving the deep dark of winter behind us. This is the month that my patiently chitted potatoes will be planted out and I can finally reclaim my windowsills, though I doubt they’ll stay empty for long as I want to get a head start sowing all those seeds that will need…

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Happy New Year, Happy New Start

Happy New Year, Happy New Start

Well hello and welcome back, it’s been a while. So here we are, poised at the start of 2016, the first week is over and I thought I’d take some time to reflect on the year ahead and look back at the lessons learned since getting the keys to my little half plot last June. Firstly, the biggest lesson that I took away from last year is that I completely failed at time management. In the juggling of…

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Garden Visit: Jardin Marjorelle, Part 2

Garden Visit: Jardin Marjorelle, Part 2

I’ll admit up front that this post is pretty much just an excuse for me to post pictures of frogs. I’ve managed to contain myself and include just two but trust me, it could of been a lot worse. They’re just too cute! This post is all about the pond at Jardin Marjorelle. A big part of my Autumn involves setting up a wildlife pond in the south-west corner of my allotment so this was the perfect…

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Garden Visit: Jardin Majorelle, Marrakesh

Garden Visit: Jardin Majorelle, Marrakesh

We recently came back from a much needed holiday in Marrakesh. Whilst there we visited the Jardin Marjorelle, a beautiful garden just on the outskirts of the main town centre. It is otherwise known as the Yves Saint Laurent garden due to the work he did throughout his life to save and restore these gardens. It is a stunning place and we took plenty of photos to bring back home for inspiration…

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The Desolation of Sprouts

The Desolation of Sprouts

One of the things that I was most excited about when getting an allotment was growing my own sprouts for Christmas (sorry sprout haters). I absolutely hated sprouts up until around two years but now I can’t get enough of them. Being a bit far on in the year to bring them on from seed I ordered some plugs from Suttons and I cannot recommend them highly enough. 22 perfectly healthy plug plants…

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Allotment Wishlist

1. Bugs hotels from The Thoughtful Gardener 2. The Paper Potter from Nether Wallop 3. Gardener’s Journal by Sophie Conran 4. Tuck and Tool box by Burgon and Ball 5. Beehive Compost Bin from Primrose

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Plot 23b - Veggie Update!

What a busy few weeks! We’ve been kept away from the allotment over the last two weekends due to plans with friends and as a result the heavy duty clearance work has taken a back seat in favor of a post-work watering schedule in order to save the baby plants from the July heat. Hopefully (I use the word loosely), we’ll be back up to our elbows in grass and weeds this weekend before it all starts…

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