Readying for Runners

Another lovely few hours on the allotment today. It was mostly sunny, though the wind was chilly, so we needed to keep busy or at least sit in the sunshine! The temperature last night was -2° but finally reached double figures today 10° while we were on the plot - it's getting there, slowly...

The first thing we did was dig circular trenches for our runner bean wigwams.

We put 2 bags of mushroom compost in each trench. We have two types of runners this year: Scarlet Empire and a white-flowered variety which we were given by a fellow plotholder last year.



While Jamie dug over the rest of the bean quarter, I piled manure round the raspberry bushes as a healthy mulch. I covered the area where the fennel is going with black plastic to try to warm the ground a bit. Also managed to square off the dug area on Plot 8a, still a lot do be sorted on plot8b though...

Panorama of Plot 7 - Three Quarters ready...

Spotted this pheasant clearing up one of the empty plots near us - there's nothing for him on our plots at the moment. I've updated the wildlife blog too.