Sunday 24 February 2019

Its Going to Happen

We had a lovely couple.of hours on the plot yesterday, in warm sunshine. The crocuses have opened up because of the extra warmth and we saw several (or possibly one) Brimstone butterflies flitting up and down alongside the hedge. There were also plenty of bees - bumblebees and other types.
It was lovely though we couldn't stay long. However, we managed to plant our shallots: 23 Red Sun. Each surrounded with a sprinkling of 6x. And then we covered them with some netting. Hoping that will keep the birds and mice away from them until they've grown enough roots to secure them to the ground.
Jamie hoed lime into this year's future brassica plot. The rest of the time we were on site we spent chatting with other plotholders and having some coffee and biscuits. There was plenty of gardening going on around us. We (the HAHA committee) have some plans for an area of the site near the toilet and one of the 'mares tail plots'. We have a work day in a couple of weeks so more on that in March... In the meantime, here is another photo of one of our crocus pots. (with a bumblebee who's just taken off)
Crocus are so pretty and there isn't much else of interest to photograph on site at the moment. However, Jamie did uncover these and I haven't identified them yet... I wonder if they're good guys or bad guys.. Suggestions are welcome!

Today we didn't make it to the allotment but we did drive to nearby Charlton Park Garden Centre to pick out a few additional seed potatoes. Such a great selection - but we don't need many as we always end up not using them.

We already have some Nicola and Kestrel. We bought a handful of individual tubers. I selected Dido, which we've not heard of before, because my Dad was an engineer at Harwell on the Dido reactor and the others are chosen because of their various attributes as shown below..

It was a shame we missed out on a second sunny February day on the allotment, but at least we have all our potatoes now. And I have two days off work so will hopefully catch up with a bit of plot-work then...maybe. We decided to go for a walk along the canal just as the sun was going down and were glad we did.
And the title is courtesy of The Undertones because Spring is surely on it's way...

6 comments:

  1. I’ve never heard of Dido potatoes and we don’t see brimstone butterflies here. We have managed plenty of plot work in the sunshine though.

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    1. Lovely to get a bit of early sun to encourage us outside!

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  2. Exciting times...everything is taking off again!

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    1. Yes, nice isn't it! Now wondering when the frogs are going to return to fill our pond with spawn ...

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  3. "Floury to waxy texture" ??? That's covers all bases!
    Undertones nicely capturing the optimism of spring

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Belinda