5 weeks of Chitting

It was lovely and warm today but sadly not able to get to the allotment.
We've got the onions/shallots ready for planting at the weekend and checked on our potatoes which have been chitting in a cold bedroom since 15th Jan - they all appear to be doing well...

Chits aren't too long and all the spuds still look healthy. Some have gone more wrinkly than others, but that shouldn't be a problem. They have about another 5 weeks before we intend to plant them.

Plot 8A gets a tidy

We got to the allotment early as we knew rain was due today. It was quite chilly, mostly due to the really strong winds, but we had to get our compost bins sorted - they've been waiting to be put back in place since we made the path on Plot 8A a couple of weeks ago.

We combined the contents of the open wooden compost bin with the green plastic one and a big bag of cut up brown cardboard. Then divided it all between the two plastic bins - they're both nearly half-full now but a lost of that will compost down fairly quickly. Oh yes, the broad beans went in there too :-(

Because of the path we had to shift our bench and other 'furniture', so we re-layed the weed suppressant under the decking and put the stones all round the compost bins - this is to provide a bit of cover for insects - we found quite a few centipedes, beetles, spiders, larvae and slugs. The slugs and larvae went over the hedge towards the canal but the others can stay as they tend to eat other nasties rather than our produce!


There, that looks better!

We're intending to put strawberries in the wooden planter - the basil didn't do well in it last year - but I may move the herbs (in buried pots) up to the corner. I'm getting rid of the mint and sage (didn't use any last year) but will grow some par-cel (like parsley but tastes like celery) and coriander instead - these along with the usual rosemary, thyme (both so pretty and bees love them), parsley and chives.

We left just as it was raining - http://uk.weather.com/weather/10day-Hungerford-UKXX1507 is so often accurate to the hour for us!

After the snow

Well the snow did arrive, but wasn't very deep. We only got a couple of centimetres but it was VERY cold....
-9° minimum on the plot over the last week.

It was cold while we were dropping some compost off at the plot, but the sun shining on the snow is so beautiful and it was very pleasant wandering around. There was about 10cm of ice on the water troughs. We broke it up so that the birds could get a bit of water. I attempted to photograph a robin who was watching me - got a lovely shot ... of a stick :-}

Aquadulce Broad beans don't like -9°

Now we're really convinced that our broad beans aren't going to make it. There are so few left in such a sad state that we've decided to remove them and sow new ones when the weather is a little happier. As usual we'll protect them with their little plastic bottle cloches.

Lots of bird-life around the site at the moment - mostly robins and blackbirds but we've also seen a thrush, wren, rooks, moorhens and pigeons (of course!).
There's evidence of moorhens all over the place when snow's on the ground, but no rabbit tracks inside the fence so that's good.

Moorhen footprint

Snow's a-coming

Frozen canal through the hedge

The Kennet & Avon canal is frozen and we're expecting (and I'm hoping there will be) snow later this afternoon. Blackbirds and robins were eating everything in sight - including a tennis ball by the look of this robin!!

Just went to the plot for a walk round - we knew we wouldn't be doing anything up there today. Far too cold! The minimum temperature recorded was -9° but it was about 0° while we were at the plot.

Finished path

Managed to get the path finished off though we didn't get to the plot till gone 3pm and there wasn't much sun left so it was a bit chilly.
We used up one of the bags of bark chips which was left over from last year. It had turned into a snail farm with loads of different sizes hibernating huddled together - we put them all over the hedge.

It's fairly level and reasonably straight apart from the one really obvious bulge - well, the plank was warped, not our fault :-)

The path doesn't actually go to the end of plot 8A - that is intentional. We're going to plant some Leonaris flowers (orange) in the corner.

I need to start moving the raspberries to the other corner so we can finally dig out the area where we move them from. We inherited the raspberries so that section of 8A has never been dug by us and there are quite a few docks and other weeds that pop up each year.