More digging

We finished what we wanted to do today and now we're broken! We dug in a peat-based bag of compost from B&Q to aid water retention for the celeriac. Jamie says we should dig to "a spade and a half depth"; well, if he does a spade then I think I do the half! It's so tiring but worth it for the end result.

We added some Epsom Salts (for magnesium enrichment) to the shallots which are looking a bit yellowy. We added some Growmore general feed to them yesterday to give them a helping hand.

Jamie planted out the 3 Speedy dwarf french beans which grew in the pots - none of the other beans germinated but we'll be planting some more in a few weeks.

We moved our Leonaris, one of our peppers and the one Rocky cucumber which has emerged up to the plot - they'll stay in the cloche for a bit to harden off. We put them on top of some EcoCharlie slug deterrent.

Here are some of the weeds (or wildflowers if they were growing somewhere else!) we are contending with...

Forget-Me-Not

Groundsel

Dead Nettle

Not sure what this is but it grows in abundence
on any uncultivated plot

Ow - digging's painful!!

Jamie dug a bit of the new plot during the week and that's what we were doing for a few hours today - really forget how painful digging is!! We're concentrating on digging an area where we'll plant the celeriac.

Angle Shades moth pupa

The weeds are up to our knees and include grass (couch mostly), nettles, docks, margolds, groundsel and others which I'm not sure of yet. Some have terribly long roots. Oh yes, and the previous tenant's potatoes are doing pretty well for the second year - though they're too blighty to eat :-)
It's a haven for wildlife - particularly beetles, slugs and worms. There are masses of ladybirds around at the moment, but not any aphids for them to eat at present. We also found lots of pupae - mostly Angle Shades moth ones but also smaller ones.... 

Waiting to eat our veg before us!

Beautiful ground beetle

A shiny beetle with mites

Oh, I did plant out the sweet peas - 22 of the seeds germinated and didn't get eaten by slugs. They're looking happy so to keep them that way I surrounded them with mesh. Pigeons love peas, I don't know if sweet peas taste the same but I don't want them to get wiped out before they can afford to lose a few leaves!

A growing allotment

Really excited! We've taken over the rest of Plot 8 :-)
It's completely overgrown at the moment but we plan to use it for some fruit - Jamie wants blueberries and I want some little fruit trees (apple and plums). It also gives us room for a pumpkin so we'll have to see!

Plot 8B in all its glory!

Sun, seeds and plans for soup!

So warm and sunny today - it really felt like May! Marsh Lane was the busiest we've seen it in weeks - a really active allotment site.

And we weren't just sitting in the sun - well, not the whole time. We managed to get everything done that we intended to, including trimming the fringes of the grass paths and mowing the one between our two plots.

Plot 7

Jamie dug our home-made compost into pea/sweet pea trenches - either side of last year's pea frame. We sowed the following seeds:

• Scarlet Empire runner beans (into root trainers in allotment cloche)
• Cornells Bush Delicata squash (indoor cloche)
• Butterbush F1 squash (indoor cloche)
• Rocky F1 cucumber (indoor cloche)
• Ambassador F1 courgette (indoor cloche)
• Fennel (buried pot in herb plot)
• Par cel (seed tray in allotment cloche)
• Apache salad onions - red ones (directly into onion plot)

Various squashes

Last week at work I had some celeriac and fennel soup - the first time I've had either of those ingredients - and it was so delicious! I decided that I'd grow celeriac but thought I was a bit late deciding to sow the seeds so when I spotted a trayful for £1.49 at Yew Tree Garden Centre I had to buy them! So, I transplanted about a third of the seedlings into modules and they're in the allotment cloche with the rest of our seedlings.

Celeriac seedlings

Mint and Parsnips

We had a lovely day up the plot today - most of the time in the sunshine and really warm.
We dealt with our parsnips - we had sown 3 seeds into each position and most have germinated this year (we didn't get any to germinate last year). So, today we thinned them down to just one seedling to each position - seems a shame but we don't want masses of small parsnips; just a few biggish ones.

I'm still not happy with the herb plot - have changed it at least twice already this year! So, I moved the parsley away from the thyme and the chives (lucky most of the herbs are in buried pots). It all needs cutting back a bit but don't want to do it while there's a risk of frost.

One herb we don't have this year is mint but I saw both these on the site today and yesterday!

Mint moth

Mint beetle - beautiful!