1st Sunday of July

Spent a rather busy few hours on the Allotment today. 
In less than 2 weeks our site is having a Family Fun Open Day, where we invite local people to visit our Allotments, we will be showing our Chickens on the day, in the hope more will consider adopting ex-battery Hens.
Last years open day was a great success, this year we are planning lots more activities and expect more to visit.


So I needed to neaten our plot a bit, the path needing most attention as it has over grown rather a lot, mostly with grass, all the rain we have had hasn't helped, so as you can see from this shot it looks much better.

We managed to do a bit of planting too, here is one of the cold frames not in use at the mo, so I got 2 compost bags, turned back to reduce the height, as you can see the inner black plastic is now also outside, this will absorb more heat, that will warm the roots of the Squashes we have planted. I re-filled the empty sacks with home made compost, from our compost bins, some spent compost the Tomatoes were growing in last year and some Grow Organic fertiliser.  We planted A Small Sugar Squash and a Courgette (yes more Courgettes)   

In the raised bed the Garlic was in, we planted out some round Courgettes, here you can see one forming.


Other crops planted this week:
Spinach
Spring Onions
And some more Climbing French Bean seeds were pushed into the soil inbetween the ones already growing up the climbing structure, to give a succession crop.

Here is a part of our Allotment I don't show very much, up near the shed we have:
The Asparagus with Lettuce inbetween.
On the right is one of our Strawberry Beds.
At the back is the Comfrey, I harvest the leaves 2-3 times a year and make Comfrey Tea from it. A simple way to make Comfrey Tea is to fill a large bucket with comfrey leaves, fill with water and leave (covered) for a few weeks to a month, then you can decant the brown (stinky) liquid from the bucket (put the remaining mush/leaves in the compost) the brown liquid must be diluted before feeding to your plants, about 10/1 so it resembles weak black tea, a great FREE plant food.

This weeks Harvests:
Strawberries (2lb 10oz)
Raspberries (2lb 8oz)
Tayberries (only a few)
Peas (too many to count)
Lettuce (only the one)
Potatoes (Charlotte)
Rhubarb (5lb of Victoria)
Not all harvested today, just whats in the Trug was today's haul.


Thanks for reading/returning. Ian