Author: Rob J

Ok, so they are not really called fruit sticks, but I couldn’t remember which soft fruit these were. To be honest, at this stage, they all class as ‘mixed red berries’ and go in a smoothie as far as I am concerned. We were given these over the winter, and with four young allotmenteers and no time, I resorted to putting them ‘roots first’ in a large bucket of water.  Come rain, sun, hail and snow, they stayed in the water until now….  So this week, I cleared a space in the garden.  (I hope you don’t mind a...

So its been a bean cane extravaganza. Maybe that should be bamboo cane extravaganza. This mission required a large number of bean canes to be assembled, in some form of structure, sufficient to support the growth of beans.  Having surveyed a number of other bean cane constructions on the allotment and a small amount of practice ahead of time, Allotmenteer #2 and Daddy set about pushing been canes into the soil and tying the tops together.  We soon got into the swing of things and by the end of the row, felt that we were looking like professionals.  Looking...

So today’s adventure was to try and clear the weeds from around the strawberry’s.  This task seemed easy enough at the start, however the reality soon hit home that this grass weed was well and truly rooted into the soil, fabric sheeting and just about anything else in sight! With one Allotmenteer sleeping on the job, and the other wandering the plot with her tool bag, Daddy was left to uncover the plants before they are swallowed up into a grass extravaganza, rivalled only by ‘the rough’ on a golf course. Ten minutes in, the inevitable happened.  Nope, not...

With a rather damp day and an hour to spend, we decided to put phase one into action against the beast in our midst.  This thing is much bigger than it looks in the photo, and with the help of 2 allotmenteers, it got what I can only describe as a serious hair cut. The beast had grown leaves that were overwhelming the bed it was in, completely blocked two paths and it was starting to impact on two other beds.  It was not a situation we could allow to continue if there was any hope of us managing...

It’s the start of the season, and all around the allotment site preparations have begun for this year’s growing season. With this in mind (and a little peer pressure!) it was time to return to the patch after last year’s initial dabble at clearing up and get serious. First off a little tour of the plot and what we have found. So, here comes the serious stuff 😉 The site has around 50 plots which are all ‘small’ in size. There is a car park/manure store/wood chipping pile at one end of the site and one big grass path which provides...