The paths have finally been dug. Lovely husband came and dug the rest for me and now they are all straight and wonderful and the raised beds are extremely raised so I barely need to bend down when planting. The tomato plants started dying off so I picked the rest of the tomatoes and pulled up the plants and have planted loads of stuff ready for next year. We have an entire bed full of garlic and onions, and have planted 52 broad beans!

The winter squash have slowed down somewhat so I think they need a bit of fertiliser so I’ll take down some smelly horrible weed tea to feed them with. And we have comfrey springing up all over what is supposed to be the potato patch (so I think I may have to rethink that one and just leave it as a comfrey and herb patch.

Next job is to get herbs on the go in pots in the greenhouse so I can plant them round the edge of the beds companion planting style. I also have heaps of marigolds for next year as well, to deter pests.

Now a lot of the plants are dying off, I am finally starting to put the new design of the allotment into place. So today I started on two of the news bed, making them slightly raised by digging out a path in between them and dumping the lovely crumbly not clay-ey soil on top. Couldn’t do all the way from along the beds because there are some wayward tomato bushes, (and I mean BUSHES) in the way that are still quite prolific. But I did as much as I could, and in the meantime, managed to drop a fence panel on my foot. I was moving it (as we’d been using it as a makeshift path for the past few months) and dropped it on my big toe! Luckily, nothing broken just a little owwie. But after two hours of digging a path, my instep started to hurt a bit and upon inspection I seemed to have grown a rather impressive purple bruise. So I took that as my cue to plant up the onions sets (courtesy of MadamLeBlog) and 5 bulbs of garlic (still got 4 more to put in but thought I’d leave it until the end of the month so I still have bits to do).

At home, plants and seedlings wise, the main pests are the local cats. I was fairly convinced we had foiled them this time but nope they got us back. We had put up a high shelf in the garden and put the plants we had left (mainly basil and aubergine) and some seedlings (parsnips grown in toilet rolls awaiting transplantation) up on the shelf thinking that the cats wouldn’t be brave enough to use them as litter trays up there. We were right on that count, but in their frustration they took the whole shelf down today. I was furious. Luckily the hard won plants were ok (peppers and aubergines) but a fair few of my parsnips and basil plants will probably only be fit for the compost heap now. Will give them a week or two to recover from the shock though.

So tomorrow, our mini greenhouse is going up and all our bits going in there. The only worry I have is that I want to plant out broadbeans in pots before taking them to the allotment but they don’t really need the heat of the greenhouse, but I’m too scared the cats will poo in them!! Think I may have to start growing seedlings down at the allotment, where it is cat free.

I went to check on the melon yesterday and prepared myself for the worst. But apart from a couple of slightly nibbled leaves it seems quite happy in its new spot. We gave it lots of water and then there was a huge thunderstorm last night so everything down the allotment got drenched. Great really, it really needed it as the weather has been excrutiatingly hot of late. It’s pretty warm again today though, although overcast, but hopefully the plants will continue to do well.

Seedlings wise, I planted a couple of trays of rocket, some beetroot (just to finish off the packet really) and some parsley. To be honest its getting a little late to plant anything, and I need to work out what’s going where in the allotment to prepare for the big redesign with minimal plant loss ideally. And I need to find out where I can get straw!

The other day, I took MadamLeBlog down to our very messy allotment and made her brave the brambles to pick blackberries. Which was heaps of fun actually. We got a tubful, then I ate some the next day and they really weren’t ripe at all, which was a shame! I did my best though and found a few non bitter ones in there which were ok.

On that day, I also braved planting out my biggest melon plant. It really was too big to keep in the propogator any longer so it had to be planted into the ground. I chose a sunny spot next to the compost heap (for warmth), dug a hole and put comfrey leaves in the bottom for feed, then planted the melon, put card around it to suppress the abundant weeds that grow in our composting area, put more comfrey around the plant then put large stones around it that had been warmed in the sun so the plant would have more heat and wouldn’t have such a temperature drop come the evening. Then we watered it lots and have left it. This was Wednesday and so far I haven’t had a chance to drop by and check on it, and won’t until Monday. So fingers crossed it will be alright. At any rate I took photos just in case it died so I have my memories! At present I have a getting photos off camera onto computer issue so they will come later.

Also on Wednesday at the allotment, we put up a fence to train the rogue brambles, with a view to putting up more fencing round the edges for raspberry canes etc.

In other gardening news, I am experimenting with trying to grow a pineapple using the top of a shop bought one. I don’t think it’s looking good but I’ll keep trying. Basically you soak the top of a pineapple (having cut off all the flesh) in water for a few days until it grows some roots, then plant it. I’ve done this and put it in my propogator so it should have enough warmth. But it’s going a bit brown round the leaves so not certain it’ll be ok.

And I think my potatoes have blight! I’m not certain but they’re not looking too healthy. I need to do some more research really. More updates on that later!

Have done some somewhat late-ish plantings today. Planted two trays of spring onions, two tray of oregano, two trays of salad leaves and about 20 runner bean seeds that my mother in law gave me the other day.

The other week I planted a couple of broad beans, knowing its a bit too late so I only did two to see how they would go, and one has started sprouting now.

At the allotment today, I had to move on of my squash plants as I completely underestimated how big they would grow! So I gave one a nice big space by itself where it won’t get squished anymore! The other one was threatening to take over my path but after some advice from the internet, I coiled it into a circle, so hopefully it’ll grow the other way. It seemed to be happy enough to be curled away from the path.

Also planted out 7 sunflowers which are about a foot and a half high already. All of my other sunflowers got ruined by slugs but these ones are about twice the size of the previous ones I’d planted out so hopefully they’ll stand a chance. They are called Velvet Queen or some such, and produce plants with red flowers and multiple heads! I also cut down the comfrey plant (well pulled all the leaves off and cut my hands loads on the spiky hairs in the process!), and mulched all around the base of the plant I have in at the moment, so hopefully this will give them a bit of a boost nutrient wise. And comfrey is so fast growing, I will have another full plant in 6 weeks ready to cut down and use again.

I seem to be winning the war on slugs and weeds at the moment. I’ve left some of the weeds at the unused bits of the plot alone at the moment, using the theory that they are covering the ground and bringing up nutrients. The bits of the plot that aren’t in use, but I’m planning on using, have been covered up with card to suppress weeds which has worked wonders. Every week I pull back a bit more and plant something new. Weeding underneath literally involves pulling up 3 or 4 roots that tend to be close to the surface and come out very easily. In all the gaps in between plants I’ve planted radishes as they are quite fast growing and pretty small. We also have a wild blackberry bush against the fence, we are trying to train it to grow along the fence but it is hard. Anyway the berries have come on early this year and I’ve found 3 or 4 ripe ones already. I think the birds will get them before I do though as I forgot to pick them today…

The allotment is full of wildlife at the moment, lots of bees and lots of slow-worms which is a good sign as they are a protected species and apparently slow-worm populations are considered to be quite low. But I found two today and they looked like babies so hopefully more will breed there. I should probably consider setting aside a corner as a permanent habitat for them.

I bought a great book the other day, which has given me some really good ideas on redesigning the allotment.

I think I’m going to do 5 beds with a curvy path going between 4 of them (the 5th will be at the bottom end of the garden which is seperated off by a stone path and a big rhubarb plant). By digging the path we can raise the beds slightly, and make the path also into a watering system (a bit like terraces) because we are on a gentle slope, in theory the rain will travel round the path and round the edges of the beds instead of just running down the hill, taking all the soil with it. In theory anyway.

Round the edge of the beds I am planning on planting herbs, garlic and other alliums to deter pests. Some of the soil is really fertile, but some is really bad so on the bad patches I have planted alfalfa which has long roots to bring up nutrients from the subsoil so when I cut it down, it will rot on the surface and give the soil loads more nutrients. We also have a comfrey plant which needs cutting down roughly every 6 weeks. We used to put the leaves in a water butt for weed tea (although it stinks), or on the compost heap but now we are going to lay it directly on the soil around our plants so it can rot in directly.

Here are some photos of pots of soil (with seeds in I promise!), and me and some rhubarb we picked from the allotment. So far I’ve made lots of rhubarb crumble and some rhubarb vodka (as yet untested – it will be ready shortly).

Back in November 2007, a very kind man who looks after lots of owls, gave me and my husband a corner of his garden to use on an allotment type basis, due to the stupidly long waiting lists with all the other allotment associations. So we had massive plans for it! Cleared it all. Then dispensed with the plans and planted stuff willy nilly.

Anyway, providing I can work out how to post photos, here are some photos of the plot before we started.