Busy, Busy

I said to my self at the start of the week that I would do a regular Monday update about the allotment, which makes sense as Sunday is the day we are most likely to get a lot done. However, here we are on Thursday and I haven't written it yet so I'm off to a good start.

Progress so far - when we got the allotment 2 weeks ago it had been roughly rotovated and looked not too bad on the surface. There are 3 large tree stumps however that the association say they will take out for us. These aside, the ground was fairly clear. So we started to dig. We got one corner dug over and planted a few potatoes just to get something going while we worked on the rest.

One corner has the remains of an old greenhouse under the surface, so every spade uncovers more bits of broken glass - this will take some clearing. There's an old concrete foundation from a shed - not a problem, we'll just site our own shed there when we get it. The rest of the plot, it turns out, was a bramble patch. Rotovating this has probably cut the roots up and distributed them everywhere, but since it had already been done once, we bit the bullet and rotovated the whole plot on Sunday. The soil looks quite good but is very stony and of course it's full of roots which all need to be dug out. So now we're in the middle of digging the plot over, section by section, and pulling out all the roots and stones - backbreaking work but it will all be worth it in the end.

The first weekend we had the plot Pete and the Evilpixie dug over a small section by the back fence and I have finally got some strawberry plants in there. That's all we have planted at the moment but here at home I have some peas and beans growing on in pots, so they can go up to the lottie when the ground is ready. I also have too many courgette plants and some squashes waiting to germinate. Rain is predicted for the next few days so progress will be slow this week - the ground is a bit on the clay side so it's almost impossible to dig when it's wet. Shame, as I have three days off in a row this weekend and we could have got a lot done if it was dry.

Another update on Monday (ish) and I'll try and get some photos - though bare earth is not terribly exciting!