Saturday, October 27, 2007

Catching up on Plot 13

Although we have been to the allotment over the last couple of weeks, I have not had time to update the blog. So here is a rather large, picture intensive, run down of what has been going on.

A couple of weeks ago we arrived at the allotment to find that the brambles at the back of our shed had been cut down:

It seems that the likely culprit is the council as the brambles disappearance has coincided with other allotmenteers being sent warnings about their allotments. We just find it annoying as they weren't in anyone else's way, enclosed our shed area, and offered potential of blackberries next year. Unfortunately they don't seem to put the same gusto into providing my flat with a recycling box, the topic of at least a million pleading emails to the council....but this is not the place for such discussions...

The allotment has also seen the sudden, and now regular, appearance of a cat:

Whilst this may not be worthy of note to most, it needs to be mentioned in advance to explain what is likely to be a slowing down in the work-rate. Whilst Emma has spent the last 6 years stating that she doesn't like cats, the weekly appearance of the cat is always met with the laying down of her tools, and comments such as "oh David look", "awww, isn't he sweet", etc, whilst she does nothing until he strolls off again. It wouldn't be so bad, but he is always back five minutes later and it all starts again!

At the moment most of the work on the allotment is digging the ground over, especially those areas where nothing grew this year and have just become covered in weeds. However, the Jerusalem artichokes are continuing to grow, and have now got flowers on top:

And we have just planted some Brussels Sprouts:


We also scattered some grass seeds a couple of weeks ago in an attempt to create a more defined path between some flowers and one of the vegetable patches, and that seems to have made a bit of a showing:

Sunday, October 07, 2007

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of the Veg World

After what has been a fairly disappointing harvest of crops this year we are starting to prepare for next year. They were still a few bits to dig up however, and yesterday we got a few potatoes, some stumpy carrots, a few onions, and some parsnips that turned out to be extremely tasty.

All that we really have left in the ground now are the Jerusalem artichokes, and a little prod with the fork yesterday seems to suggest that they are not quite ready yet.

There is still plenty to do though, and today will be filled with planting some flower bulbs.