With plenty of heavy rain, rain showers and misty drizzles of rain over the last 7 days or so, my plots have been too damp and wet to achieve anything positive on, without getting covered in mud or becoming soaking wet. As I was awaiting delivery of a parcel, which I expected to arrive by the end of last week but didn't, plus the weather was cold anyway, I opted to spend a lazy week indoors not achieving much. I did manage to catch up with my blog reading, commenting, updating and correcting errors on my blog and finally clearing a full email inbox.
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| A Variation in Autumn Colours (13/Nov/13) |
Many other allotment posts I have read this week, have rightly centered on the Autumn clean up and the preparation of next years planting areas of all different shapes and sizes, in gardens as well as allotments. Having, myself, spent the past 2 to 3 years digging over, clearing, preparing and re-designing new and old plots, I am now finding I have little to do as far as "ground work" is concerned and the various clean up and preparation tasks lately seem to be finished in the blink of an eye with tasks down the plots, being few and far between, so lack of visits there lately is not much of a loss to me.
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| Autumn Raspberries Still Producing Fruit (13/Nov/13) |
The 2014 year planner that I attached to the potting table in my shed, is, at the moment, being used as a calendar. The notes written on it will serve as a reminder, when next Autumns tasks come around again. On Friday the 1st of November, I spent an hour or so weeding and tidying the flower border, which runs alongside my front driveway. This single border is now low maintenance, planted with 9 box, running centrally along the border with a miniature variegated shrub at each end. I ventured down to my plots that afternoon and began weeding the overgrown bed on the drainage ditch bank of N1 Plot, underneath my fruit trees. I was back down the plots on Saturday the 2nd and by mid afternoon the bed was weed free, with several containers of weeds, fallen leaves and decaying fruit added to the compost heap. Further rain on the 4th & 5th of November stopped play. With the ground and soil too wet to work, I spent a few hours in the shelter of N2's shed, as the strong breeze blew more leaves down from the nearby trees, I cleaned and disinfected about 50% of the garden canes I had used as supports for my French beans. From the 6th to the 9th of November rain again stopped play. Last Sunday afternoon, a break in the wet weather allowed me to remove my Runner beans and their supports. Several dozen more pods were salvaged and their beans will be used as next years seeds, after being dried and stored.
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| Full of Beans (10/Nov/13) |
With more rain yesterday, it wasn't worth toddling off to the plots once again. Tuesday was fine and sunny for a change, with some tangible warmth emitting from the suns rays during the morning. With frost forecast here for Tuesday night, it was an ideal time to plant the last 22 of my Winter Onion sets, which was the first task of the afternoon. It was then time to clear up more fallen leaves and other foliage, which had been strewn around by the wind, consigning it to the compost heap, which is now bulking up well.
The final raised bed, which I constructed some time ago, had the remainder of the polythene liner tacked to the inside of it, to aid soil retention. By late afternoon the temperature was dropping somewhat, so I spent 40 minutes or so, in my shed, shelling the last of my Runner beans for next season. A satisfactory afternoon down the plot I would say.
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| Runner Beans Removed & Roots Left In Place To Replenish Some Nitrogen (10/Nov/13) |
Yesterday was dry, sunny for a while and cold, after the first hard overnight frost of this Autumn. The afternoons task was to fill the the final raised bed with soil. Using the remainder of the soil taken from the main bed of N2 Plot during the
Dandelion wars which started in October 2012, this was the soil that had been spread along the top of the drainage ditch bank, alongside my shed on N2 Plot. After filling my wheelbarrow with each load of soil any perennial weed roots were removed and after a dozen or so loads, the raised bed was almost full and the bank leveled and clear of loose soil. Four hours of work, job done. A couple of bags of multipurpose compost will be added on top of the soil later, after which, polythene covers will be placed over the top of each bed. The beds will then be used for next years seed sowing areas, easier than sowing seed at ground level and hopefully less back-ache!!
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| Final Raised Bed Topped Up With Soil (13/Nov/13) |
There's Always Tomorrow!!
