February Video Diary

This is how we left the allotment on Sunday night.  The two big beds are weed-free, onions are planted, broad beans are planted, daffodils are in the ground and the shed has a new tar-felt roof.

VIDEO DIARY CLICK HERE

Onion Bed

February 2011, Onion Sets.
In trenches filled with multicompost in a very carefully de-weeded bed, we have sown the onion sets which we bought but didn't get round to planting last year. This is clearly not best-practice, but the tiny onions were sat in the shed, seemed hard, and are beginning to sprout, so we've given them a chance. There are about ten rows of "Troy" and "Radar".

Rhubarb Bed

The Rhubarb bed in February 2011.  It needs weeding, but this doesn't matter all that much. There are about twenty large crowns of rhubarb in this bed, which have sat undisturbed all winter.  No compost or manure has yet been added.  The tiny new growth is just peeking through the soil at this point, and this year we aren't forcing the growth at all.

Nothing was done to this bed on the first visit.

February Tasks

Allotment First Visit February 2011

As usual with a first trip of the year to the allotment, it appears rough, overgrown and unproductive, and yet the weeds have been killed back by the snows and frost, so it is more of a blank canvas.

This year, we arrived to see the main beds overgrown with the first weeds of the new year, and to see that the recent storms had not only blown the guttering from the house, but also the tar felt from the roof of the shed.  This was our first job.  A 10m roll of garden shed felt costing £18.99 from B&Q gives a quick and easy repair.  We stripped the remnants of the old tar off and tacked on the new in an hour or so on Sunday 27th.  On Saturday (photo above), Rosie dug over the small plot between the summer raspberries and the fruit bushes.

The raspberries are of two types. By the gate (picture) we have autumn fruiting raspberries which need to be cut down to the ground every year at this time.  In the far right hand corner are the Jerusalem artichokes, which also have tall dead canes which we remove at the same time. The summer fruiting raspberries are meant to fruit on last year's new growth, so we only cut out the dead canes and those which fruited in 2010. We didn't get time to do this at the weekend, so it'll have to wait until next visit.

At the same time as re-roofing the shed, we also cut out a few of the tall branches and trunks of blackthorn from the hedge, which are getting a bit tall and thick, and hard to get access to later on in the year.

Around the shed at the top of the garden, we have planted another big bag of Winston Churchill daffs and narcissi.

Re-roofing in the rain.

A general view of the allotment in late February.  The main beds are all visible, and all show signs of the weeds - creeping buttercup and dock - starting to grow.  We added 400 litres of compost to the nearer and smaller of the two beds in which we later planted onions and broad beans.

With both big beds weeded, we left it at that for a first visit.  The further bed is just turned over and major weeds removed.  The closer bed has been carefully weeded, and 400 litres of compost raked into the single dug ground.  To the right of the plank we have planted broad beans and to their right are rows of onion sets.  In the uncomposted bed, to the right-hand side as we look at it in the photo, Rosie has planted a small herb garden.