Monday 22nd September 2008 - weather: overcast and nippy.

Managed to get to the allotment today after work for a couple of hours to begin my latest plan. I did a large landscape job back in the spring and had to order masses and masses of weed supressing membrane. Due to my careful cutting I was left with quite a large amount, so I have decided to use it on the allotment - surely it makes sense? As time is very tight for me now that I am working almost full time, I figure that I could use it where I plant brassicas and squashes so I don't have to worry about weeding those half sections of allotment. I am sure there are problems doing this, but at the moment, I can only see it as a win win situation. So, today I dug up a row of Picasso spuds, lovely huge spuds by riddled with slug holes so I won't bother with them next year, raked the ground level, scattered with lime granules and laid the fabric down. I dug a small trench the width of the plot and put the edge of the fabric in and backfilled the whole. I pressed this down with my heel. I unrolled the fabric and did the same at the other side. Along the edges I have used pegs with pin it to the ground. I then planted 10 Spring Cabbage Hungry Gap plants, 10 curley kale plants and 5 calabrese plants - the other 5 were snapped so I will be phoning DT Browns tomorrow to see what they have to say. I scrabbled around for some netting and managed to cover the area, in a way, just hope the slugs lay off as I had no pellets.

I then planted a row of Jermor shallots and a row of Solent white garlic. The onions I planted a couple of weeks ago are already poking their noses through. This is the earliest I have ever planted onions so I am hoping for a good size crop come next late spring. I may try to get some more, but our local nursery doesn't do Japanese onions and I refuse to pay P&P mail order so I will keep my eyes peeled on my travels and see if I can pick some up elsewhere.

No pics today, forgot the camera, but we are off to see the bank manager tomorrow about our mortgage, and after that I will need some chilling time, so I will be back on the plot to take my aggression out on the weeds and hopefully I will have remembered my camera!

Saturday 13th September 2008

Danbury and Little Baddow Autumn Horticultural Show

Yes, of course, I entered which meant me getting up at some unearthly hour Saturday morning, shooting to the allotment and gathering lashings of crops, then darting home to get them washed and sorted. Did shockingly well taking 14 firsts in all, but this was for veggies, photographs and cooking. Also brought home 3 trophies and one plate, and daughter number one won a trophey for most aggregate points in the under 9 section. Anyhow, here are some pics from the day.