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!