Allotment Diary – Monday 6th June

I was out hiking today so I didn’t get to the allotment until gone 2pm.  The hike/drive wasn’t wasted though as I gave some thought to how I was going to use the, area under the trees, I’d originally planned to grass it, but now I see how much sun it gets (a lot) it seems such a waste.  In the end I’ve decided to start to turn it over to successional sewing’s of beans and peas and cold frames and hot beds for winter.  Next year I will invest some real time into making it as productive and maintenance free as the rest of the plot.

To prepare for the beans though needs quite a bit of work as the whole area is infested with bind weed and mares tail, it’s also full of tree roots so there’s no chance of deep digging.  In the end I’ve let the weeds grow for a couple of months and treated them with weed killer, then left them to die back for three weeks and finally – today – dug down about 18 inches, taking the roots out.  I’m hoping this is enough to give me a decent chance of cropping the area this year, without losing the weeding battle.

So in the blazing 2pm sun, I’ve forked over out an area of 20 square meters, dug manure in and put up the pea and bean frames.  This was nearly enough for me, but I still had to do the watering and I acquired a pallet, that I will be using tomorrow.  Finally I did an allotment tour, to check out things I’ve missed and spot new ideas.

Tomorrow is going to be a big clearing and planting day, can’t wait!