Allotment Diary–Tuesday 23 August 2016

It’s been a very productive ‘project’ day down on the allotment today, we are now well on with phase 2, our – prepare for autumn/winter – project.

Yesterday we put weed stop fabric down in the orchard area and built a couple of raised beds, these will probably be for pea next year, as they are most resilient to falling apples!  These beds have been filled with a mix of top soil from the allotment (dug out of the deep bed near the greenhouse) compost from the bins, volcanic rock dust, sea weed meal and chicken manure, all the beds will soon be treated with this mix.

Today I finished the composting area, I already had the four large compost bins, but now I have an area for the two plastic bins that will be storage for aged compost and leaf mould, these are the bins are will be using for potting on seeds and day to day compost and mulch supplies.

Then I finished the forest bark area under the trees, this will eventually be planted up with hostas and other shade loving plants.  As the ground it’s on is infested with weeds, it has fabric at ground level and also under the bark.

I levelled the remaining ground and planted shady area grass seed.  Given the challenges of falling leaves and apples, I expect this to be fairly patchy, but I can reseed any remaining areas in march.

We also created the support props for the cold frames, nice and study for the strong winds, we have mini props as well for venting in winter.  Debbie finished putting polythene on the lids.

We’ve built the sunken cold frame, next to the green house, this will be used for hardening off and bringing on seeds this year, but might be converted to a hot bed in the future depending on how things go.

Now all that’s left is the new autumn cropping raspberry bed and to put a lid on the hotbed and the final cold frame.