Allotment Diary (February – Week 3)

What a difference a week makes. The wind direction changed to a southerly, the temperature rose and we enjoyed cloudy skies with a few sunny spells. Perfect planting weather and it needed to be, because I had quite a few seedlings desperate to be planted, but held back because of the ‘big freeze’.

I managed to spend two half days on the allotment planting, which is my favourite job on the plot. Taking an old bed full of scrappy plants and weeds, clearing it and leaving it pristine and full of promise.

It’s also been a very busy week off the plot. On Tuesday Jennie (middle daughter) had her baby girl and she and her husband were in hospital for the whole week. As a result we had our grandson for the week and Debbie was doing his school work with him every morning. Meanwhile Tessa (youngest daughter) and I were busy giving Jen and Jon’s house a top to bottom spring clean as a nice surprise for them when they returned. Baby is still in hospital for a few days, so Debbie is doing taxi duty at the moment and no doubt I will be next week. It was also Debbie’s birthday, so – since we can’t go out – I cleaned the house and her car for her.

I did manage a couple of cycle rides this week, but no long walks. I cycled along the sea-front to Blackpool and that allowed me to stop off at the hospital to run errands for the kids. I got some fresh air and exercise and had picnics on the prom.

Anyway, back to gardening. In addition to a fair amount of planting, I also did a lot of sowing and pricked out the peppers. This is my second batch, the first batch are growing very strongly. I was expecting to need to sow a third batch in March but as it happens I don’t need anymore now. This is great news, because growing space is getting short now.

I was expecting to need to sow a third batch in March but as it happens I don’t need anymore now. This is great news, because growing space is getting short now.

We only harvested for Debbie and I last week due to the freeze, but even so it wasn’t so bad. I took the first harvest off my grow light salads (on top of the wardrobe) and they were excellent, I picked about 10 litres and another 6 litres from the allotment. So far I’m expecting that we will be able to supply almost all of our winter lettuces from this LED setup, which will completely change the mix of veg that we are able to grow over winter.

Plenty of sowing this week, I’m almost finished now for the month, just a few carrots, turnips and radish to go, here’s what I sowed this week:

Here’s what we planted this week

Here’s our harvests for the year so far, with the most recent at the top.  We hit our target for last year and harvested over £12,000.

Here’s a list of the preserves for last year.

I always like to keep a track of or first harvest dates and you can find a summary of those here:

YouTube videos for the week can be found here: