Well it’s the end of July and it’s been a strange 1st year for me and the allotment to say the least. The weather has been against us, we’ve had the slug invasion and it’s generally been a struggle to try and stay on top of things with what has happened elsewhere in my life.
But, we will not be deterred from the goal of having a truly wonderful productive plot. 1st year is also a learning a curve and we have certainly learnt a few things so far and let’s not forget that its not finished yet. We took control of out little piece of ground in October so we’ve got a good 2-3 months before we can say that the first year has been a complete disaster.
With this in mind we are going to have another stab at getting some stuff planted now for harvesting in the autumn and winter. I’ve just planted out seeds of peas – this time I’m sowing them in modules at home – 25 plants hopefully and I’ll then plant them out once they’ve germinated at which point I’m going to try and protect them when they’re planted out with some home made bottle closhes. We’ve also planted 10 dwarf beans and a further try of spinach. All have been planted together in a single tray of modules under a basic propagator lid. We are also going to give the brassica family another try with some direct sowing of cabbage (golden acre) and purple sprouting broccoli. Finally we are also going to give the carrots another try after seeing Monty Don’s woefully poor efforts on Gardeners World I don’t feel so bad. We’re going to try 2 varieties. The Fly Away which we tried before and another type called Nantes.