Seeeeeeeds!

I have made my main seed order, through the organic gardening catalogue www.organicgardeningcatalogue.com ....it was rather a lot of money so I shan't reveal how much it was but a lot of the seeds will last more than one year (that's what I tell myself anyway). Plus I bought a couple of 'starter' seed mixes for two of my brothers, who have recently started growing some of their own food. I'm a member of Garden Organic, so you get 10% of your order, which is a bonus.

The weather has been nasty here, as with most of the country, but as the soil is so sandy, it's still workable even after heavy rain. I got in a couple of hours yesterday, between showers, continuing to clear the area for the apple tree and moving carpet around to the most needy areas.

I've noticed that there a lot of little seedlings popping up all over the plot, plus a carpet of green has appeared on my neighbours plot too. On closer inspection they seem to be poppy seedlings which have more than likely come from all the poppies we let seed this year....oops! Well, they're easy to hoe out and the poppies were beautiful, so worth the extra hoeing I think! Not sure that my allotment neighbour will agree......

Today

I was raking up some leaves on the plot and JB said 'what's that?' and out jumped a huge frog. Yippee! A very welcome visitor to the allotment. I moved him (or her) to a safe area of the plot, under the buddliea, near a log pile and the little pond I put in last year. It was really strong, pushing it's way out of my closed hands...JB stroked it's head when it peaked out between my fingers.

I hope it stays!

Well, am being a bit poor at the blogging at the moment, so apologies. We have been popping down every now and then (mainly to pick things and do a bit of weeding) but haven't had much chance to get really stuck in to anything....the weather this weekend didn't help. Plus I keep forgetting to take the camera...

Today the weather was really nice, so I decided to use up a bit of lieu time I'd built up and take the afternoon off to spend it on the plot. I stayed as long as possible, until it was too dark to see very much (actually used the light from my mob screen so that I could see what I was picking! (rainbow chard!)

I've been breaking/cutting up pallets to make edges for the beds, which look pretty smart once they're in. Still lots more of that to go though and I will take some pics soon. I was going to put some of the edging in this afternoon but then couldn't decide on exactly what I was going to do with one of the beds so made a decision to put off decision making til another day, and instead did some weeding/digging! I cleared quite a big area, in preparation for planting out a small apple tree. The area seems to have been an old turf mound-come-rubbish dump, so is a weird mixture of lovely topsoil, with bits of rubbish (old carriers bags/tin cans/crisp packets/bits of metal etc). I'll level it all out once I've dug out all the bramble/couch grass/rubbish. We're also planning to have a bit of a wildflower area here and maybe plant a rosemary/lavender hedge (and make a bench to sit and enjoy all the lovely aromas and colours).

If the weather's nice again some time this week, I think I might use some more lieu time to have a bonfire for all those brambles. It's a pretty big heap and I want to have one before the weekend as local youths tend to get in to the allotments at this time of year to set off fireworks - don't want them setting light to my heap and having all the fun. Also need to check for hedgehogs of course!