A tour around the allotment - part 2

So last week I took some photos on my day off on Wednesday, and shared my Allotment Tour Part 1. Now it's time for Part 2! The photos are from the same day so things've changed a bit since then but you get the idea.

Continuing around the far end, in my fruity area, I have a lovely red gooseberry bush (one of the first things I bought for the plot) you can see the pretty flowers here. It's covered in them! I'm not very diligent when it comes to pruning and tend to let it just grow all over the place. This does make picking the fruit tricky as the branches are very thorny, so I stick a load of canes or sticks into the ground and tie the branches to them, trying to space the branches out so I can reach through easier.

Red dessert gooseberry

I actually have 6 gooseberry bushes! The red one which I bought, a green one given to me by a friend at work (which over the winter I moved slightly and split into two plants) and 3 green ones from a plot neighbour, which I've put in along one of my boundaries. I think they're all dessert varieties, they're very sweet anyway.

In this photo you can see one near the base of the large redcurrant bush (centre) - this is one I moved and split as it was even closer to the currant before. The red gooseberry is just to the left of this. Next to the red gooseberry is a row of 3 different blueberry varieties that I bought last year.

Here's one of the blueberries, it has loads of flowers but the leaves are a bit red which I think I means it's not that happy, I probably need to increase the acidity of the soil around it more as blueberries like low pH. I have given them some mixed leafmold mulch and I only water with rainwater but I should try and find some pine leafmold or something.

Next up is one of my 'U' shaped raised beds, made out of pallets. Across one side of my plot there's a steep slope, so I made these to try and level it up. They're 3 pallets wide all the way round, with a space one pallet wide, two pallets deep, in the middle of the U. I have two of these U beds facing each other. They're a few years old now and starting to rot, plus the couch grass has got into the beds, so at some point I'll need to do something different here. They've been good while they lasted though.

In this piccie are some short rows of brassicas I've just sown, to transplant elsewhere later on. There's already some couch grass poking through, darn. To the left is where I've had most of my over wintered chard, leeks and corn salad, under some environmesh.

Here you can see the change in height, I'm standing in the lowest spot.

Just to left are two small beds of garlic, where I had my early potatoes last year. Today I moved the enviromesh over these to protect them from leek moth caterpillars

And beside that is my new hugel bed, currently under plastic. I've made it in a natural dip: first a layer of small logs from the buddliea cuttings, then smaller sticks, then bramble leafmold, then old compost from the tomatoes at home. I took photos as I went along, so will share them another time. I'm going to plant two squshes in it this year.

Up in one of my U beds I've left a couple of parsnips to go to seed. The flowers will be good for wildlife first and maybe I'll get self sown parsnips too. Under the enviromesh behind is most of my overwintered brassicas (mainly PSB and kale)

Here you can see it from the other side, near the top of my plot. I have a bramble hedge all the way down the left (East) side which produces lots of tasty blackberries for free!

Behind me are the two dwarf Apple trees I showed last time, here they are again as a reminder

I could go even more but that's enough for now, I hope you enjoyed Part 2 of the tour!

 

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