Ground level

I've been doing some work in the garden these last few days. I can't neglect the garden, even though there's always lots to do at the allotment. So every so often I turn my attention to the garden.  At the moment it is still needing to be cleared of winter debris, leaves, weeds that are starting to grow and cutting back the remains of the dead foliage from last year.  There's a lot of moss on the beds too, so I have found it easier to get down on my hands and knees and do some hand weeding.  I found a useful hand tool in the shed which is like a claw.  I don't know what it is called but it is very useful for scraping the soil and removing moss and surface weeds and debris. At ground level even the moss is beautiful.

Getting down so close makes me see things better.  There are lots of ladybirds coming out of hibernation now and many of them are hiding in the stems of the dead flowers I'm cutting back.  I move them to a safe place when I find them, and hope they will survive.   Many of the spring flowers are quite small so I'm admiring them. Getting down to ground level I can see their beauty.

I had my friend  Holly to keep me company, who took over my kneeling mat. I think she thought I had put it there for her, but really it was to help my painful knees.

I picked some flowers to enjoy in the house.

Allotment pond

When we took over plot 8 a year ago we were delighted to see that it had a pond. Like the rest of the plot it was very overgrown with plants and weeds. The plot also had a serious drainage problem.

Once the drainage was sorted and we could walk around without getting stuck in the mud, we were able to see the pond better.  The pond is filled from a drain running from the top end of the plot and from the plot above us. When it gets full of water it flows out into a drain down the plot and out onto the lane. We think there is a spring somewhere which is why we have all this  water on the plot.

As we started digging over the plot we noticed a few frogs and toads   They were probably a bit disgruntled at being disturbed and losing their hiding places under stones and raised beds. Later on in the Spring we were delighted to see frog spawn in the pond.  We checked it regularly and looked forward to seeing tadpoles grow into frogs. Then we got a spell of dry weather, the water supply to the pond stopped, the pond dried up and the frog spawn disappeared.  This was when we discovered that the pond liner had a hole in it.

We decided that this year we would have a project to sort the pond out, clear the plant area, put a new liner in and replant. As there seemed to be an abundance of yellow lysimachia and yellow irises, I have been investigating other moisture loving plants which would grow in that area.

the pond is somewhere in the middle of this

Well so far this year we have been busy getting the vegetable beds prepared and haven't got around to thinking about how to tackle the pond.  And with all the rain we have had this year the pond has been quite full of water. So of course the frogs are back.  When I checked a week or so ago, there were four frogs and a good amount of spawn.  Since then the spawn seems to have increased.  I think there is both frog and toad spawn. The worry now of course is that if we get  another dry spell, the pond will dry up and we will lose the tadpoles again.

But now is not the right time to clear the pond.  We will wait until the time is right, when the tadpoles have grown up and we are not too busy with growing our vegetables.  I hope we will be able to work on it this year.

frog spawn in the pond

A new cold frame out of old materials

Our collection of wood and other materials continues to be recycled to make things for our allotment and my husband is enjoying the challenge of building things  for as little cost as possible. After all, allotments are about not spending much money.

Last year he built a temporary cold frame out of  bricks and an old shower screen. It was lovely, but sadly had to be dismantled, we needed the bricks for other projects. We have a cheap plastic Aldi cold frame on plot 10b but it will not be big enough for hardening off all our seedlings. So my latest request has been to build a cold frame for plot 8.

Faced with a pile of wood and the instruction to spend as little as possible, this is what he came up with. It's made using wood from the sheds he demolished when we took the plots on.  The frames on the top opening doors are made from pallet wood.  The hinges came from the doors which he made the shed out of.  The polycarbonate was left over when he built the polytunnel.

That's a cheap cold frame.

Flower love

For as long as I can remember I have had a love of flowers. The village where I grew up, before it got taken over by housing estates was surrounded by fields. I have memories of fields full of buttercups, buzzing with bees. I loved the buttercups but not the bees, I thought they would sting me.

My mother owned a shop--an ironmongers-- we lived at the back of it. It was one of a row of little shops in the village.  We didn't have gardens, just backyards.  I remember one year when we had seeds for sale in the shop and  my two brothers and I sowed flowers seeds in two small beds in the yard.  There were Virginia stock, candytuft and cornflowers.  I loved the flowers. At the back of our house was some land, it was known as 'the spare ground'.  I don't know why it was called this, but I used to play there with my friends. Sometimes I played there on my own and I used to wander around picking the wild flowers which grew there. There were foxgloves, the bees used to hide in the bell shaped flowers, I wasn't keen on that.

I remember my mum taking me to visit someone nearby and it had a beautiful cottage garden. I felt quite overwhelmed by all the lovely flowers. At the back of the  row of shops  where we lived there was another house with a lovely garden.  One day my friend and I were playing nearby and noticed that the garden had a beautiful display of lupins. I can still remember now how colourful they were. My friend and I decided that we would pick some of these lupins for our mums.  We each took our bunches of lupins home thinking how pleased our mums would be, only to be shouted at and made to take them back to the owner.  We were only about 4 or 5 years old I think.  I love lupins and always try to have a few growing in my garden, they still remind me of my childhood and I often think of the time I stole those lupins.

I have my own garden now and my love of flowers has not waned. I have difficulty coming out of a garden centre without buying any plants and I have reached the stage where if I want to plant something new I have to dig another plant up first to make some space.

I particularly like flowers that I can cut to bring in the house. For a year or two now I have been promising myself I will have a cut flower border either in the garden or down at the allotment.  I have decided that this year I really will do it. We have more space at the allotment now that we have two plots, I also have a spare
raised bed in the garden where we used to grow vegetables before we got the allotments.

I have bought a selection of annual seeds from Higgledy Garden and I also have various packets of flower seeds which have come free with gardening magazines. I'm dreaming of a patch filled with colour, butterflies flitting around and the gentle hum of bees. I'm all ready to start sowing as soon as the soil warms up.
Fortunately I've overcome my fear of bees.

Packing up for the allotment

 As we were packing up the car ready to go to the allotment I thought it must be like setting off on an expedition with the amount of stuff we sometimes take with us.  There are the essentials, flasks, milk, cake, fruit, maybe lunch too.  Then  there's the all important wellies with an extra pair of socks. My husband's tool bag goes in and any garden tools we may need. We have a collection of tools in the allotment sheds, but some tools like my favourite border spade and fork are too good to be left at the allotment where they could be stolen. So they go in the car every time we go.

Those are all the essentials for every allotment visit, but then there are all the extras.  Sometimes there are bags of garden or kitchen waste for the compost heap. This week there have been trays of plants for the woodland garden, trays of strawberry plants for the polytunnel and bags of compost. It's not surprising my husband said we couldn't fit any thing else in.

What do you take to the allotment with you?