Spring has arrived at the allotment

We've not been down to the allotment much recently, partly due to bad weather,  but also because of my ankle injury which meant that when the lane was muddy and the allotment paths slippy it was a bit of an unsafe place for me. But at last Spring arrived and fine weather, so off we went to get some much needed work done.

I was greeted by one of my favourite flowers in bloom, the marsh marigold in the pond. As I took a closer look I noticed that there was no sign of the frog spawn which had been there for a few weeks. I wondered if the rain had washed it away as the pond was pretty full up of water. But no, on closer inspection I could see little tadpoles swimming around happily. Peeping out from under the marsh marigold was a frog, I spotted another one down at the bottom of the pond. The frog was very quiet and still and didn't seem to mind me. 

Another welcome sight was the daffodils bordering the path, the bright lime green euphorbia under the sycamore tree and the tulips flowering in the big tub.

The last time we went to the allotment a few weeks ago, we moved the blueberry bushes from the fruit area where they were a bit overcrowded to another bed where they would have more space. They were looking fine after their move. The mulch you can see in the photo is shredded pine needles. We always shred our Christmas tree branches to keep for the blueberries as they like an acid soil. I have heard that this is a good thing to do.

Looking at the rest of the fruit bed we could see that the fruit frame was falling down, so some work will have to be done on it soon before we need to start netting the fruit against the birds. Richard dismantled the frame and repaired the support for the apple tree.

The rhubarb is growing really well and we should be pulling some of the stalks soon.

I'm a bit late planting the potatoes, I would normally have them done by now. So that was an important job to get done. We started work on preparing the potato containers with compost. I planted the first earlies in six of the potato bags. The variety is Maris Bard. I put compost in the bottom of the bags to about a third of the depth and sprinkled in a bit of bone meal. The bags are quite big so I put four potatoes in each bag. Then topped with more compost. When the potatoes start to grow and the shoots show through the compost I will top up with more compost. The next lot of potatoes to plant will be the second early Charlotte a salad potato.

Another important job was to weed the asparagus bed. I also fed it with some blood, fish and bone. I was pleased to see a few little asparagus spears starting to come through.

The fine weather didn't last long, it started to rain, but at least we got a good number of jobs done.

Asparagus bed completed

It has always been my daughter Helen's wish to grow asparagus on the allotment, but I wasn't too sure.  It sounded  to me like a difficult plant to grow.  So I kept trying to put her off the idea. However, realising we had a spare bed at the allotment on plot8 which seemed to have the right growing conditions I decided we could have a go.

As we didn't know anything about growing asparagus, I spent some time reading up on how to grow it.  The hard work seems to be in the preparation of the ground. You need a well dug, deep bed in a sunny spot and free from perennial weeds. The bed had already been well dug and weeded some time ago but  we dug it over again and removed as many of the weed roots as we could and also incorporated lots of well rotted manure.

The crowns arrived last week so we spent last weekend planting them up. We had bought  two different varieties--Backlim and Gijnlim, five crowns of each. They're a bit weird looking with all those roots.

 

We were quite keen to get the planting  right, so with our tape measure and instructions at the ready, we measured the trenches very carefully for width, depth and spacing.

 

The crowns are now in place but we will only be able to cut a couple spears from each crown this year and a few more next year. Hopefully now they are in place all the hard work has been done and they will keep on growing for several years.

 

Ploughed fields and an asparagus bed

We've just returned from a weekend staying with our daughter in Bedfordshire.  Our journey to her home takes us along the A1 and as we travel there at this time of year I love to see the ploughed fields ready for planting or sowing. In fact some of them were already showing signs of green and I wondered what was growing there. There's something about a newly dug over and manured bed which I love. There's a sense of freshness and newness of having got rid of the old and preparation for the new. To me there's the excitement and expectancy of what is to come. Later in the year when we visit again we will see what crops are growing.

At our allotment it's very much the same but on a much smaller scale. We have beds dug over, manured and waiting for the new season of growth. One particular bed is part of a new project for this year and is quite exciting. We are going to have an asparagus bed. This is something we have been thinking about for some time, but needed to find the right place to grow it. We have changed our minds several times about which bed to grow the asparagus, but it had to be right because it is a perennial vegetable so once planted could not be moved. Finally we decided it would be grown on Plot 8 in a bed which wasn't being used as part of our crop rotation. The bed has been well prepared, dug over and weeded several times to get as many of the perennial weed roots out as possible, manure has been incorporated into the soil. It is now ready and waiting to be planted up. And more excitement--the plants have finally arrived in the post. I think I know what we will be doing this weekend!