Garlic and Broad Beans

A glorious morning down on t'allotment!  The sun was shining, the birds were singing, the transport planes taking off and other people were slogging away at work.  Me?  Oh, I was slogging away digging up another patch of dirt. 

It's loverly dirt, all crumbly and aerated with worms.  Nice stuff!  I found a few taters and a bit of bindweed.  It's going to be a matter of keeping it under control.  After a cup of coffee (or two) and a slice of cake (or two), in went garlic and aquadulce broad beans.

Then a bit of a hack around with a mattock to grub up some bramble roots.  After that I decided to pull up some bolted carrots and parsnips.  I am now the proud owner of buckets of parsnip and carrot seeds.  I wonder if they turn out to be viable?  I bet the ones that escaped will sprout up everywhere and the ones in the shed will go on strike.

My first crop - a fine growth of black plastic.

What is Plot 91?

It's my allotment, just taken on in October 2011.  It's a wee bit overgrown, but has an abundance of slugs and frogs. 

And a fantastic apple tree down the end.

So far I have shed blood clearing brambles, removed the shards of shattered glass that could have been for a cold frame and drank a lot of coffee in my shed.  I like this gardening malarkey!

There's a lot of black plastic kicking around on it, an easy way to kill off the weeds, provided the gales don't make it into an impromptu kite. 

Having invested in some gooseberry bushes and a rhubarb crown I have marked out my first bed and had a trial dig or two.  The ground changed from light and dusty to concrete in the space of a footstep.  Time to pack up and hope the forecast rain will soften it a bit.

The water butt is a huge galvanised cylinder, a paladin, a rubbish bin from the days when the council flats used them - they're all plastic now.  Problem: the tap has come loose, to I have to mastic it in place.  Easy enough, except that the darn thing had brambles growing over the base and it would not tip over.  More pruning and chopping and I managed to capsize it.  Now all I have to do is to wait for it to dry out, then crawl inside to fix it.  I'll be like Huckleberry Finn, living in a barrel.