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Extra space!
The allotment next to ours has changed hands. He'd been waiting two years for a plot, the queue is around 20-30 people at present. There's more turnover on plots than you might think - older people move to residential care and leave their plots. Around half of new people coming in will only last one year. Those who stay more than a year are pretty likely to stay a long time, but the one year turnover combined with people moving out of the area does mean that the waiting list is long, but not forever.
The new guy (very sensibly) is not trying to work it all at once. It's only a half-plot, but it wasn't all in use last year so it's more stuff to dig from scratch. As we're bursting to the seams on our plot, I asked him if we could use the unused third of his. He was fine with that as it will result in the soil being cleared, so we're going to plant our maincrop potatoes there.
We had a good session today in spite of the rain. I've dug over the carrot patch to be. Lots of remains of roots from the old raspberry canes that I moved to a better position (they were the remnants left when the previous plot holder dug out the good ones). I salvaged the bits worth having, fed them lots of manure and planted them with sensible spacing and I think they will crop quite well this year. Carrots like fine soil, so I've been breaking down lumps, raking the surface and generally getting it to the proverbial 'fine tilth'. I going to leave it a week or two to let the first flush of weed seeds germinate, then I'll hoe them down and plant the carrots.
Richard dug over the new spud patch - it will need going over again as there's plenty of couch grass and the like, but the potatoes should out-compete the worst of it. We've put some clear plastic over it, which will help the soil warm up faster.
Weeded an area where we wanted lettuces and planted some young plants that we bought at a swop session. (We were late getting our lettuce seeds sown, but we were organising a convention at the time...)
It's all action at the moment. We're both pretty stiff after all the digging, but I'm far less stressed than I was this morning (and I was getting backache from stress, so I'm certainly no worse off than I was)
The plot looks amazing. I'll have to get Richard to take some fresh pictures.
The new guy (very sensibly) is not trying to work it all at once. It's only a half-plot, but it wasn't all in use last year so it's more stuff to dig from scratch. As we're bursting to the seams on our plot, I asked him if we could use the unused third of his. He was fine with that as it will result in the soil being cleared, so we're going to plant our maincrop potatoes there.
We had a good session today in spite of the rain. I've dug over the carrot patch to be. Lots of remains of roots from the old raspberry canes that I moved to a better position (they were the remnants left when the previous plot holder dug out the good ones). I salvaged the bits worth having, fed them lots of manure and planted them with sensible spacing and I think they will crop quite well this year. Carrots like fine soil, so I've been breaking down lumps, raking the surface and generally getting it to the proverbial 'fine tilth'. I going to leave it a week or two to let the first flush of weed seeds germinate, then I'll hoe them down and plant the carrots.
Richard dug over the new spud patch - it will need going over again as there's plenty of couch grass and the like, but the potatoes should out-compete the worst of it. We've put some clear plastic over it, which will help the soil warm up faster.
Weeded an area where we wanted lettuces and planted some young plants that we bought at a swop session. (We were late getting our lettuce seeds sown, but we were organising a convention at the time...)
It's all action at the moment. We're both pretty stiff after all the digging, but I'm far less stressed than I was this morning (and I was getting backache from stress, so I'm certainly no worse off than I was)
The plot looks amazing. I'll have to get Richard to take some fresh pictures.
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Congrats on plot appropriation!
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