Allotment doings.

It's just been lightening spectacularly.  Red sheet lightening brightening the sky and bright fork lightening shooting across accompanied by deep rumbles, but still no rain.  Just as well I water the allotment earlier, should have done the garden as well.

The artichoke is growing well, lots of heads on it, looking forward to harvesting it and seeing what it tastes like, it looks pretty good when you first come onto the allotment.

The slightly cooler weather has brought the slugs out in force, they were chomping their way though the strawberries and have taken bites out of loads, hoping that the frog I disturbed in the strawberry patch will come back.  I don't know where the frog goes to keep cool, not seen any ponds or puddles around our end of the allotments.

There was a dark black spider with bright red spots on his back up by the brassicas, don't know if we have poisonous spiders now, but he sure looked as though he wanted to be.

Sweetcorn is poking it's furry end out of the middle of the leaves, the courgettes are growing, will be able to pick some soon I hope, have just pop the first few pea pods (it's like eating sweets),  there are small tomatoes on the plants in the well ventilated green house (most of the glass is missing lol).  The strawberries are still producing and the raspberries are snidered with juicy plump fruit, yum:0)

Greenhouse

Spent yesterday up the allotment playing snails.  We moved a greenhouse from an adjoining plot on to ours, but of course it wasn't as simple as we first thought!

We did well taking the glass out (only broke two panes) but then we looked at how it was tethered down we discovered that they had sunk some long 2x2 wooden batons (think Stonehenge deep) into the earth which were then screwed to very long horizontal pieces at the bottom!  They didn't intend for it to move.  So after digging the greenhouse out we then had to dig a very deep trench on our plot to sink it back in, I've only got short legs and had to be hauled back out after getting stuck in the trench!

This is where the snail part comes in because then we picked the frame of the greenhouse up and walked it across on our backs to where we wanted it, it must have looked very odd.  So we are now the proud owners of a greenhouse, lovely fresh warm tomatoes this summer.  With the greenhouse and the rhubarb we planted last week it's looking like a proper allotment:0)

Allotment Paths

Got paths in now, it's really beginning to take on some framework.  Have rubbed skin off my finger cutting the carpets to go under the bark chippings to make the paths though, but at least you couldn't see it oozing for the mud.  Gwen has got her bike wheel on a post for the peas to grow up and in even more exciting new there are green shoots appearing that aren't weeds - no they are things we've planted and wanted to grow, garlic, leeks and the onions are very nearly ready to send out green shoots:0)

Allotment

Up the allotment doing some Ho Ho Ho ing, sorry is it a tad too early for Christmas jokes...

Allotment make over

Had an exciting day on the allotment without doing a lot yesterday.  Had a man with a big tractor come and dig our plot over, so worth it, saved hours and hours and hours of sweaty digging.  It is now a blank canvas for planning out where things are to go, and we can start the good bit, growing stuff:0).  The farmer said our soil is really good too and he must know his onions.  Will have proper harvest time next year, yeah.