One job I definitely wanted to get done this winter was to finish the reorganisation of the soft-fruit section of plot #59.
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Tag: gooseberry
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Plot #59 Update: June 2018
Right, we’ll take it as read that it’s too damn hot and drier than a teetotaller’s liquor cabinet. Otherwise, things aren’t looking too bad down on Plot #59. As long as we can keep on top of the irrigation requirements, we ought to be able to keep everything alive long enough for the temperatures to […]
A year has rolled on by since I posted the first Year in Review piece here on Notes From the Allotment, and a lot has changed down on Plot #59. After three years of hard graft, we’ve finally reached the point where almost the entire plot has been transformed from a weed-choked, debris-strewn nightmare into […]
With the weather holding dry and fair last week, I took the opportunity to spend some time down at Plot #59 and make a start on of the more essential winter maintenance jobs: pruning our soft-fruit bushes. Soft-fruit crops are among the most useful you can grow on an allotment. They’re perennial, so once they’re […]
Summertime (down on Plot #59) and the harvests are mighty! Here’s what we’ve been picking for the last couple of weeks: Our four varieties of courgette are all producing like crazy, as you can see from the above. Not a few of those ended up in this year’s batch of courgette and tomato chutney, now […]
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Plot #59 Update: May 2016
May was a manic month down on Plot #59, and no mistake. My plate is particularly full at the moment with revision for my RHS Level 2 exams in mid June, so please do excuse me if I whizz through this month’s update. Projects / Maintenance As well as sorting out an old compost bed […]
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Let’s Hear It for Soft Fruit Flowers
The merry month of May is when blossom season really gets going. Whilst the big, showy masses of apple, cherry and early strawberry flowers are grabbing the bulk of the attention and hogging the photo opps, I thought I’d take a closer look at what’s going on in the soft fruit patch down at Plot […]
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Plot #59 Update: April 2016
“April is the cruellest month,” said T. S. Eliot, in the opening line of his epic poem ‘The Wasteland’. He could well have been referring to the tricks that April seems to enjoy playing with the weather. Last year April served up a prolonged, scorching heatwave, followed by a thoroughly miserable, damp cold-snap. This year […]
I swung by Plot #59 this afternoon on the way back from a volunteering session for Incredible Edibles Prestwich, raking over the new raised beds in the polytunnels, to get the third of my second early potato trenches dug while the weather was good enough for digging. Strolling up the middle of the plot, I […]
January is the traditional time to post a year-in-review piece, but for me, the start of the sowing and growing season – with the last of the previous year’s over-wintered veg crops being harvested or cleared away and the first of this year’s plants being sown and planted out – seems a good time to […]