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Plot #59

Spuds Out, Leeks In

Honestly, I don’t know what it is about leeks, but I seem to have a mental blank when it comes to remembering to get them in the ground in good time…

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Plot #59

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 […]

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Advice Plot #59

Thinning and Trimming Leek Seedlings

I’ve been growing leeks using the same method for the past three or four years now and it seems to be working quite nicely. Rather than tray-sowing and then pricking out individual leeks into modules, I use deep plastic troughs – the sort of thing you can find in most large supermarkets at this time […]

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Plot #59

Our Allotment Year in Review: 2016/17 Edition

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 […]

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Monthly Updates Plot #59

Plot #59 Update: September 2016

September turned out to be a really good month, weather-wise, so I ought to have been down at Plot #59 for most of it, working my backside off to finish a few infrastructure projects, clearing the last few patches of stubborn weeds, sowing a few winter crops and prepping for next year’s growing season. Instead, […]

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Monthly Updates Plot #59

Plot #59 Update: August 2016

Ah, the long lazy days of high Summer! (What’s that? Summer? Has it arrived yet? Are we due one? Answers on a postcard to the usual address…) Definitely long, but not so lazy if you’re an allotment holder, with early crops finishing and going over that need clearing away, and later crops just starting to […]

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Plot #59

The Leeks Are Finally In

It’s been a funny old year. The weather in May and June was so atrocious -preventing any serious attempt at weed clearing and/or cultivating down at Plot #59 – it threw all my planting and sowing plans out of whack. Which is why I only just got round to planting out this year’s leeks a […]

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Plot #59

Our Allotment Year in Review: 2015/16 Edition

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 […]

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Plot #59

Now Sowing: Leeks and Broad Beans

There’s always a temptation – one I admit I succumbed to when I first started growing – to start sowing seeds at what seems to be the earliest possible opportunity. We get that first warm(ish) weekend in mid-February or early March, when surely Spring can only be a few days around the corner, and the […]

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Monthly Updates Plot #59

Plot #59 Update: January 2016

There hasn’t been an awful lot of activity on Plot #59 this month. Rain has stopped play most days. Admittedly we haven’t been anywhere near as badly-hit as some folks have and my sympathies and best wishes really do go out to anyone whose plot has been water-logged or flooded. But still, apart from a […]