Open Day at the Allotments

Good blog and great pictures too :-)

I agree with Louise, good to see like-minded people sharing their knowledge with others. Vey tidy plots, lovely pink Poppies. : )))

Lovely blog. I enjoyed it thanks. Looks like you had a lovely day, I would have enjoyed it too. Everything is so slow this year in LA. May brought us a month of wind. June brought us the June glum that doesn't want to leave. Temperatures are below normal, 5 to 10 d. So I'm not only missing seeing everything in bloom by now but missing my beach days too. It seems Europe has our summer this year. Enjoy it, you guys deserve it for a change. ( but I'd like it back soon. :-) )

Great Post. I think some of the big Shows could learn from this type of 'gathering' if only they wouldn't charge so much for entry and refreshments maybe more people would attent.
Those Allotments are really well looked after and you can see the Pride folks take in it. I can tell by the way you wrote about it how much you liked it:)

I enjoyed the walk round with you,Macpat,it looks wonderful,and such a nice informal atmosphere too,by the sound of it.Do you know what the pink poppies are called please..apart from poppies,that is.Lol.I have some of these and was wondering what they were...Glad you had a lovely time....

Thanks everyone for your lovely comments.

Bloomer...I know these Poppies as Opium Poppies...they grow in abundance in this area, all self seeded.

Thanks ,Macpat,thats nice to know..

lovely kept allotments macpat, your right gardening folk are so friendly arent they, lovely pics to ;o)

What a brilliant way to send a morning!! A lot of thought went into this, with refreshments and produce sales on offer. Have never known anything similar here, but must look out for any. Many Thanks for sharing. :-))

Thanks for sharing your day out with us, Macpat! :-) I enjoyed looking around other people's allotments for a change! I have just started allotment gardening with a friend of mine from church. He had 1 & 1/2 allotments but, owing to a serious operation last year, they had got out of hand. He asked me over the winter if I'd be interested in helping him on his allotments I said yes & at the end of March we went down together & started knocking them back into shape again.

In 10 day's time we have an "inspection" for the "Best Kept Allotment" competition. I doubt very much we will win it but at least Gerry won't get a reprimand for having a very untidy allotment this year!!!

You both have achieved so much this year, Balcony!!! Don't write yourselves off quite so soon! Fingers crossed, and await news.

Thanks, David! I still have a week in which to tidy it up a bit more but after the heavy thundery downpour of Wednesday evening & a couple of showers since then the weeds will all be fighting to re-establish themselves just when I was more or less on top of them!

I spent several hours on Wednesday morning trying to clean out the weeds, especially bindweed, from the Onions & the Strawberries. The onions weren't too difficult as I'd cleaned them out a couple of weeks ago but bindweed was making its presence felt. The soil (sand?) being so dry it wasn't difficult getting them out while exposing the onions so that they could dry (?) out some more before lifting them in a week or two.

The Strawberries are a completely different story!!! The weeds, again mostly bindweed, get in the crowns of the plants & are extremely difficult to get out. It's a very frustrating, time consuming operation. I've already pegged a few runners into small pots buried underneath them in the ground with good compost. I want to repeat the operation with some more runners this Friday or Saturday. Then in the autumn we will make up a new bed & put them in for next year. I'm NOT repeating this year's experience next year!

Wednesday was an awful day everywhere, I think, Balcony :-((

I've had similar experience with the other garden I have taken on. Got all the weeds out, but were back in force this week. because of the weather, although to a lesser extent than when I began, so quicker and easier. Hopefully, by keeping ontop of the weeds, as sounds like you are doing, next year will be easier! ;-)

Perennial weeds will be missing, except for the eternally present bindweed. There are at least 3 different species of it & amongst the strawberries there is a kind that produces very thick fleshy roots & it throws out runners a couple of metres long! I don't know what colour its flowers are at the moment & have no intention of finding out either!

Annual weeds will need to be kept on top of constantly but they are pretty easy to deal with. The other "weed" is horseradish! It grows everywhere & because it produces VERY LONG, THICK roots it's almost impossible to dig out! I spent more than an hour pulling them up from all over the allotment today! I no longer try to dig them out - that will have to wait for the soil to become empty again. But because I've divided the allotments up into manageable beds it's a lot easier.