Unfamiliar territory.

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I feel a bit at a loose end today. I’ve not got anything to do on the allotment, and an afternoon off. What am I going to do, as my wife says I may have to spend some time with her ! I can feel a panic attack coming on !

You see I’ve had yesterday (Friday) off to (a) enjoy the sunshine, (b) get some work done on the allotment and the garden and © because it was my birthday.

This is almost perfect weather for me, nice rainstorms and then a few days of heat and sunshine. It does make the weeds come up but at least the plot is draining well so I can get on it.

I managed to build a bit of hard standing at the bottom of the plot near the shed so I can stack my chicken wire hoops without the weeds tangling them up. Easily done and very satisfying to get it done.

I cut the grass around the compost bins and the shed, and did a lot of weeding and hoeing and got it looking happy again. It does look very good (or at least a lot better than it has in previous years).

I tied back the sweet peas on the shed, It’s a lovely perennial sweet pea but it does sprawl on the floor a lot, and needs tying back or I can’t use the path for flowers!

Changed the beer in the slug traps (I think I’ve reduced the slug population by about 150 in the last 2 weeks). I’m still trying to work out how often to change the beer, and at the moment I am looking at every three days or so, any more than that and the beer does go a bit mouldy. I must point out that normally opened beer does not last that long around me, so that’s a bit of an odd situation.

I picked the last of the spinach and replaced it with a few tomato plants that I had spare (I grew too many). I also put another 2 spare tomatoes in big pots and put them amongst the fruit bushes. In total I have had about half a kilo of spinach off the plants, not bad as they do bolt a lot around here.

The plants themselves are going well. The mange tout are covered in flowers, the broad bean pods are about ready to be picked, the beetroot is going great guns, there are small courgettes nearly ready.

I’d expect the new potatoes to be ready around now.

The sweetcorn seems to have recovered really well and is looking very healthy at the moment (considering it was very yellow a few weeks ago).

The lettuce is ready for picking. So we shall have one of those for next week.

The strawberries are now turning pink, and a few have been taken by something, so I am hoping that the beer traps do their thing. The black currants are turning already so they shouldn’t be long.

My neighbour on the site is going to go mad when he’s there next. He’s a very elderly chap, and his son came up yesterday and picked ALL the broad beans and then pulled up the plants, leaving a lot of small pods that would still develop into decent pods. Oh dear.

Well I spent a lot of yesterday afternoon relaxing in the sunshine with a nice cold beer. Last year I got (for a man) probably the best present you could ever get. It’s a hammer, and the claw end is a bottle opener, so that’s been getting some use yesterday and will be in evidence this afternoon.

Now it’s off to collect a few friends for a BBQ this afternoon…

Happy gardening all.

(sorry photo’s on the camera still and not transfered them yet … maybe tomorrow)