Thursday 9th August 2012 - Planting out the pea's, pumpkins and okra!

Today was spent getting the allotment in good shape, and planting out the okra, pea's and pumpkins we had been keeping indoors in pots away from the dreaded slugs and snails...

It was time to plant them out, and we managed to cover the good part of a large area left aside for them > good stuff! they look great - no photographs again unfortunately, will try to get some in for next week.

The rest of the time was spent on weeding and cutting the grass, and we spotted another visitor to the plot, a 'Garden Tiger Moth'  no photo from us, but it looks like this;

Garden Tiger Moth - photo from http://www.ox.ac.uk/images/hi_res/6561_Maarten_Jacobs_-_Garden_Tiger_-_89__decline_over_35_years.jpg

More to follow - watch this space...

Thursday 2nd August 2012 - Grass cutting, weeding and ... digging!

Yes digging is back! We are preparing the pumpkin and brassica bed for some transplanted plants which we re-potted last week..

Oh, and this time the post will be just me typing because we had no camera to take photo's with...

So on with the day! On arrival, we got stuck in as usual with weeding our plot and raised beds, picking out the weeds and ensuring the plants we wanted there stayed safe from bindweed.

After this, we gave them a well deserved watering, and began on tidying the plot up, namely cutting the overgrown grass so the edges of the paths are visible.

This is important because there are a lot of uneven paths with some drops to the edges, so it is good to be able to see the paths properly. We all helped with this task.

Some of us dug and turned the soil on the pumpkin and brassica patches: you can't see them, but they are looking good!

Others continued to maintain the paths by taking out material like grass tufts, stones and bumps which can be tripped over.

It rained a few times during our visit today, but everyone left in good spirits, and we are getting ready for planting out the pumpkins, squashes and peas next week!

Thursday 26th July 2012 - Frogs, beans, pea's, pots and... poison

So, today was the day we introduced poison onto the plot. It was not a light decision, but we decided the slugs and snails had just eaten tooooooooo much of our plants.

 We go a couple of surprises when we arrived > As you can see from the photo on the left, we have our first pea! And the photo on the right shows our first beans! Good going team... Now hopefully these will be followed by more vegetables!


After looking at our plants, we ventured down to the garden centre and proceeded to buy a large pot of slug pellets, here is a link to the brand; http://www.bayeradvanced.com/insects-pests/products/dual-action-snail-slug-killer-bait/questions-answers - as you can see, it say's it is safe to use on edible crops, and although not everyone at the allotment uses them, most do, and most people seem to be fine there...

 So. Before we applied the pellets, we decided to re-pot some of the plants we had re-grown from seed - the pumpkins, squashes, okra and pea plants.

We put some compost into pots, then made holes for the plant to rest into, before carefully transplanting the seedling and its roots into its own pot and firming the soil around it... lots of transplanting today...

Re-potted Okra...

...pumpkins and squashes...

... and pea's!

After finishing the re-potting, and on our tidy up of the plot, we found the little fella above (can you find him?) - in the 'pond' (bucket underground) the last group left at the plot... he was happy to be photographed briefly... then, it was about time to leave the activity and go home.

Raised beds on 26th July 2012