Thursday 10th May - Seed planting, shelter, saws and mud...

Up at the plot today, straight away as there was no rain! Just grey skies...

Firstly, we bumped into the new community building at Rosendale Road Allotments which is in the process of being built:

The new community building in the process of being built

Then upward, up to the allotment; today was the first day for 4 weeks that we felt comfortable to venture straight to the plot and work without the fear we would have to stop re: rain - as our new shelter (an old gazebo from Rathbone) would keep us dry if it did rain at all.

The new shelter in case of rain...

We continued with our planting from the previous week (in which we only planted a few tomatoes) and planted in propagators - we had brought the seeds the week before, and managed to almost fill the propagators ready for planting out in a few weeks...

Searching and choosing the seeds to plant in the propagators

We planted pea's, broad beans, sweetcorn, watermelon, okra, cucumber, marrow,  some salad and mustard!

While some of us planted seeds, some of us laid some wood down for a temporary working surface under the shelter...

... and others found metal on the site to clear which is being collected for recycling later next week...

... and others helped to clear some more grass from the plot!

Quite a busy day, with a new staff member joining us and a couple of new people joining the group, but at least we managed to stay up at the plot for the whole session

Thursday 3rd May 2012 - Choosing seeds, clearing part of the plot

The third week down at the Rathbone Gardening Project saw light rain with a few dry spots - a nice change from the constant rain of the previous weeks.

We started this week by talking about what vegetables and plants we like, and then deciding what plants we would like to grow. A couple of members of the group have purchased their own seeds for their plots already.

We then walked down to Croxted Road Garden Centre and browsed through the seeds they had on display to find the right variety of plant, and read the information on the back of the seed packet to make sure we could plant it this year.

Then, after a cup of tea and a toilet break at the local cafe, we made our way to the plot at the top of the hill. There was no shelter from the light rain so we began to clear a space for the shelter to go.

The site of the temporary shelter being cleared

Parsnips rescued from the clearing

It took a good hour to clear the plot - we found some old carrots and some parsnips which must have been planted by the previous community group who had used the plot.


    






We then settled for a spot of lunch before returning to the work and eventually finishing the clearing! It looked like this when it was finished:

Finished the clearing - ready for the shelter

We then put up the shelter and sat down to plant some seeds - unfortunately, we only had time to plant a couple of tomato seeds today, hopefully next week we'll get a chance to get all the seeds we need to plant into trays to begin germination...

The project continues on the 10th May!