How it looks now....

It looks amazing at the moment, I love June! 

Everything's so green, unfortunately so are the weeds. I

 planted spinach, romanesco, baby corn, radishes and more salad leaves the weekend before last and it's all coming up.

The peas have almost reached the top of the netting and are covered in flowers and excitement of excitements theres a pod on a couple of them.

To top off the excitement level the strawberry plant has produced the biggest fruit, its not the best photo ever but...

And here are the peas, again just taken on my phone, (I prefer bluetooth)...

I don't know how to express how happy, optimistic and hopeful the whole thing makes me feel. About everything.

It's also astonishing

 how cross slugs make me...

Fat, slimy, buggers.

Anyway... off to make dinner, with salad from the 

allotment with a huge grin on my face.

Netting and first harvest.

We've had our first harvest of salad leaves and radishes. It's pathetic how thrilled I am by it all. It amuses me no end and just seems so right on the most basic human  level. 

The hunter gatherer in me is happy.

In an effort to stop the birds eating everything, I sprung out of bed at 5.30am and covered the brassicas in chicken wire which I'm now in the process of replacing with netting bought from ebay. 

I've got loads of the dead apple tree left and striped several of its straighter branches down to use for the uprights and its all looking more covered (although there is an element of the heath robinson about it all). Now for the slugs, its time for more nematodes which really do seem to have been working. This morning though I saw a slug in amongst the peas and I'm not happy about it. Anyway I'm blathering....

Feeling very sad...

Just been over the road to see what's been happening after two days of hideously early starts and late finishes. The horrible fat pigeons have been at my brussels and broccoli... is it not enough for them that they munch through a half ton of bird seed in my garden? 

I need to get some net and cover them all up, but I've got another 2 days of early starts/late finishes and I know they'll had the lot by then.

Horrible fat stupid things.

Even my trusty helper isn't cheering me up...

How's things look today...

Pretty much every morning and certainly every night I go over the road, armed with a cup of tea to see what if anything is happening, and it never ceases to amaze me how there will be nothing to see in the morning and yet by the evening there it is, waving its head above the surface. 

It also never ceases to amaze me how often and how fast the slugs get at things. I'm expanding my vocabulary of expletives...*******.

Nematodes do seem to have worked, together with home made slug collars cut from plastic bottles with pinking shears... not to mention slug pellets and beer. How can something so repulsive require no much attention.

Anyway, here are some pictures of how it all looks at the moment..:

It's even possible to see the shed of wonky shed fame, it's not looking as green and exciting as people whose allotments have been going for years, but I hope given time it'll look greener than it does at the moment.

I've counted round my bean poles and of the 20 seeds planted, only 11 are coming up so far, but hopefully it's still early days.

Today as well I've planted for the second time my Romanesco seeds, nothing happened last time so maybe its the seed or maybe it was the badger stomping over their heads.

This week might be the week for our first produce from our plot, the salad leaves look good, but I'm not sure how big they're meant to be?

It's all proving to be a wee bit unscientific...but I'm having fun and as long as I manage to save something from the slugs I'll be happy.

Greenhouse

I've got a greenhouse, a proper one, not another comedy plastic one (which had impaled itself in the wind twice) Hopefully this one won't require repairing with sellotape! 

Its taken a while, but general nervousness not withstanding, it's glazed and up. 

I've constructed possibly the worst standing for it using the middle pieces of the pallets I made my raised bed with. One leg is shorter than the others and no-ones allowed to touch it, but it works (so far!).

What else....? I was given a water butt which is proving very useful in propping up Wonky Shed, just need some guttering now.

It's the most exciting stage of the year so far for me now...

Planting so far......

So far my potatoes are all in and some are already waving! My peas are in and resolutely doing nothing, ditto carrots and beetroot. My radishes are waving but with reservations and my parsnips appear to be sulking. The salad is whooshing away (maybe slight exageration) and the raspberries that lovely Caroline gave me really are whooshing away. 

What else, the calabrese is crawling along, and the chard is hiding... and that's about it for the stuff already in the ground. In the small plastic greenhouse I have tomatoes, herbs of various sorts and the most pathetic excuse for brussel sprouts ever.. (so I have to confess I bought some plants instead). My sweetcorn is germinating indoors, along with some broccoli and pretty much every window sill in the place has a chilli plant on it.

Life is good.

It's landed...

My allotment landed last year, October sometime with labels like "You've got the one that looks like a concentration camp" and instructions that if it wasn't tended regularly I'd be out on my ear.

What can I say about a piece of land rented for £16 a year, other than I love it.

It's a very odd shape, has a Deer fence, two compost bins and a very wonky shed.

When I first got it, it looked like this....

It's taken alot of clearing, cursing and blood (I'm clumsy with a hammer) but now it looks more like this..

I've books on allotments and vegetables coming out of my ears but I still feel like I don't know what I'm doing but its fantastic and I'm still at the pathetically excited when anything sticks its head above the soil stage... sad I know.