Manure delivery has kept me busy!
As I write this the weather is nice and mild but we’ve had a lot of frost recently and the ground has been frozen solid for a week or so. A delivery of manure was made to the allotment at the end of January. I filled some bags of it, brought them home and put them on my chrysanth and dahlia beds. I also took some to the school where I help run the garden club and put it on the veg beds there. The rest has been barrowed onto the allotment beds that need it. All the beds get manured, except the root crop bed and the beds where I grow annual flowers. I tested the pH of the soil and the only bed that needed lime was the one for brassicas. This needs a higher pH to avoid clubroot. After liming this bed I can’t put manure on for a month, so I’ve filled some sacks to put on later. Because of the frosty weather I haven’t been able to dig in any of this manure but now that it’s mild I’ve done most of it.
The only veg we have for harvesting at present are cabbages. I picked the last sprouts in mid-February and pulled up the plants. In the greenhouse, I sowed the first flower seeds in January and February but most of them will be sown this month. I’ve also sown the tomatoes and peppers and more aubergines. I’ve taken the first dahlia cuttings, and the chrysanth cuttings taken in January have rooted and been potted into 7.5cm (3in) pots, with more cuttings having been taken. The exhibition onion seedlings have been potted into small yoghurt pots. Begonias, gloxinias and achimenes have been in their pots under the greenhouse staging over winter. I removed the corms and tubercles from their pots, boxed them up and put them into my propagator to start them growing again.
I’ve re-potted all my plants that were in 12.5cm (5in) pots and over. I knock the plants from their pots, remove some of the compost and replace it with fresh. The old compost that was removed doesn’t get wasted though – I mix in some more fertiliser and use it to grow potatoes and carrots in buckets and bags. Another job I’ve done in the greenhouse was to pot the shallots from 9cm (3½in) into 12.5cm (5in) pots, because the ground for planting them isn’t ready as it needs manuring.
The new shed arrived and is up now – I’ve fixed it up with shelves and nails, on which to hang tools and the hosepipe, and put all the things back which had been temporarily housed elsewhere. I’ve also fixed up a nice new fence between our front garden and next door.