Allotment 2011

Some of my longer term readers may remember that around this time last year our family got an allotment and all last summer I blogged about it’s progress. We got loads and loads of vegetables and even won an award for how good it was. Then of course the autumn came, I went off to university and the allotment didn’t really do much over the winter. But it is of course now spring and I’m at home so it’s time to see what’s happening down at the allotment!

So I arrived there yesterday morning with my Mum and Dad so we could plant some things and we were all surprised to find that the rhubarb looked like this:

Thanks to the unusually warm April we have had so far the rhubarb that we planted months and months ago shot up over the last few weeks and now it’s ready to harvest. You’re not normally supposed to harvest rhubarb until at least May but it’s a variety which you have to harvest earlier and the weather must have made it grow quicker.

And here is what our whole allotment looks like now, with handy labels about where different vegetables are.

So what did we do today? Well first we weeded the far quadrant as it was a bit wild. Apparently my Mum and Dad planted this special plant over the winter which rots down and makes the soil really fertile. Some of this was left over so we had to pull that out. We then dug the soil over and made a couple of raised rows and planted the potatoes in them. Last year we had literally hundreds of potatoes and so fingers crossed we should have a whole load again this year.

Next up we weeded and dug over the section in the next quadrant along and planted carrots and parsnips in it. These are planted in shallow grooves and have tiny little seeds. We’re hoping that the carrots will be as successful as last year but parsnips are a new experiment. They are my favourite vegetable but apparently they are really hard to grow so we shall just have to see what happens there.

This year we are going to grow even more vegetables than last year but of course we only have limited space. That is why we have used grow bag things, those green bags you can see on the picture. We have put leeks in one and peas in another, though we will need to build a net thing round the peas as the birds love to eat them. There is also another grow bag thing behind the rhubarb but I cannot for the life of me remember what we put in it.

The quadrant at the front of the picture is empty at the moment but our conservatory is full of various plants which are growing a little until they can be planted and virtually all of them will be planted in the remaining quadrant. I will continue to blog about the allotment when I can and when there are things to say about it.Hopefully we will have another good year!