Seeds start new life in polytunnel!

Had a good weekend up at the allotment. We got lots more done and I feel like we are really starting to get somewhere now. (Do I always say that?!).

I moved about 16 raspberry canes over to their new home. I wasn't sure if I moved the 'best' ones. Some seemed much older, more established, I think in the end I moved some of the younger ones and a few slightly older ones. We have loads left so will be giving some to Mum and I'll probably post something on Greencycle (Freegle) to offer them to people.

Here's where they were:

And here's where I moved them to:

Not the most exciting pictures. I don't fully understand it to be honest but last year we had some bear fruit in early summer and some in late summer/early autumn. The early ones we cut down and the later ones we left so that when we moved them we knew which were which. The thing I don't understand is that I think it will be opposite this year so that the early ones from last year will bear fruit later on and vice versa. Is that right? Who bloody knows, as long as we get raspberries I don't really mind.

I was pretty excited to start sowing seeds in the polytunnel!!! I even felt like I knew what I was doing. My friend Suzanne and her daughter Oiana came up to visit and we put tomato, chilli and cauliflower seeds into small pots, like so:

I will be so chuffed if even one of them grows! Our friend works for this local company that sell chilli products and last year she gave us some chilli seeds, so we have ten different chilli seeds starting a new life in our polytunnel now! Me and Baz are both into our chilli- my body not so much but I still eat it!- so it will be great if we can grow it.

Baz made great progress with the paths and securing the polytunnel with paving slabs.

I'll leave you with a lovely picture of a flower that has sprung up in one of the beds....

-x-

  

February

It's been a while. I have been pretty unwell these last few months, hence why I haven't really posted. Plus it being the winter and all, we haven't been at the allotment all that much. But we've started putting the hours in again recently, including this weekend. We spent a few hours there on Saturday and the same on Sunday. One thing we did was clear a space for and erect a polytunnel which Mum bought us, which looks like this:

When we started putting it all together......

...the weather was lovely; the sun was out and it didn't even feel that cold. But gradually it got more windy, cold and wet and so whilst we were putting the polythene on it was a battle against the wind and rain.

But it's up now and I think with some extra reinforcements it should hopefully withstand the strong winds we get on the site, which start to come in March/April.

We were pretty excited about starting to build the beds and create the new paths. We bought some wood from Wickes recently, walked it up to the allotment, and voila:

So we have 10' by 4' wooden beds, which we've sunk in a little bit and they look pretty damn good. We bought some lining which we've laid down on the paths in between the beds and on top of that have put some woodchip. There's free woodchip at our site and luckily the nearest pile is pretty close, so we just go down there with our barrow and load it up.

Ah, it's all starting to take shape now. And as you can see the green manure we sowed from September time did pretty well. It wilted with the frost/snow we had about a month ago, and then we just dig it in a few weeks before we're ready to sow/plant stuff. We'll be putting in potatoes into the couple of beds you can see in this picture (above). We've started chitting some at home. We went for one lot each of an early, second early and a maincrop. Arran Pilot, Maris Peer and King Edward. Had no idea which ones to buy, but hopefully they'll all yield a good crop, and we'll have our own potatoes for several months.

We'll be going again this weekend, one job we have is to move the raspberries, which neither of us can really be bothered to do for some reason. We'll need to make sure the polytunnel is still standing. Fingers crossed... Baz will no doubt be lopping something down, that's one of his favourite pastimes at the allotment, and actually there's a tree which we're getting rid of at the bottom of the plot near the shed so he'll be doing that. I think we have radish and chilli peppers that can go in so we might put that in the polytunnel. Ok well until next time... -x-