All change!

So I went up to the allotment this evening, with Baz, and it looks really different than when I was last there, about two and a half weeks ago. I couldn't believe how much sweet pea growth there is- tonnes of it- and I could really appreciate how many hours Baz had put in whilst I've been visiting brothers in different parts of England these last couple of weekends. He'd created some more beds, and done some planting out, namely cauliflower and broccoli.

 Here is the (Sam's) squash that I planted out this evening.

Here are the crazy sweet peas.

We'll be going up again at the weekend, probably spend time there on both days, it's our big 'plant out' weekend, now that the winds have hopefully come and gone (though our neighbour still thinks there are some on their way) and everything is ready now to go out.

Have decided I'm going to join VON, as it's only £12 for the year. Exciting times!!

Oh yeh, I took all the seedlings that were growing nicely on our windowsill and are now ready to be transplanted up to the allotment this evening, didn't have time to sort them out, but will do so on the weekend.

Baz had a couple of ideas for the allotment today, which I didn't really like, I have this issue with using a lot of plastic, I just hate that it's such a planet-hungry substance, takes so long to biodegrade, and would rather use other materials if possible. I think it's too easy to just go into Homebase or wherever and see something that could be useful for the allotment, without thinking of the environmental impact of said item. I know it sounds like I'm being all high and mighty, but I also admit to being a sucker for plastic things. Just try stopping me from buying random, pointless garden ornaments made out of, yes, plastic. I guess I just want to make as little impact as possible, hence trying to do things stock-free and organic, and I don't want to get sucked into buying things for which there might be more environmentally-friendly alternatives. (When they make cardboard or wooden ornaments I'll buy those, haha). One idea Baz had was to get some plastic sheets the exact size of the beds to lay over them when they're not in use, to suppress weeds. I said I would rather use cardboard instead, which you can get from supermarkets for free and which can mulch down into the soil. Baz said, very dishearteningly, "I knew you wouldn't like my ideas".

The other idea was to get some of that cloche material and make detachable windbreaks for all the beds. I said I also didn't want to do that, partly because I feel like we have got around the wind problem by doing what our neighbour suggested and waiting until the end of May before putting anything out, and I said maybe we could do it for one or two of the beds, but I didn't want to spend lots of money getting loads of them.

I am quite good at crushing Baz's allotment ideas. I don't really mean to do it as such, I think he just has lots of ideas a lot of the time and I guess I am quite negative so I'm bound to be idea-crushing at times. Some of his ideas are awesome.

Oh, Baz just reminded me that he fixed our wheelbarrow. Which is soooo good because it was such an effort pushing it around with the front wheel not working. As you can maybe imagine.

Ok well until next time amigos xxxx