First strawberries of the year!

Just been down the plot to see if it needed a water and noticed we had a few strawberries ready 😃

Strawberries

Strawberries are growing well in Wheelbarrow

29062009041.jpg,
originally uploaded by lozza1.

Strawberry Bed

The Strawberry bed was looking very sorry for its self, so many weeds I could not find the strawberrys. Decided to try and save the bed today.
This is the before photo

After photo
Still needs a bit of work but you can now see the strawberrys. Going to move the bed around a bit and have the strawberrys in rows so its easier to look after.

Quick Update

Just come back from a trip to the allotment. Planted a few flowers, Borlotto Lingua ( Climbing) and some cauliflowers which have been growing at home in small pots in the spare room.

The potatoes we planted a few weeks ago have started to appear, the onions, strawberries, garlic, raspeberries, peas are doing well. The broadbeans are still not doing well. I was close to pulling them all up but relised I have a few growing. I think I may have enough for one meal but not holding my breath. As mentioned earlier I will not be growing winter ones again.

The asparagus is also doing very well. We have heard it really hard to grow but we thought we would give it a go. Most of the spears have started to grow and produce the flower. They will be ready next year.

I have a few things growing at home aswell. They are:-

Various types of toms
Butternut squash
Sweetcorn
Various type of onions
Green Beans (Dwarf)
Pumkins
Brocolli

We also have another set of potatoes to plant which we will plant in a few weeks.

I will wait till these are a bit bigger than I will plant in the allotment

Early Sunday Morning Visit

This morning I went to the allotment in my own. Got up at 8.15am and left the house about 9.30am. Steve was still in bed when I left. I wanted to get some work done on the allotment today but had to get up early as we have tcikets for a rugby game today, Wasps v Bath.

I mainly wanted to do a bit of weeding and tie up my broadbeans - got to the allotment and realised I forgot the the string. throught I might have to go back home but luckily two of my neighbours came to introduce themselves and I mentioned I needed to go home and get some string,luckily they had some in there shed so they very kindly gave me some string- woohooo.

I love meeting new people on the allotment. Everyone is very friendly and they give some excellent advice. As we are new to growing veg we take all advice we can.

It also seems one of the nearby overgrown allotments has been cleared by council so someone should be taken that plot soon. I do feel sorry for them taking on an allotment in November!!

These are the strawberries we planted. The two varieties are Florence and Alice. They seem to be liking there new plot. I think they where very squashed in the pots I used.

Sunday morning Vist!!

We spent sunday morning down the allotment. Our onions that I bought from ebay have still not arrived but it gave me to time to sort out the area they will go into. Lucky the area have had carpet on it since about September so no weeds but still had to dig it to get rid of any bine weed. Also added some manure. I am hoping the onions will arrive this week, so I can plant next weekend

This is be digging the area for the onions. If you look at the bottom of the picture you can see the Bine weed!!! Loads of it.

We also decided to take the strawberries we had in pots down to the allotment and plant. As we are new we did not know the plants can last for about 4 years!!! When we took them out of the small pot we realised strawberries needs loads of room. If you grow strawberries in pots we would recommend planting them in large pots.

The carpet is now starting to be removed and three new beds have been created today - still keeping the carpet for paths but it finally seems we are getting somewhere with the allotment.

We also bought a few tools and a Wheelbarrow from Wilkinson, bargin price £9.99 for a wheelbarrow. They are selling all there garden gear half price. We will be taking that down to the allotment next week.