We hit the allotment on Monday.

We had a small list and as is the way with the plot, we did loads but not all of the things we planned on.

Firstly, the water has been switched on which is really good because everything needed watering. Ma did the front, with particular attention to the gooseberry bushes (she also cut back some dead branches) and I did the back and the polytunnel, I also fertilised the blueberries and roses!

Then we sorted out the blueberries, but that meant adding posts to one of the raspberry beds. We have two beds, one I cut right down in January and one I just tidied a bit. That second bed is flowering already which was my plan, so we get a longer run of raspberries and hopefully not too much of a glut! However that means that we are going to need to contain the canes a bit and we’ve had this on the plan for both beds but I’m short on posts and wire, but we started with what we had and got three of the posts up. I’ll finish it when I’ve bought more posts and wire.

Then we set up some arches for netting the blueberries, it’ll be a bit of a squeeze (there are eight bushes!) but should all fit. If all the blossom turns into fruit, we are going to be drowning in berries.

Then we planted the rest of the potatoes, we now have 12 pots, that is quite a few potatoes but seems to work for us.

We then filled a raised bed with compost and sowed beetroot. And having got all the water bins where we wanted them (one by the blueberries, one by the squash beds and one in the poly tunnel), we filled them up. Lots of trips to the water tank but not as bad as the pumping we did last week!

I planted the wild garlic at the back of the plot, I ended up making a very fast bed by the compost bin, they are quite shaded but that should work. I bought them from an instagram friend (Anjee) so I haven’t been raiding nature for them, but they should spread like weeds and if I’m going to have weeds, I want useful ones!

While I was doing that, I noticed that my favourite rose that I didn’t move or cut last year, was in bud and there were greenfly, so I gave that a spray.

At that point we were flagging (it had been over three hours in the sun). I collected chard, mint and rhubarb, Ma tidied up and we went home and made a future work list and redid the plan of the plot.

• trim rosemary and oregano
• transplant a thyme and oregano plant to the ‘wild area’
• sow parsnips and parsley in beds
• weed beds
• sort out boysenberry area
• build arches
• paint shed
• sow brassicas
• pot on tomatoes
• sow squash, melons and cucumbers

As you can see the boysenberry area is in dire need of some work!