This weekend was the Pumpkin Walk, I did a solid 5 hours on the booze stall and we ran out of beer (again!), I think my back still hurts from 5 hours standing but it was a really good event and well received by most of the people who came.

Ma doesn’t attend either of the allotment open days anymore, so I wasn’t expecting to do a lot of allotment work this weekend, but on Friday afternoon the 30 strawberry plants I ordered turned up. So on Saturday morning , I filled the strawberry planter, I’d bought for this purpose. I’d ordered another on Friday because I knew that we needed two. Each planter holds 18 plants, I’d ordered 30 new plants, knowing that I had five in the bath, so that would be fine.

On Sunday, I went back to the plot to tidy up the Halloween decorations and plant the other twelve up. A quick count of the bathtub strawberries revealed that the 5 original plants are now at least 10, if not twelve, so I’ll order another planter and sort that out in a week or two. My working plan is to have a planter to plant any runners into each year on a five year cycle, let’s just see how that goes.

The theme of the year seems to be very warm and we are having a very warm October, this is giving some of the plants ideas. The roses are flowering beautifully and the nasturtiums that struggled all winter are starting to flower too. In the poly, I’m overwhelmed with ripening tomatoes and the salad beds are doing well. There is self-seeded dill all over the ex-cucumber bed, that’s now got swede in it, I’m going to let it do it’s thing until the cold comes!

I also managed to feed the birds. We stopped doing fat balls in the spring as they weren’t getting eaten but we’ve put them back in for the winter. We’ve got two suet feeders, two fat ball feeders and two peanut feeders and it’s going to cost us, but on Sunday I was really chuffed to see how many birds were around and using the feeders, so we’ll carry on doing it.

Next week, I’m also solo on the plot and I need to plant more garlic and the tulip and fritillary bulbs that need to go in the ground too, I want to cover the empty beds or sow mustard or something on them too. Then I’m all about the weeding!