Not many allotment jobs were not done last weekend.

I did however, weed the beds and surrounding paths where the tomatoes and courgettes are going and talk to several other people and get convinced to help at the bar for the allotment open day in July, so not an entirely wasted weekend!

I have this idea that plants between the beds and the path that separates my plot from my plot neighbours might help with the weeds, but it’s been really difficult to get them to take. Last year, I planted echinacea and santolina and either survived the winter. This year, I’m going for more weed like plants, so I’ve bought, nepeta ‘neptune’, erigeron ‘stallone’, geranium ‘tiny monster’ and a whole bunch of lavender ‘hidcote’ to plant down the sides and hopefully help with some weed suppression as well as add to the gaiety of the plot.

I managed to plant the geraniums this weekend and hope to get to the rest of them this week or at the weekend.

In the polytunnel, two of my cucumber plants didn’t survive and I’ve just put a couple of seeds in the soil where they were and I’m calling it successional sowing! I’m waiting on melons and aubergines, which I’m told have just been dispatched, to arrive and fill out the other bed in there. I really am trying to pack plants in and not have any bare soil.

I’m still in ‘my throw money at it’ era and bought a lot of reduced-price dahlia tubers. I have a bed that up until the weekend was full of pansies and forget-me-nots and I hadn’t decided what to do with it. Now I’m going to add the tubers and see if I can have a cut flower bed. I’m also hoping that if I leave them in a mulched raised bed that they will overwinter and become a ‘perennial’ bed, because I never have much luck with digging them up and storing them. 

I did pick an entire box of strawberries this weekend too, it’s taken a lot of work (and many, many attempts) but yay strawberries.

At home, the perennial kale and nine-star broccoli have sprouted as have all my herbs. The summer squash, physalis and beans are taking their own sweet time. I’ll need to take the herbs and brassicas off to the plot as I suspect that they are too hot at home and the basil needs potting on anyway!

My work list is still big but if I can get my head down over the weekend, I’ll have several beds planted up for summer and more weeding done! I know that the weeding is the price I pay for good soil