Nic Dempsey

We are so close. Last Wednesday, Ma did a good three hours of weeding and then did another three hours on Saturday. The area that has no beds on it, is now weed free, it’s pretty impressive.On Wednesday, I trimmed the verbena and Ma and I finally sowed the broad beans and netted them, we also had to remove and encroaching raspberry runner. I love raspberries but they are little buggers, look at the size of that root!Anyway the broad bean netting is a thing of allotment beauty!On Saturday, while Ma was taming the weeds, I got on with other stuff. First I weeded the little bed that we’d put down next to one of the squash beds. Then I took up two of the flower circles at the top of the plot. They contained verbena and carnations and dianthus. The compost from the beds, went into the little bed and the plants when into the edge of the rose bed (verbena) and the flower bed (carnations and dianthus).Then I moved a self seeded oregano and two lavenders into the rose bed and moved one of the verbenas in the middle of the old plot. We have narcissi flowering right now, when they are done, we’ll move that last circle bed and but the narcissi in the big bed at the top. The chard did really badly in there and we decided it will be a flower bed in future. (I did buy a lot of seeds in Wilko last week)That done Ma and I had a discussion about the long beds, so the three we ordered haven’t arrived but I really wanted to split the autumn raspberries, so we decided to move what had been the boysenberry bed until last week to where one of the new beds was going to go and split the autumn raspberries into that. We also decided that the space left would be where our blueberries could go and that we’d only have three square beds instead of four.

I still wasn’t done. I sowed the sweet peas, I decided with Storm Ciara due on Sunday that I wouldn’t put the cloche up. I did try to burn the rubbish heap but failed (I am not a twisted firestarter!). Then I decided to build the last bed we’d planned to build. It’s not even close to lined up but I’m beyond caring about straight. Ma was nearly finished so I started to tidy up. I was worried about the impending storm and the rubbish pile (it’s all weeds and cuttings, not actual rubbish) when I hit on the genius idea of using the currently empty compost bin we found in the hedgerow. We put it at the back and loaded the pile into it, it can sit there forever and rot down and be tidy! I also spent a couple of minutes at the back of the plot, picking up rubbish, this is the area where the shed and other assorted rubbish was and people throw stuff over the fence, so I just want to pick stuff up every time we go to start to clean it up a bit. This rubbish got taken home! Finally we filled up the bird feeders…

So here’s where we’re at with the February list, we are six more beds and a pond away from having all the structure in place for spring…

• Install the first three long beds next to the fruit beds
• Transplant the roses
• Move the boysenberry
• Split the autumn raspberry bed into two.
• Sow some more broad beans and cover the bed with netting
• Pull up the chard and cover that bed
• Set up the cloche
• Sow sweet peas
• Sow leeks
• Buy seed potatoes (we couldn’t get nicola’s so went for charlottes)
• Paint the shed
• Split and trim the verbena bonariensis and move the stuff next to the rhubarb
• Trim the rosemary and sage
• Sow the first batch of peas
• Weed everything!
• Buy compost and start filling some beds
• Turn the compost bins
• Have another bonfire