Sunday 24 February 2013

The spring is almost upon us again!

It's the end of Feb already! In a few weeks it will be potato planting time and then full steam ahead with the 2013 planting season. So far has been a slow start to the year as it has been so cold. Even the last 2 weekends the snow has been slightly falling again! Our manure delivery didn't make it until almost Christmas due to the wet ground. So, the first job of this year has been to manure the beds for planting. We have managed to cover most of the beds on LottiePlotFour; except those reserved for root veg of course. We have decided to make some big structural changes to the middle section of LottiePlotFour. This is mainly because maretail has taken hold on many of the paths here and they really need a good dig over again to knock it back. Maretail is a real nightmare of a weed which is very difficult to get rid of. Saying this, it has taken a good 4 years to start being a problem again from our original clearing so if we battle on we will hold it back. The fruit bushes to LottiePlotFiveA so we can clear the area and put some new 10x4ft beds in. In order to transfer the fruit we had to dig a rather large area out of the back of LottiePlotFiveA, removing much couch grass and a globe artichoke plant. We are not particular fans of the artichokes and the plant roots were so tangled with couch that it was much easier just to get it out. Ant dug out last years compost bin to provide compost to cover a new strawberry bed. We used existing beds from LottiePlotFour to build a 3 section composting areas and a large strawberry bed in the area we had cleared. ...and made sure we added lots of manure before covering with the compost. The bed was eventually filled with 47 strawberry plants grown as runners from an existing bed on LottiePlotFour. The new composting and fruit area is situated at the back of LottiePlotFiveA. We moved these established blackcurrant and redcurrant bushes onto LottiePlotFiveA along with some pink gooseberry plants. This left a messy area in the centre of LottiePlotFour which needs to be dug over and weeded to make room for the new beds. We dug up the herb bed, tidied up the plants and re-planted this also on LottiePlotFiveA. Here you can see the new area completed. Other jobs included pruning the autumn raspberries and the bramley apple tree. We extended the raspberry frame with some runners. Life even springs up in a recently exposed bit of manure on the flower bed. There is still alot of manure left to move. Fortunately there is quite a bit of space left to cover. We now have LottiePlotElevenA so watch this space!! Some crops do still remain including Black Kale seen under meshing. Behind the kale there is a bed of potatoes which still seem very good; we better get these up soon though as they will sprout as the ground warms up! Plenty of leeks. Rhubarb sprouting through. Swedes. Spring bulbs giving us hope of some sunshine soon.