23 June 2007 - Due diligence and not much else

Today is Saturday and we have had a slow day today. We visited the allotment, primarily to put more things in the shed (including a set of old greenhouse shelves that we had brought from our previous shed, that is, Shed No 1 - we now have 3 sheds in total) that had been stored in the car and to monitor the situation generally. We seemed to be the first on the allotment this morning as the gate was shut. We thought about watering, but a combination of the weather forecast and the generally cloudy conditions made us confident about leaving it to Upstairs to sort out.

The carrots are beginning to show feathery tops and we have now decided that the beans we planted (in a last ditch attempt to get beans on the go) are not going to happen. This means that we can sort out that other side of the bed to hopefully plant leek and cabbage seeds for overwintering, especially as we dug good stuff in it to make the beans grow. Though that depends on the weather tomorrow.

The grass and weeds are growing fast, so we need to think about our strategy for getting it all under control a bit more. The fence is on hold because frankly today we did not have the energy to address it. We are both very tired and busy at work.

Two more raspberries; the 4 lettuces are looking good; and sprightly radishes are all good signs. However, spring onion seeds seem not to have taken but the seedlings we planted (see earlier blog) look almost ready to take up and place tenderly into a salad. The potato plants are coming along nicely, albeit at different paces. We look forward to having more potatoes next season, right from the first earlies (other peoples are now flowering) to the maincrop (which is what we have).

We went to the recycling centre today on the hunt for a discarded wheelbarrow. We didn't find one, but the cheery recycling guy hailed our latest request to take away yet another pallet. This one is really heavy and is made of oak so we'll think carefully about what use to make of it. We also popped into a (very posh) garden centre on the way home from the Hatfield Galleria mall (ahem, a little unauthorised clothes shopping for us both) for some comfrey, as all the books say it is absolutely essential for a Good Plot because of its many and varied uses, e.g. as mulch. Unfortunately, they didn't have any so we are thinking of cunning ploys to persuade the one plot holder we know that has LOADS to pass some onto us - perhaps in exchange for a pallet. They did, however, have the most Ginormous Rabbits, that even Archie (our killer ginger cat) would baulk at. They were from the Continent. Way too scary for English countryside and God help allotments everywhere if one of them got out.