Saw this amazing stile whilst exploring the bluebell  woods. Hope it makes sense.

Our old rotting wheel barrow Is all ready to function as our mobile bbq. Just waiting for the weather to short itself out then it will be hot sausage lunches on the plot.

The red onions are growing well. i have not grown these before but they were given to us so – waste not want not. We placed a netting cage over the top for the early stages to prevent the blackbirds from pulling them out. That seems to have done the trick.

Finally harvested the last of the people sprouting brocolli so we pulled our the plants and opened out the last section of the central path. we now have a handy central path running all the way down the centre of the plot. This has ben a bit of a bone of contention but now finally sorted.this should make things much easier for the wheel barrow.

I took a few pictures in the garden the other day with some of my tiny architectural model men. I think I will take them down to the allotment too so that I have something worth photographing.
more to come.

I was working at the Grand Designs show in Birmingham last week and had the chance to have a little look at their future gardens section. I was not that impressed – but it can’t be that easy to create a small garden in 2-3 days.

Here were the small garden installations…

Quite a spherical theme going on here – It was a simple idea and worked quite well.

This one was quite a beach/coastal garden theme and obviously consisted of quite a few donations from the shows exhibitors as the driftwood sculptures were abundant at this show.

This one was the vegetable garden – it wasn’t particularly well laid out – but again was obviously a number of donated items laid out on a woodchip floor area.

Also at the show – there was this spherical summerhouse that rotates to face the sun – quite a high-tech monster really! Available at John Lewis – prices range from £6k to £15k

Not much to say about this – other than that if I ever saw my neighbour I would offer to help him empty his shed and straighten and stabilize it.

But this sort of thing is what’s great about allotments. I’m sure my shed will be doing the same after a few of these harsh coastal winters..

I finally had a bit of time and inclination to complete the shed. I filled the hole in the front of the roof – with rusty steel slats that I found thrown away outside an exhibition hall. I have also removed the polycarbonate window that was on the side of the shed and replaced that with more rusty strips – to make it so that the whole shady side is clad in the same thing.
I’m quite happy with the final result – its quite odd looking and i will probably make a few more amendments – but it is at least waterproof now and has a lockable door.
I am going to start removing items soon though as i have heard that the autumn and early winter is a bad time for break-ins.

I half built a structure the other week – which for this season is going to function as somewhere to leave our bikes when we arrive – but may next year become a new compost heap – so that I can get the council to drop their grass clippings into it.
At present I have the compost heaps at the bottom of the plot – as the cherry tree casts too much shadow down there to grow anything. – but maybe if I have the compost heap at the top of the plot we could make more of a seating area around the tree base.

Here is a pic of the bike store – walls still need to be built up a bit – Just need to get a few more long bendy twigs.

Looks like I have got hold of some large sheets of clear polycarbonate for the shed roof – instead of the patched up bits of plywood and chipboard that I put up there a while ago and never got round to waterproofing.
Will try my best to get them up in place over the weekend.

Done it  I screwed a few sheets up there – over lapping – so that I now have a clear and waterproof roof.