Pathways are taking shape. – We’ve layed the weed control fabric – edged the paths with timber and layed woodchip onto them.
Its making the area seem quite tidy now – just need to transplant out some of the veg that are currently on my windowsill.

Paid a 2 hour visit to the allotment after work yesterday. I think am getting a bit addicted. I worked up quite a sweat dragging some long straight-ish logs down from the nearby hills to edge my central path. The problem though is that once I get them down to the allotment they suddenly seem a lot less straight . I may have to abandon the idea of using logs and revert to woodchip or slabs instead – rectangular raised beds will not sit well against the wobbly logs.

I also had a bit of a tidy up – there were bits of timber offcuts everywhere that needed to go.

The weekend will be spent actually getting some beds marked out with string – and maybe planted. I have lots of timber raised bed frames at work but no way of transporting the 2.5m long pieces to the allotment unless I hire a van – which I am reluctant to pay for at the moment.

Had the afternoon off – so a short visit to the allotment was in order – I wanted to rake out the huge mound, at the rear of the plot, that I had dug over at the weekend – but it was hard going and the skies were trying to rain – and my son wasn’t quite in the mood today.

so I raked out some – but managed to break my 2 yr old rake (the top metal part just broke) as well as an old rake that I found 2 weeks ago under the old compost heap.

I resorted to shovelling out the soil towards the lowest areas – but it was getting hard work – so called it a day before I had finished.

The mini shed has been temporarily re-located into the middle of the plot while work take place at the back. For a small structure it sure is heavy to move around. I did enlist the help of my neighbour for that one.

Once the back are is flatter I can start thinking about building a shed there beside the cherry tree. As you can see I already have a pile of timber piling up – which needs to be used for the shed cladding or raised bed edging.

Allotment layout thoughts.

We have dug over the back area – approx 5m x 3m. This now needs raking out across the rear area so that a shed can be built alongside the cherry tree.

The plan shows a grassed area alongside the shed as well as half way along the plot.
I have drawn up the beds to be approx 1m x 2.1 each – allowing an 800mm path way along the centre.
Not yet worked out what is going into each bed – although there are already a few things in near the rear.

I’m also starting to plan how the shed will work – We don’t need anything huge – so I’m looking into the idea of a 1m deep x 2m wide shed that has 2 doors at the front. when we are working onsite – these 2 doors can be opened out creating a larger sheltered seating area under the overhanging roof.

Have also thoughts that I should add some trellis to the back of the compost bins – to hide them a bit.