The second wave of sunflowers are now flowering – These ones have much larger petals – and smaller centres. Some of them are about 11 feet tall.
they create a bright colourful welcome each time I arrive at the plot.

after 2 weeks away it seems that the Rocket, Mizuna and Mustard have decided to shoot to flower – and before going on holiday I had only harvested about half a dozen mustard leaves..
I love the Rocket flowers but am not so keen on the Mizuna flowers close up – I guess the next step is to dig them out and re-seeded for a new batch.

We have a second wave of Mizuna coming through – but I had not planted any more Rocket – I think I used up all my seeds in one go.

The plot is looking nice and colourful though.

This was something I did for my first visit to the site – but I have only just remembered to take a picture – I had an old yellow timber post – so I sharpened one end and painted the other end pink – to make it look like a pencil – this has our plot No. painted on it.

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.

My first visit was with my 4 yr old son and we spent 2 whole days over the weekend – to get some of the plot dug over and to construct a small shelter big enough for the both of us should it rain.
I took plenty of partly prepared timber and polycarbonate sheets that I had acquired some time ago from a skip belonging to my very local double glazing company.

Allotment plot after day 1

Hi
I have just been given the keys to a 5 rod allotment plot after being on the waiting list for nearly 4 years.
The plot has been left in fairly good order (no brambles anyway) and is mostly covered in short grass and weeds, abandoned compost heap and a large Cherry tree.
I am hoping that the frosts have finished now so I should be able to get on top of things before it all runs away with itself.
I’ll try to take regular pictures of progress as it gets dug over and as I get a shed built out of found materials.