Huxy's Blog

Huxy's Allotment

This is huxy's Blog all about his allotment. It should show how it went from a plot full of weeds to a plot full of lovely veg if all goes well.

And in the beginning... there were weeds.

June 2006

The first few yards of the plot are low weeds, and then about 1/3 of the way to the back they turn into 3 foot high monsters.

With the aid of a scythe the tops of the weeds were gone in an afternoon :-) Now there's just the roots to be dug out. The picture below shows about 1/3 of the plot dug over, and the rest to be done over the coming weeks.

The cunning plan is to cover the part that is dug with weed control matting to stop the weeds coming back while I dig the rest (according the my fellow 'lottmenters the weeds don't hang around... or rather .. they do).

A bit like this....

Then it's on with raised bed construction and a comfy chair to sit with my thermos of tea while
listening to the Archers.

Winter 2006
Nothing much else happened over winter as it's too wet to dig, and the wrong time of the year to plant anything.

2 March 2007

The plot has finally dried out after all the rain/snow and I'm finally making some more progress. There are now some rather natty compost bins at the front of the plot (Ta louise for telling me how to build em). All the wood was free (pallets and posts) so it only cost me a couple of quid in nails :-)

The weed control matting has also done it's job over the winter stopping anything from growning back, and killing the weeds in the bits I've not dug yet. The front of the plot is now revealed and has 5 plots with some of that lovely soil-ey stuff by the gates dug into it. The matting that I've removed has now been transformed into an elegant path between the plots, and a couple of slack spadefulls of the wood chips next to my plot hides some of the black plastic look of it.

Now I can put my seed spuds in and some of the rest of my crops, and set to work on the back half of the plot. Onwards and upwards.

4 March 2007

As it's still raining (and has been all weekend) I was confined to the garage with Planet Rock and loads of seeds. The ones that need a bit of help were all potted up today to get them sprouting indoors (in the airing cupboard). The rest can go straight into the plot so we'll see what comes up and what doesn't.

Tomatoes: Tigeralla, Legend, St Pierre
Cauliflour: All year round.
Peppers: Hungarian Wax and mixed spanish.