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Mizuna, Magpies and cheap Underlay......

Today was our most productive day yet! It all started with Helen arriving at my house at 10:30 this morning armed with handfuls of donated seeds. I'd also recieved some donated French Dwarf bean seeds yesterday at work and spent the whole day trying to remember not to eat them as they looked remarkably like peanuts..... We found that we could plant the Winter Cabbage and Mizuna and some winter spring onions at the front end of the plot right away. We decided to save the peas for next week. We started by digging and raking the area which had sprung a few little weeds in the last two weeks. We very amaturishly sowed the seeds according to the packets (which didn't seem to help that much as we are we weren't sure how many seeds we should be planting in each row). We marked them with copper signs we found at the Hardware store.

After we had finished the sowing, we decided to go over to Codicote to see if they had the wonderful, the magical, plastic greenhouse I'd seen a few months ago. We have long since decided that we just can't afford a shed or proper greenhouse, however this plastic one would do the job of storing our tools, keeping us dry and a place to start off some of the seeds in spring. On the way to the tills I spotted the onion sets and garlic which had been alluding me all month! With squeals of excitement we bought some 'Garlic Marco' and 'Onion Electric'. After storing all this in the car, and as our expedition had been such a triumph, we treated ourselves to lunch at the Garden Centre Cafe!

Ernie, an experienced and double allotment holder at Eliot Road had scared the living daylights out of Helen in the week, by mentioning that weeds start to grow back within two weeks of digging them up! This led to discussions about the methods we could use to keep down the horrendous weeds that we hadn't tackled yet and to stop any re-growing from the parts we had worked bloomin' hard on! Either carpet, black plastic sheeting or some old curtains would do. We had no success at the Charity shop, however on the way home we stopped at a Nearly New sale at our local church. It was there that Helen spotted two rolls of underlay, which we then managed to procure for the princely sum of £2!!!!

We immediately rushed this down to the allotment and layed it out to protect our precious patch of digging. It was while we were there that I noticed that the copper signs we had used to mark our sowed seeds were utterly crap because the Magpies just love them! That's Helen on lolly-stick duty this week then....

All in all it was a very successful day ! We have also made a few decisions this week:

1) Dani is in charge of 'organisation', as she has, a) too much time on her hands and b) Helen admitted organising wasn't her forte and anyway she is rehearsing for Oliver! until November, so there. P.s Organising isn't Dani's forte either, but as she just sits on her bum watching TV or knitting all week, she really didn't have much choice...

2) Dani has been put in charge of the 'crop rotation plan'. Let's just hope it doesn't turn into the 'crap rotation plan'.....

3) Helen will borrow her dad's scythe for cutting down the evil stinging nettles which have grown all over the back of our plot.

4) The erection of the plastic greenhouse will take place at approx. 1pm next Saturday.

4) The onions, peas and garlic will also be sown next Saturday. An approx time cannot be given as Dani's cack-handedness may thwart the completion of point 3 above.