Loaded the shredder I inherited from Mother into the trailer, added all the logs from the tree I felled a few weeks ago and took the whole lot to Robert, who had accumulated fifteen bin bags of horse manure for me. Had a pleasant chat with Robert over a cup of tea before taking my leave and going home via the allotment where I offloaded the bags onto the bottom end of Plot 18.
Saturday.
The weather took a while to make up its mind about what it was going to do and finally settled on "mostly sunny". Intended to mow the main path and the carpark in order to put loads of grass cuttings in the very bas of my bean trench, but it was not to be. I started the self-propelled grass collecting Hayter and it ran very well for ten minutes, allowing me to cut the grass near the shed, the path just outside the garden and one stripe of the new terrace before it died and would not restart. Took all the plastic housing, incorporating the fuel tank and air filter, off and inspected and cleaned the carburettor, no joy. So tried my Suffolk Punch, which refused to start at all and the the starter cord snapped. Fixed that and it still refused to start and to add insult to injury the brass eyelet in the plastic housing came adrift and the next pull of the cord cut a nice 1cm groove up through the housing.
Gave it all away and used the Hayterette and rake on the lawn instead, then mowed the car park.
Put six bags of fresh horse manure in the bottom narrower section of the bean trench, covered it wit a layer of soil, trod it down a bit and ran Sliecen-dice up and down the trench. Then added another six bags, evenly distributed and a bigger layer of soil and re-introduced Slicen-dice to the trench.
Left that to settle and slung my geometrically arranged molehills of well rotted horse manure on Plot 18 evenly across the surface and rotovated it in with Slicen-dice.Sunday.
Went to the BSAGA allotment shop and bought fifty eight foot canes, ten four foot canes and another two hundred three inch square pots.
Put the rest of the decent soil back on top of the bean trench, I'm leaving the clay from the bottom spit for the moment, watered it with half a dozen cans of water to get it to settle and weather a bit quicker.
In order to do that I had to put out my membrane and carpet cover on my squash bed, so I could shovel properly, but to do the carpet etc, meant three different piles of "stuff to move, lay out, weigh down, change the arrangement....... you get the idea?
Got the Hayterette out again and mowed the main path and my side paths, planted out half a dozen more peas, but had to put up another length of pitch-roof steel mesh for them to climb, plenty of room for another sowing now.
Finished the day at the site by strimming the edges of the main path and both my plots.
Came home for tea via the greenhouse, where I potted up about forty Dahlia seedlings, forty Aster seedlings, re-potted half a dozen squash seedlings which were a bit big for their current pots and potted up ready for the terrace the Honeysuckle into a nice green glazed pot.
This coming week I need to get some free space in the greenhouse and the only way is to move some of the Brassica seedlings and French Bean seedlings up into the roofless coldframe on Plot 17 with a bit of anti-pidgeon netting across the top. Some mindless littl oick has been bunging stones and one of the last sheets of glass iin the coldframe is smashed, so I need to look around for vandal discarded estate agent boards, the plastic signs fit perfectly and the posts are very useful. Our local vandals tend to nick the whole thing and bung it into bushes in the park. With the liberated space in the greenhouse I can then resume potting up seedlings
No comments:
Post a Comment