Apple trees! - 18 October 2006

Been busy digging and weeding a strip of ground ready for fruit. The triangular area marked out up to the corner of the shed is going to be all fruit - once I've dug it!!.


Planted two lovely medium sized (12ft tall when fully grown), two year old apple trees. A cooking apple which is sweet enough to eat called Holgate (i think), no need to add sugar and apparently it keeps it's shape well when cooked. The other is Elstar, it has red fruit with pale white flesh, very sweet and juicy - the sort of apple Snowwhite would have eaten! They have to be planted 12ft apart, mine are 10ft apart - oopphs!


Mum planted a row off Japanese onions alongside the apples and I've sown some green manure, Hungarian rye all over to suppress the weeds.

Edged the fruit bed with decking to hold the crumbly soil in place and create a path to the shed. Interesting...


Started digging the next stretch of ground ready for raspberry canes today!

Tulips, daffs & herbs - 4 October 2006

Here's all the baby strawberry plants ready for next year - at least 50. Amoungst them I've planted at least 30 tulip bulbs - I couldn't think of anywhere better that had actually been dug!

And here are the one year old Cambridge Favourite strawberries - dug up the courgettes to make room for them!

Planted rosemary, golden thyme, sage, thyme, purple sage and lace mantle (achemollis) cutting carefully avoiding the garlic cloves.

Here's the cutting from my gardening course - it is good for flower arranging apparantly so lets hope it takes. I was embarrassingly one week and one hour late for my first class - the shame and yet totally unsurprisingly typical! This week we learnt about growing and using herbs which was interesting and useful.

Finally, planted the daffodils in grass close to the water tank, unfortunately I broke my latest 2 month old fork trying to dig into the weed infested soil - lucky it's guaranteed for 10 years and I have the receipt - somewhere!!

Three Claires' - 3 October 2006

Yesterday Claire P came to see the allotment and I finally put up the windchimb that Clare F gave me. It sounds lush as the wind blows.


Today I planted the cloves of garlic and parent strawberries that Claire W gave me - I'm so lucky to have such fab Claires !!! I planted the garlic in the wildlife bed (since I've run out of dug ground now!) with 1inch of soil covering each clove and at least 4inches apart. I hope the soil isn't too wet for them.

A fellow allotmenteer kindly gave me a bag of about 30 Japanese autumn sewing onions so I need to make room for them asap. Also my Mum's mate Jill has given me a massive bag of tulips and daffadils - might plant the tulips amoungst the small strawberry plants and dafs in front of the water trough. That's providing I can work out which is which?! Another allotment holder, Dennis has offered to rotivate a small area of my plot for me which would be great so finger-crossed he'll be able to borrow his mate's machine.

So needless to say, there's still plenty to keep me busy. By the way the home improvements are looking good!