Things start to happen...

So last week Helen went up to plant some large but unspecified garlic - got it started at home in the kitchen. Going up there today looks like it's settled in OK.

Made a visit to Charlton Park (local garden centre) today, very helpful. They have more varieties of potato than you can shake a stick at, and provided some useful local knowledge. So, on the spuds got:

 - Estima 2nd early, main crop
 - Lady christl, 1st early (recommended in Gardener's World)
 - Winston, 1st early

And got a few alliums:

 - Shallot pikant
 - Onion red baron
 - Onion sturon

(should that be allia?) Anyways, these can go in to the plot we have in March. Went to the allotment afterwards and did some more digging, mixed in 200L of bought compost, 100L of mole hill, 100L of random other stuff into the patch. Discovered that the top patch is probably the most clay, so the next plot should be no where near as bad!

Wheel barrow dead handy, couldn't carry 2 x 100L bags of compost down the hill!

Not been there for two weeks, not a good start...

To be fair the weather's not been on our side - was under a foot of snow for much of the time since the last post, then no chance to get up there this weekend just gone, ho hum. Got garlic ready to go in the ground up there now (sprouting in the kitchen right now - deliberately!) which should be planted in the next week or so.

Still need to get up there and do some digging, so much to do. Then there's the need for second hand grass...

No chance to get there today but...

This may prove to be the way to go for much of the plot:

http://www.allotment.org.uk/garden-diary/465/rain-television-clearing-a-plot/

In essence, wait for weeds to start growing, apply RoundUp (which prevents the production of some key amino acids in the plants, deactivated in the soil) then rotavate. Given that the lower half of the plot is somewhat weedy, may be much more productive than picking all the little blighters out by hand...

Moving compost and planting anchors

Made a "wheelbarrow anchor" today to stop it going walkies. Goes a couple of feet into the ground, should be hard to remove... we shall see! However, picking a day when it was frozen wasn't the best choice...

Thought it would also be nice to take a couple of pictures of the area around the allotment site (though this is from the top of the hill so doesn't include our allotment) then finally started to fill the raised bed (see pictures yesterday) but only got about a quarter full with four full barrow loads...! Makes for a good workout...