The Big Tidy Up!

There’s a special visitor coming to plot 15C this coming Friday so it’s all hands on deck getting the allotment looking as tidy and pretty as possible. I’ve been neglecting it a lot this past year due to work and my time in Wales so there’s plenty of jobs that need to be done. I’ve written a long list and narrowed them down into certain areas to focus on, that way it will be easier for me to focus on the areas and tick as much off the list as possible.

First on the job list was the strawberry patch… this area has been the most neglected and since the Winter I haven’t touched the two raised beds. The weeds have been having a blast and have been growing happily away, smothering the poor strawberries and growing to knee height.

I spent yesterday afternoon weeding the two beds, it didn’t actually take too long and I had a lovely little helper watching over me and eating the worms. The only problem now is the bindweed which has been happily growing up through the mesh at the bottom of the beds. This means that there is no way of digging up the bindweed roots unless I take up the raised beds and remove every single piece of root. I have been thinking that maybe it would be best to get rid of the raised beds completely and replace them with a galvanised trough like the one I grow my tulips in. That way I can dig up as much as the bindweed roots as possible, make more space available on my allotment and the strawberries will still be elevated and can still be protected by the birds and rats. It would be sad to see the raised beds go after all that hard work making them, but I think in the long run it will prove to be easier to manage… seeing as my visits to Wales aren’t going to stop any time soon…

I also forgot to take runners from the plants so therefore had to go out and buy some new plants, although this might have been a blessing as now I know the varieties of the strawberries! The variety is ‘Hapil’ and they are an excellent mid season June/July variety producing a heavy crop of large fruit. I managed to pick up 14 new strawberry plants from a garden centre for £1.49 each, each plant has a runner coming off them so I can pot these up and use them too. So for now I will plant up one raised bed and pop the runners into some pots, then when I find a galvanised trough I will transfer them all to there new home.

Whilst I was up the allotment yesterday I also took a moment to plant out my other new purchase, a Japanese Anemone called ‘September Charm’. I’ve been wanting one of these for a while now so when I saw them in the garden centre I was a tad excited! I have a thing with tall growing flowers and this beauty will grow to 1.2 metres in height, it’s a pretty pink colour and I am very tempted to go back and buy the white variety too. I planted in in the new flower patch and I can’t wait to see it bloom fully.

The next job tonight is to weed the trough and tidy the pond/surrounding flower area.