My Most Favourite Place

Boy have I missed spending time up the allotment! Everythings been a little hectic lately so it was nice to be able to spend the whole day on the plot with my head in the sun and my hands in the dirt. We treated ourselves to a day off after spending the bank holiday weekend at the Upton garden fair, and what a glorious day it was. The sun was shining, the trailer was full and the to-do list was extra long, I was so excited to get up the allotment and to finally start planting things out!

The trailer was loaded with a giant pumpkin, a crown prince pumpkin, munchkin pumpkins, a sunflower, a globe artichoke, red cabbage, dill, nasturtiums and the plants I brought at the garden fair (black lace sambucus, a geum and a little alpine plant) That’s all I could manage to take up today in my little, but ever so handy, bicycle trailer! After cycling all these plants up to the allotment I only managed to plant out the red cabbage, giant pumpkin and crown prince pumpkin. I was so busy filming the next video and taking photos that I didn’t have time to plant out the rest, which just gives me more excuses to go up in the evenings I guess!

I was so pleased to see that the rose bush had started to bloom, the beautiful purple flowers are abundant this year and I love how they hang over the pond. Both roses are only a year old and I pruned them both back in early Spring. The climbing rose has yet to bloom this year but I’m hoping it will cover the side of my shed and even climb onto the roof in the near future.

The broad beans are also another crop which has grown so much over the past weeks. Since my last visit they went from having flowers to producing these 5 inch long pods which I just can’t wait to harvest. I’m sure it will be a couple of weeks yet, I’ll let the beans fatten up slightly before picking and then I’ll probably cook them straight away on my little cooker in the shed. I also had just enough time to make a support around the broad bean plants, some of them were leaning over slightly so I wrapped some twine around bamboo to make sure the plants were supported off the ground.

My Mum even visited with a few of the children she was childminding, they had a picnic on my allotment and spent a whole hour watching the frogs in the pond and helped me to clean it out too. Even though it was nice being able to teach the children about pond life and growing your own food it was not nice seeing them trample all over my freshly planted flower seedlings around the pond. I’m sure when I have my own kids they’ll know full well not to tread on Mummy’s plants!