The All Weather Gardener

So the plans to spend the weekend up the allotment were thwarted by the good old British weather yet again. This time dear storm Doris was here to say hello and she brought wind and rain with her, not the ideal thing to garden in! However, on Sunday morning I decided to head up the allotment with plans to finish weeding the flower beds, plus my Dad had been to the car boot and come back laden with goodies for me and the allotment…

Since planning my allotment in the Winter I’ve had my heart set on buying another water butt to sit behind my other one next to the shed as well as two small containers to house the homemade plant teas I plan on making this year. My lovely Dad phoned me from the car boot to inform me of a seller who had lots of these containers and I put in my order. I was so happy and couldn’t wait to take them up the allotment where they will be living for the foreseeable future, all I need is some guttering for the water butts and they can finally be set up to catch water! The two smaller ones will sit on a shelf above a manure bin and will be filled with comfrey tea and nettle tea, I’ll even make some little labels for them too!

Back to why I was really up the allotment and that was to finish tidying and weeding the two flower areas. These have been rather neglected the past year so I wanted to give them a good weeding, the grass is growing through the wire fencing and being a complete pain! I made sure to prune all the perennial flowers and laid a small layer of 6X natural fertiliser on each plant to help them grow this season. I gave the pond a good clean too, taking all the leaves out of the water and pruning back the water iris which is starting to produce beautiful new sprouts. The pond itself isn’t looking it’s best, lots of dirt has fallen in the water and has created quite a thick layer on the bottom. I would love to dig all the dirt out but don’t want to annoy the frogs which might be spawning at this time, although I haven’t seen a frog in quite a while!

After I had finished weeding the flower beds and popped back home to have some lunch I headed back up the allotment in the pouring rain (wearing over trousers, wellies and a rain coat!) to start the next project. This is the big project of the year and involves taking up both the strawberry beds, getting rid of the bind weed invasion and planting my newly acquired rhubarb crowns. All this can be saved for another story though…