Planting (of sorts)
Categories: stirling
Date: 04 May 2013 16:29:27
Last Sunday we went back to the allotment, and despite the lack of fencing I felt that we really needed to plant the potatoes, which have been merrily chitting for several weeks now. So whilst HD carried on digging over the bits that haven't yet been dug, I planted potatoes (4 varieties: an early, a salad, a main crop and a speciality type, 6 of each) in four rows. The plotholders either side have also planted potatoes and have immaculately straight rows, I have to say that mine were a bit more amateurish and more than once when I got to the end of digging a trench and looked back there were some interesting angles going on! Oh well, I know roughly where they are and hopefully once they start growing it won't matter that they're not perfectly aligned! I also planted out the blackcurrant bush that we had been given as a big cutting by one of the other plotholders, it's been quite happy in its pot by the kitchen door and was showing lots of new leaves and even lots of baby blackcurrants, so I put that in a spot where we'd dug up some old potatoes left over from last year.
This third photo probably shows where we dug the best - the darker bits in the foreground are the trenches where the potatoes are, and you can hopefully see the blackcurrant bush too. The dark bits in the background are the bits HD dug over.
The seeds I planted a couple of weeks ago are showing mixed results. The brussels are doing great, and I have 2 or 3 quinoa seedlings. I planted somewhere between 12 and 15 beans, of three different varieties, and this afternoon I saw the first shoot almost ready to burst through the compost, but not a thing from any of the others which is a bit disappointing. The aubergine, squash, courgettes and marrow are also noticeable by the complete lack of anything growing! Oh well - there's plenty of other things to try so if they don't work there's bound to be something else we can grow a bit later.
Hopefully if we can all get organised the work on the fencing will happen next weekend.