Lots To Do & No Time To Do It……
Life near the beach, too many distractions.!?

With the recent purchase of the Ryobi Brush cutter/Trimmer RBC30SESA to clear the allotment of long grass we realised that the strimmer was maybe not the best thing for the surrounding paths as it tends to send the grass clippings everywhere.

The flexy-mower attachment is small and is perfect for the small grass paths around our allotment. You could probably keep a small garden lawn down with it but it obviously wouldn’t give you a bowling green finish. The machine handles well once you’ve got used to it – it seemed to take a lot of revs to get it started.

The difference with using this head over the strimmer is the trimmings don’t fly about, they stay close to the ground and can be raked up afterwards (or left!). It isn’t the type of tool I’d choose to cut the lawn on a quiet Sunday afternoon but when there’s no electricity available it does the job at great speed without the need for lots of extra tools to store in the shed. The flexy-mower head got a bit clogged up when the grass was wet and quite long – nothing more than a normal mower would have done though.

All-in-all we’re really pleased with this new piece of kit, we’ve even found new homes for our electric strimmer and lawn mower and will be using this new kit in the garden and not just down the allotment.

We thought we’d experiment with our own paper pots, rather than using the standard plastic pots or buying biodegradable ones. We did have to buy a newspaper – not a common occurrence in our house, but it did get read – just some would argue it wasn’t news by the time we got round to it!

I ripped the sheets down the fold and then folded long ways. I then took a wine bottle (I wanted 3″ pots for the squash plants) and rolled the paper around the base. Then crushed the base, filled with compost and planted the seeds. The pots have worked really well, transplanting the squashes into the allotment worked really well, I just wish we’d worked out how to stop the slugs – out of the 18 plants that germinated 5 are surviving on the allotment….

I thought the Christmas holidays were supposed to bring snow and snowman building, but no we’ve snow in the Easter holidays instead! The weather forecasters really do have their jobs cut out. We turned the heating off a few weeks ago, adamant that Spring had sprung. The snow drops have been and gone, as have the daffodils, yet we now have snow. We planted out our potatoes yesterday thinking we were late but maybe we’re a bit early. I don’t think we have to be concerned that the raspberries would be planted out late

We’ve owned one of these dragon like pieces of equipment for a couple of years and the hubby has used it a couple of times to de-weed the gravel drive. Lighting it is usually great fun (not!) and I’ve often been the one running on my heels. We decided we’d take it down the allotment last weekend in the hope we’d be able to burn of the couch grass so we could at least fork it to pull out the roots. We’re finding that cutting off the turf is just generating so much waste that we really don’t know what to do with. We couldn’t get the gun to work before running out of paraffin, 1lt doesn’t go very far when you’ve forgotten what to do!

Anyway I spent quite some time hunting on the internet for tips. Mower Magic have a great write up on the tool and list of spares, as well as this very useful little bit of video footage. (Thank you!)

The really great thing about this gun is that it gets rid of the weeds, chemical free. Do be warned though, they are dangerous, I’ve read some horror stories this afternoon about people that have set fire to their allotment (and others too!). We are also in the fortunate situation that bonfires are permitted in our area. We’ve got so enthusiastic about our new hobby we now have another plot! Our plans have just outgrown the space. We must get some photos up, it’s changed quite a lot since the last one.

The wife has been instructed to communicate our doing’s as new allotmenteers! So, as wifey I’m doing as I’m told (for once!). It’s day 4 of our new venture. The photo above was taken on day 2. At this point we had stood and admired: okay, maybe stood and imagined is more truthful; our plot. The rose tinted glass included a view of: a row of blackberries along the back near the fence; a row of raspberry canes in front of that; an orderly arrangement of various squashes and rows of strawberries along the front. We decided to be keen and set to digging along the front. It seemed a good plan at the time, hubby skimmed the turf and dug, whilst I forked and picked out the roots. The kids got a bit restless and so our day ended.

The evening was then spent doing a little research…

The raspberry planting season is October to March, and seemings it’s now mid March our vision of raspberries is looking at little far away. I’ve read that we need to plant them in rich soil, train up a cane and any fruits we get in the first year have to be picked off before they rippen to strengthen the plant for fruiting the following year. So, we have to get them NOW or not have any fruits for two years! Well, the internet is wonderful for instant purchasing, 10 canes were ordered instantly and should arrive within the next 7 days.

Blackberries: we have an abundance of these in our garden. I don’t know what the variety is but we get loads of plump, juicy, sweet fruit every year. I can’t see the point in buying any plants when the cuttings have a high chance of survival – if I can’t get blackberry briars to shoot we really have no hope as allotmenteers!

Squashes: a quick surf on The organic catalogue gave us a variety of seeds.

Strawberries: Well after a little research it was decided to wait a while and do these at a later date!

The weeds: As you can see from the photograph the plot is overrun by couch grass. This is an invasive weed which roots can be as far as 2 feet deep. There seem to be a number of ways to eradicate the beast: weed killers like Weedol sprayed and left for 2 weeks to kill off the plant and the roots, then dig in – we are trying to be organic and this would seem a little defeatist on day 3! and mean we miss our raspberry window; double dig!! – and break your back!!!; or skim and dig and fork out all the roots. We’ve opted for skim and dig and fork out all roots. And yes we will inevitably miss some and be digging again soon.

Hopefully this will be relatively successful but we do have a couple of tricks up our sleeves (we think).

The raspberry roots will not like being disturbed so we are going to mulch. We’ve been collecting cardboard boxes for some months now, these will be laid on the ground onto level soil, around the bases of the canes and covered with bark chippings. This should give the couch grass at least a year to die off around the plants. The rest of the plot will be seeded with clover, a green manure which will hopefully choke the grass, planted along side turnips which apparently will help to rid the plot of couch grass. We will then have the squashes planted into the clover bed, and all our lovely fruits will be cushioned on soft ground cover…

Its a new year and so far its been quite a slow start we are still in that holiday mode. This is not helped by the weather and getting up when it is still dark outside I find difficult. Inspiration is hard to come by when during the week the only time I get out side its dark and the weekends are wet. This week I tried cycling again, got soaked both ways on Monday and that put me off for the rest of the week. I don’t like cycling through deep puddles/ flooded roads in the dark not being sure where the side of the road is or where the pot holes are. My fitness has gone through the floor over the last six months so I really need some descent weather so I can drag myself back ready for a year of getting things done maybe!!