Carrot Sunday

Well the cold weather is well and truly over (for the moment that is) 26C today 27C tomorrow and no cloud cover so not ideally the weather to be slogging away on the allotment. I'm very lucky because I have shade at the top end of plot 1A until about 12 ish if I want to keep out of the direct sunlight or need to cool down 

So the main job for today was to get the carrots in Bed 8, I could however not find the planting membrane that I was going to use and instead just cleared the volunteer potatoes and the tree saplings that were growing in the path

I had this little chap come and help me with the clearing of the path

Once he'd had his fill of grubs and insects I laid the weed membrane down between the beds and the Daleks.

I have to say I love this Stainless Steel Dibber, Potato/ Bulb Planter, Weeder, Soil Sampler. Its made in the UK, there is a patient pending on it and its £8.50 off ebay. So much neater than the traditional bulb planter and ideal for planting stuff grown in toilet rolls or vending machine cups. The only thing I do is put an elastic band on the outside to the depth I want but actually after a few goes you get your eye in and don't really need the elastic band anymore.    

So eight rows of carrots grown in toilet rolls later, I went and got three wheel barrow loads of wood chips and laid the path between the beds and the daleks. More conifer leaf that wood chips but it will do the job until it becomes browns for the compost bin and is dug up and replaced. 

Finally a good watering and covering with debris netting after adding a longitudinal brace to the top of the hoops. As you can see the sun was travelling around and by the time I was finished the bed was in direct sunlight.

It has to be said I'm very happy with the £35 strimmer from B&Q the line does not break all the time in fact I have hardly advanced it at all really in the three times that I have used it. Strimmers... the light sabres of gardening Jedi everywhere!

I trimmed along the bottom and the side of plot 1 and the area around the Rhubarb again and laid 600mm wide path weed membrane using the kerb edging that will ultimately be installed vertically once the grass under the membrane has died off.