Alan's Allotment

Winter is definitely upon us and the heavy frosts we've had this week mean work in the garden is slowing.  I've turned my attention to the 'structural' job of tree pruning. We have 7 apple trees in need of a 'short back and sides', a plum tree which needs turning back into a plum tree, a small lop sided cherry and a large/massive ornamental purple tree (possibly plum/cherry decedent). Knowing not to touch the stone fruits at this time of year I set to the biggest of the trees first. Here's the before pic: Given that it blocks a lot of sunlight from the garden (it's on the south side), the advice of 'prune no more than 20%' had to be discarded.  I needed to tame this beast and would use all the shredded limbs to form the walkways between my veg beds. Larger limbs would form my log pile at the back of the garden to encourage even more wildlife. This turned out to be a longer job than anticipated. Working well into the dar...

Given that it's still October, and I've just prepared my new vegetable garden, I thought I'd try and see whether any late sowings would come to fruition. Alongside the greenhouse I've made up a small cold frame out of a couple of spare panes of glass (for some reason I had an extra pane in the delivery - and, no, there are no gaps in the greenhouse). I took a chance on Thompson and Morgans 'lucky dip' perennials - 12 for about £5.99. These are all potted on for the winter and with a little protection over the cold months they should be good to go in the garden in the spring. So what did I get in my 'lucky dip'? Some I've never heard of, and others I'm more familiar with. I've also popped some Nigella seeds in pots outside to overwinter ready for spring. Inside the greenhouse, I've planted basil seeds (lemon and red leaved), Spring Greens, White Lisbon spring onions, All the Year Round Cauliflower, Spinach Matado...

The picture below shows the garden we inherited when we moved in. Within a fortnight, I'd ordered a new shed and replaced the rotten old one. We also had two massive pine trees at the back which blocked a lot of light and were stunting the apple trees growing behind them. We had them down quite quickly too and put almost all of them through my shiny new shredder. All the mulch has gone down under the orchard area and covered the bare weed suppressing membrane that was there.  You can see the difference already, and with the new greenhouse in and two paths laid, it's time to get on with the hard landscaping of the new vegetable area.  All the turf lifted so far is piled behind the greenhouse to break down over the winter ready to be spread as loam in the spring.  Using the timber taken from our allotment, we built two raised beds which have taken a load more of the lifted turf. There will be more on this side in due course, but they can wait until ...