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A day-to-day guide to creating an allotment garden from a starting point of absolutely no knowledge and no experience.
Thursday, August 26, 2004
Today I do as much weeding as I can among the carrots and the parsnips. After discovering damage to a number of carrots yesterday and a plethora of slugs among the plants, I think that by removing as much cover for the pests as I can, they will be easier to spot. I pull up a huge number of weeds and find a couple more slugs. However there are still quite a few healthy carrots so all is not lost.
My wife joins me and she tackles the weeds among the strawberry plants - soon an enormous pile of thistles mounts up on the pathway. I then throw down some well-rotted manure on the ground where the early potatoes were. I am planning to sow some overwintering salad onions there and want to improve the soil. When I dig over a bit of ground, it reminds me of what the earth was like this time last year - covered in grass and brambles and so hard I couldn't get a spade in.
I weed a bit among the potatoes and am alarmed to come across a few small, green potatoes near the surface. Did I earth-up too late? Have I lost the whole crop? At least I have something new to worry about.
My wife joins me and she tackles the weeds among the strawberry plants - soon an enormous pile of thistles mounts up on the pathway. I then throw down some well-rotted manure on the ground where the early potatoes were. I am planning to sow some overwintering salad onions there and want to improve the soil. When I dig over a bit of ground, it reminds me of what the earth was like this time last year - covered in grass and brambles and so hard I couldn't get a spade in.
I weed a bit among the potatoes and am alarmed to come across a few small, green potatoes near the surface. Did I earth-up too late? Have I lost the whole crop? At least I have something new to worry about.
