Six on Saturday – Feb 10th

Is it really a week since the lasts Six on Saturday? This week hasn’t been overly productive…. blame the weather and family having colds!

  1.  First up is my herb patch… ok so the fennel needs cutting down, and the sage could do with the old leaves being removed. But there was Lemon Balm in there at one point… somewhere. 
  2. Next up is a sorry looking patch which is starting to get taken over by grass again (oops!). I did have a redcurrant growing here, but three plants later, not one has survived. So I thought I’d ask if anyone had any suggestions of fruit I could grow here (ideally something which doesn’t need support, and isn’t as close to the ground as strawberries)
  3. A couple of years ago I scattered a wildflower seed mix amongst my flower bed. The packet was very helpfully labelled “wildflower mix” so I had no idea what would be likely to grow. One of the plants was a teasel which has self-seeded each year since then. We leave the stems over winter, as sometimes birds like to eat the seeds… I’ve never seen a bird on the allotment, but you never know!
  4.  The rhubarb never really gets any attention. It was there when I took over the plot, and apart from being split a couple of years ago, it literally just gets ignored until it’s time to pick it. I have tried to keep the stinging nettles under control though, as otherwise it’s a nasty ‘surprise’ if you catch your hand as you’re trying to pick the rhubarb.
  5. Ok, so I admit it – I don’t have a photo for this one. But it wasn’t going to be overly exciting anyway (that’s my reasoning and I’m sticking to it!). But spurred on by mentions of everyone else having their seeds already sown, there are now lots of black plastic pots filled with compost, just ready for the broad bean seeds to go in.
  6. And finally, this particular bit of ground is ready for the potatoes. Of course the potatoes aren’t ready to go in yet, but the gardening books say to put manure on the ground the previous autumn in preparation… and this year we actually were organised enough to achieve it!

8 thoughts on “Six on Saturday – Feb 10th”

    1. Thanks – I’m still uncovering potatoes from last year, so I think maybe sacks would have been a bit easier to make sure they were all harvested!

  1. That potato bed looks rather lush doesn’t it! (Can a potato bed look lush?) anyway it looks very healthy & no doubt will help grow a bountiful crop of spuds for you to enjoy. I love how you have much hope for your plot & you seem keen to give things a good go A lovely Six on Saturday edition.

    1. Thanks 🙂 The first year we grew potatoes they were about the size of marbles! So I’m hoping that this year they’ll be as successful as last year, when we had loads of quite large spuds.

  2. Your sage looks quite handsome, in my opinion. As to fruit, it might be time to browse your seed catalogues, if you can avoid temptation – how do blueberries do in this country?

    1. Thanks 🙂
      I’ve actually never tried growing blueberries – there seem to be quite a few available so I would guess they grow quite easily. I’ll take a look and see if that might work 🙂

    1. It’s surprising the plants that appear when you think there’s nothing in the ground. We’d actually covered most of the rhubarb with grass & soil dug out from other parts of the plot in the first autumn, then had to move most of it once the rhubarb started poking through the soil in the spring!

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