potatoes – Allotmenteering

The weather doesn’t seem to be able to decide if it’s going to be warm & sunny, or fresher and drizzle, but so far today it looks sunny – let’s hope it stays that way! Welcome to my Six on Saturday!

First up, one of my “unknown” plants on the allotment. Several years ago I scattered wild flower seed (labelled “British Wildflower Mix”) in this patch, and this year we have this plant growing…. it’s quite tall, but shorter than the Teasel.

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Some of the second early potatoes are in flower – the first earlies are growing quite well considering their lack of chitting progress, but I have a feeling some of the second earlies might be ready first!

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Moving on to the herb patch, the sage is flowering away – I was considering cutting the flowers off, but after seeing just how many bees were collecting pollen, the flowers have had a reprieve!

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Just Add Cream is next – while those strawberries look small (in fact they’re smaller than the ones from my original plants), they’re said to be particularly tasty…. just need to wait a day or two for these to be ready & we’ll find out!

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We’ve never had a particular success with growing peas before, but this year I planted some in a partly shaded area of the plot…
…I think we can safely say the peas approved of the partial shade!
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An unusual photo to finish, but a classic one from an afternoon on the plot.
One bag of rubbish ready to carry home…. if only the wheelbarrow wasn’t currently out of action, it would be a lot easier to get it back home!

Don’t forget to check out the Propagator’s Six on Saturday and read through the comments section for more blogs to check out!

The weather improved after the snowy Sunday, which meant we had a chance to finally get some work done on the allotment. So here’s my Six on Saturday with no snow in sight!

First up are the Broad Beans…. earlier in the week we had none, now we have 9! Just a few (!) more needed for 100% success rate, but hopefully the warmer weather will encourage them to get growing.
….on the allotment, the ones I planted under fleece last year are looking great!
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A quick chitting update on the potatoes – the first earlies are still looking like they’re hardly doing anything (egg box to the top left in particular), while the second earlies look almost ready to plant out!

I put my weather station sensor on the rack next to the spuds to see what the temperature was – it’s been about 6C during the cold snap this week, but on Thursday was more like 13C. Hopefully that extra warmth will encourage those first earlies to get a move on!
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On to the strawberries now, and the ones that were partly covered with snow from earlier in the month. These are white-fruiting strawberries, and most look like they have fresh growth – next month they’ll be planted out in the raised bed (once I’ve laced some twine through the net to close up the holes – these nets rip far too easily!).

And the new addition (last year) on the allotment, pink-flowered “Just Add Cream” which is actually looking better than some of my older ‘regular’ strawberry plants!
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I thought I’d better plant out those new Spring Onions from last week (the packaging says “plant out as soon as possible”), so I spent a while carefully separating each plant. Not only did it fill my newest half-sized raised bed (avoiding where I planted the chives of course), but I had three left over, which went into the raised bed with the Just Add Cream strawberries.

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I dug up the oldest lavender plants, and tried digging over the soil in preparation for the pea plants. About 3 inches below the surface, I kept hitting stones so I think this bit is in need of a thick layer of fresh compost before anything gets planted in it.

The two pots house two mint plants – the one on the left was so compacted, I couldn’t loosen any of the soil to try and get the weeds out.
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And finally, a “mystery compost plant”…. yes, you read that right. I needed to get some compost out of the bin and discovered a lot of these little plants growing in the top. But I haven’t a clue what they are!
We did bin these, as we didn’t want to find it was a weed we didn’t want to keep, but does anyone have any idea what they could be? I think there’s possibly more growing in the compost bin still!