We've actually planted something!

Its been two weeks since we were last at the allotment having gone to Wales last weekend. Very pleased though to see that the green manure is actually growing, albeit a bit patchy. Three weeks after it was sown and it looks like this...

James watered the area and scattered a little bit more seed in the bare areas so hopefully we'll have a decent enough cover to keep the weeds down.

Its been pretty dry over the last week or so and the ground was pretty hard when we got to the plot today. It took a bit of breaking up with the pick axe to turn it over and I managed to fork over and rake a small patch to get our first crops in the ground, yes we've actually planted something! 25 cloves of 'Early Purple Wight' Garlic were planted today. Onion sets will go in next to the garlic next week and we'll hopefully get some more green manure seed sown as well.

The string marks where the garlic has been planted

James is continuing to work on putting in little retaining edges to help us tackle the slope and level the veg beds and there is talk of a water pipe being laid under the path that runs along the bottom of our plot so we'll have access to water on the site at some point too. More trenches to dig!

The couch grass is inevitably coming back too, not a lot we can do about that other than try to dig it out of the growing areas then allow it grow along the paths which we will keep strimmed. I think its simply just a case of keeping on top of it as we're not willing to use chemicals to get rid of anything. I am considering using weed suppressing material to cover the veg beds and grow veggies through that for the first year at least just to try and kill off the couch grass where we don't want it.

So, slowly but surely we feel like we are making a bit more progress and we'll be trying to spend as much time every weekend in the run up to Christmas and, well, just keep plowing on!

Site Secretary Steve offered to take a photo of the two of us hard at work : )