Allotment Notes

The ground on our allotment is evil. Pure evil. A clay soil that just keeps on breaking your back season after season. We're more than sure that this must have been a river bed thousands of years ago. There is no way it could not have been. And what we battle with is soil too heavy to work when wet and absolutely impossible to break when sun baked. If we don't keep on top of it we will cry later.

We're making plans on how we hope to change our soil, over time, on this land of ours. There will be hard work initially and hopefully some pay-off further down the line.

For now we do what we can. The garlic is in, and we'll do our official garlic for over-wintering with the leeks and onions, but we'll see what we can get until then. Beans in, although to be fair the ground might be a bit too cold... we're experimenting here. The wild area is going to be seeded next week insha'allah. For now, we've added a tub for a pond and hopefully something will spawn there when the rainwater fills it up. This is the boys nature reserve really. I know the eldest will plant himself there at some point and fill his boots with what he learns.

Potatoes - in! Cabbage and kale and brassicas - in!. Gooseberries have flowered a little and behind a big lump of bramble on our new patch of allotment the boys discovered a fox run and rhubarb. A nice little spring bonus.

Still so much to do. Because it never really ends. It's a circle of life kinda thing... I feel a song coming on...