Little and often ...

... is this week's lesson. Cutting down the nettles and grass around the edge of the plot should have been done weeks ago, and would have taken half the time and been much less heavy work if it had been. Still, I now have long-handled shears to make it slightly easier. There was too much greenery for the compost bins, so there's now a large heap at the end of the plot.

The broad beans are still flowering but the flowers have started to wilt, so I pinched out their tops as instructed by my various reference books. Apparently you can eat these tops, so I wrapped them in paper and brought them home; I'll report back on their appeal.

The potatoes still look healthy, and the pak choi and mizuna seem to be establishing themselves, although some of the bean plants had died and the others looked feeble. I planted mange tout in the last square metre bed, scraped weeds off the spot for the next two metre bed, and covered the end of the plot with cardboard and black plastic to smother the last patch of nettles.


My neighbour, who cleared his plot so thoroughly a couple of months ago, has not been seen for a while, and a note has appeared on his shed door asking him to clear out the weeds that have appeared all over his tilled earth. Next door but one the other way, poppies and what looks like it might be ragwort have taken over another plot; pretty, but no doubt we'll all have a fine crop of poppies in a couple of months. My weeding turned up speedwell, a tiny scarlet flower similar in shape to speedwell, and what looked like a long, elongated clover, also very pretty. I need these attractive wildflowers to fill in obediently around the edges of the raised beds, rather than in the middle; an unlikely prospect.

On the way home I took a picture of my favourite plot. I really like the combination of flowers and vegetables on this allotment. Maybe in about ten years I will be able to look out on something similar.

A bed of beans

Runner, French and some indeterminate beans donated by a friend; they are all gathered round three bamboo pole wigwams. I'm not entirely certain of the wigwams' stability, but strong winds are forecast for tomorrow which should test them out.

I also earthed up the potatoes today, not entirely certain that I was doing it properly; planted out some young pak choi and mizuna; and sowed lollo rosso, rocket and mesclun in some spare corners of beds. The final job was to weed what I laughably call the leek bed without disturbing the twelve or so tiny, spindly leek seedlings. There are so few seedlings, and so much bed, that I think I need to see if I can find some onions to go in and take up some space. I did sow a strip of chives along one edge.

I remembered my camera today, but forgot the batteries. The potatoes all look healthy and bushy; the strawberries have a few more flowers; and the broad beans are in full flower now. The grass round the edge of the plot is two feet high and must be cut down next visit. I have a vague plan of planting lavender and some fruit trees along the back border of the plot, which would hopefully stop the grass and nettles from coming back with a vengeance every time it rains.

Nettles

I nipped up to the plot from work the other lunchtime, and pulled up a bushel of nettles, now lying in a heap up the desolate end next to the shed base. I can't help feeling that wrestling with nettles in office clothes and gardening gloves is just a little too eccentric, but fear that they would be four feet high by Saturday drove me to it.

In flower

Well, the broad beans are in flower, and there are about 10 flowers on the strawberry plants, so we may even get the strawberries. The potatoes are doing well - I must check on the right time for earthing up - and there are even some microscopic leek seedlings that are fighting their way through the weeds. Best of all, nobody had stolen my storage box or any of its contents.

However, the nettles are back with a vengeance, thistles and dandelions are up in the cleared bits of the patch, and the grass is growing long all round the plot. I took my shears with me to attempt to sort this out, but they are completely blunt. I did pull up a few square feet of nettles, and bear the scars on my forearms. I'm going to try to go up a couple of times during the week after work and do battle with the nettles - in any case, I forgot to bring back the shears for sharpening.

As well as scraping up weeds, I put another, 2m x 1m, raised bed in. I took the Gardener's World advice to line the bottom with cardboard to help suppress weeds. I suspect the local weeds are not to be deterred by cardboard, but it cannot hurt.

At home, the runner and French bean seeds have done well and have been potted up, and I've sowed courgette seeds. The new raised bed will be a home for these once they've been hardened off. I have my free BBC seeds to plant, too, which I ought to do today if we want any tomatoes at all. I need to find a way of covering the paths that doesn't involve financial outlay - cardboard weighed down with stones, maybe? - so that I don't need to keep weeding them.