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An Organic Gardening Resource - Tips on composting, organic gardening videos, about soil, flower gardens, vegetable gardens, herb gardens, fruit trees, gardening problems, gardening zones, toads, gardening with kids, landscaping, building a pond, gardenpoetry, videos, gardening advice, gardening how-to, gardening help, This Good Earth, The New Garden, Flash animations, tutorials.:

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Allotment Tuesday 21st and Wednesday 22nd February

 We had a really very good, and satisfactory year, last year. We had a surplus of tomatoes and soft fruit, and an abundance of potatoes that we are still using from the store in the shed. Margaret made lots of tomato pickle and soup and we were very contented with the crops.


                                                                       Tuesday 
   This is the first day I have had a chance to get some work done, after all the snow we have had recently. I spent about one and a half hours tidying up and pulling out some of the weeds that have just started growing again. I managed to sow some very early "Nantes" carrots in a large container, where they will remain until they are edible. I covered the whole thing with fleece to prevent frost damage. 

Carrots wrapped up in fleece.

Wednesday

Today  I planted some onion sets, in an onion bed that I established last November, by planting some Japanese over winter onion sets that have been coming along nicely ever since. 

I also dug in some beautiful compost from the compost bin That has been rotting down over the whole year and should kick start the plants that I grow here in this bed.

Caroline Foley's expert guide to a few things to do in February | Life and style | guardian.co.uk

Caroline Foley's expert guide to a few things to do in February | Life and style | guardian.co.uk:

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Spring is upon us at last, but the work is piling up and I was very busy over the last few days.

• Weeding mostly as the weeds are growing very fast again.

• I planted my first early potatoes, including some Pink Fir apple that a friend gave to me.
• I put some more Broad beans in, another friend Barry gave me from some seed that he had saved from the year before.
• I removed some of the Winter Brassicas and put the on the compost heap.
• I then replanted some self seeded Spinach that I had allowed to grow, by leaving one plant in the bed and allowing it to go to seed. I gave the balance of the young plants away to a new Allotment holder who was very glad of them.

A Busy Day

I managed to mow the front lawn today for the first time this year. The grass on front lawn doesn't seem to grow as fast as the back lawn. I guess this is because it is in shade for most of the day. I trimmed the edges of the lawn and gave the shrubs along the border a light feed of Growmore.

I spent 3 hours on the allotment in the afternoon.

I managed to plant some more onion sets in the top bed next to the shed.

I then weeded the strawberry beds and used up some high nitrogen liquid feed that I had left over from last year. This should help to give the plants a bit of a start.

I also weeded around my Rhubarb plants and used the last of the feed on those plants. I was a little peeved to see that my rhubarb is not growing as fast as some of the other rhubarb plants on the allotments.

I also harvested some lovely Sprouting Broccoli, these have been growing all winter and it is really nice to crop the results of my hard work. Margaret was very pleased with those!

Purchases and gifts

Shopping in Wroxham on Sunday 13th March, in Roys the largest village in the UK .

I purchased

• 4 bags of 60 litre size potting compost. (A bargain @£10)
• 3 large size carnation plants
• 2 patio size carnation plants
• 1 small trailing Petunia

Robin, a friend from church has arranged for me to collect some really useful top-soil which I can use for the allotment. Apparently it is the tops of molehills. I will make use of it and I picked up 5 bags and stored them at the allotment.

Shopping in Morrisons on Monday 14th March

I purchased

• Some plug Petunia plants which I will pot on.

The First Cut of the Back Lawn

Today I gave the back lawn the first cut of the year. There is nothing quite like taking the lawn mower from the shed after it has been in store for a year applying some oil and hearing the motor purr into action.

I also found the time to give the patio a good hosing down and a scrub. I used a chemical cleaning solution. I don't like using chemicals of any description in the garden, but I must say the patio looks good, and reasonably clean.