After a little bit of research I rediscovered that if I didn’t get my spuds in soon they might suffer from blight at the other end of the year.  And knowing this plot as we do, we know that there has never been a year on the site that has not had blight. Its a quandary, especially when we have had such a long, wet and cold spring. So we looked at the oracle, The Met Office and discovered that yes it would be raining all day tomorrow, but it would be 12 c rain, almost balmy one might say, and then the next few days were dry and there was talk of a heady high on one day of 14 c. The lows, which are not at this point exactly important, but will be in a few weeks, at night were 5 c, but with cloud, not much risk of a ground frost, which means game on I reckon,  its spud planting time.

I could be completely wrong of course, only time will tell. It will be easy to find out, I’ve planted 7 International Kidney, known to you and me as Jersey Royals and 7, 2nd early Charlottes, if there is not a nice tidy row of 7 a piece, I lost a few!  I would love to plant main crop potatoes, but it is impossible in the midlands, the high humidity guarantees blight well before the end of the growing season and even with 2nd earlies, one has fingers crossed, is on the blight watch app, which alerts you to blight and am checking the leaves at least once a day.

And along with that is the onion problem,  or should I say, onions, garlic and shallot problem. Garlic should have been planted late autumn, shallots are mid november to mid march and onions are mid march to mid april.  Nightmare, for someone that has only just taken over a plot.  So in the spirit of Yee Hawww, we planted two rows of strong garlic, we may well eat half of that as fresh shoots in a pesto, which will be gorgeous. Hopefully the shallots will do enough to give us that early roasted autumn glow of a well cooked shallot, and the onions, well I love the onions, they are cheap as chips, but straight from an allotment they are amazing, juicy, vibrant and gorgeous in a salad or cheese and onion sandwich, we planted three rows of a giant variety!

And while hubby was preparing the soil before I went to give him a hand I looked through my seeds and planted up, runner beans, more courgettes this time a yellow variety, little gem lettuce, a savoy and a primo (summer) cabbage and a lot of sweetcorn. I love sweetcorn, and one day it is going to do amazingly well on my allotment…

And just before we headed home for the day, I dug out the previous tenants leeks, before they go over.  I would have took them around to them if I’d known where they lived.  But unfortunately with the advent of the data protection act, even in allotments, I wasn’t able to do that. Hopefully I will be able to do them justice in a recipe tomorrow.
And hubby dug out a couple of beds, to plant some rosemary, chives, mint and thyme. And just before we went home, rather feeling the cold, we attached a bird box on a north facing wall of the shed. Our bird box at home has just been occupied by a blue tit, we live in hope for our new nest box.