Things growing

Hurray! Things have started growing:



If you look really carefully you can see some courgette plants (started in Roger's greenhouse), and if you enlarge it you might just be able to see that our garlic and some of our onions have sprouted. We also had a potato pop out, but I thought it was a weed and pulled it up (don't tell Roger...).

Radishes have also grown, but the lettuces have been eaten - there is no trace at all of them.

Couch Grass

Part of our allotment was cover in grass, strawberries and saplings:



Roger had already dug half of it, and I attacked the other half this morning - here's what it looked like after:



When I'd finished a gardener from the plot next door popped over (farmer for 30 years, so he knew what he was talking about), and told me it looked like a bad case of couch grass!

Apparently this isn't good - it's hard to get rid of without weedkiller (something like Roundup). I'm much rather keep organic, so we'll try and dig it out, but it looks like it might not be easy.

Our allotment

Welcome to my blog about our allotment! We've had our alloment, which is located in Caerleon, in Wales, for a couple of weeks, and I'm going to use this blog to record how we get on. The 'we' is me (Michael) and Roger (and our wives and kids!). We've never had an alloment before - the idea came from a night in the pub...

We were on the waiting list for almost a year before we got it. Its what's known as a '5 Perch', which is a half size allotment (plenty big enough though!).

The Caerleon allotments (self managed, but owned by Newport council) are great. There is a really friendy and dedicated team of volunteers managing the site - they made us feel welcome straight away, and the facilities are excellent. You can borrow power tools such as rotavators, buy fertilizer etc from the shop, and there is even a kitchen.

Our plot was pretty overgrown and abandoned, but luckily half of it was covered in carpet, which meant the weeds weren't too bad.

We spent a few hours (over a couple of days) digging it.

Mike (one of the committe) then brought a rotavator which made life a lot easier once we managed to control it, so we finally got it in a state ready to plant things...

On the second weekend (last week) we planted our first crops. So far we've planted:

• Potatoes (two types - don't ask me what!)
• Onions
• Shallots
• Garlic
• Carrots
• Radishes
• Peas
• Courgettes

We've also got pumpkins, purple sprouting, sprouts, cauliflower and french beans growing in our greenhouses.

So far the garlic has sprouted, and the radishes look like they've been eaten!

I'll record our progress in this blog! Wish us luck...