First seedlings pop through

It's a dreary, dank day and I'm feeling a little depressed. Though Maggie is a healing balm and I have a great book to read and pen-pal to write to; plenty to keep me busy.

But I want to be outside, I want to be planting seeds and clearing the orchard patch at the Lottie.

So the closest I get is stepping out into the mizzily, maudlin morning and taking a peek at the seed trays. And lo, joy is to be found in those little green shoots! Life is pushing through the dirt and darkness and filling me with hope.

Let these bursts of gorgeous greenery delight your eyes too. We need to share the love, the hope and help one another see light ahead xx

Broad beans, Broccoli celebrese, Kale, Purple sprouting broccoli

And I noticed this baby too :)

a tiny kohl rabi!

Hugs

Carrie

All about those Bs

In good old fashioned 'Sesame Street' style, this post is brought to you with by the letter B....

All I am about to tell you what happened on Saturday, a rare day in my life when I was able to cope and more than that, actually enjoy being at the plots!

This year, (as it is for everyone on our allotments) hasn't been going too well; we have been plagued by birds and the weather has been terrible. Thus it was that I found myself, on arrival, pulling out all our diseased and pigeon decimated broad beans. They were still in the flush of fruiting, some had flowers still to mature, but we had to say goodbye, even to the baby successional ones planted in a wee triangle further along the bed.

Beside them, the mangetout are starting to look in a bad state too, though there is plenty of flowers and pods on them. The birds have been nipping off the tops of each plant and every growing tip, they've been tugging at them hard too as quite a few plants were barely in the soil at all and had started to crisp up and crumble away from the bottom up. It really could get you down but I wasn't having any of that.

Pretty much all and I mean all (we had about 6 berries left) of our gorgeous blackcurrants were gone on Saturday. Only a day, one blasted night, after the bush had been full and gloriously bursting. Boy was I looking forward to a dark, juicy harvest only to have it snatched away from me by - you guessed it, the bloody birds. They ate every ripe one and took those on the verge of perfection and ripped them off and left them on the ground :( Such sad times.

I weeded wildly, fuelled by my annoyance for a while but soon calmed down. Andrew was off again to Gleno village for more wood - by goodness there was a netted fruit cage to be built this day! Damnation - thou shall not pilfer our blueberries! *shakes fist at sky*

the fruit cage has been working!

But, I mean look  - bird beaks have gotten to our Kale and the Pak Choi. Plus the Kohl Rabi  and PSB looks so sad. At this rate we would seriously need to consider netting our whole plot; one great big fruit cage!

So I turned my back and focused my attention on the beetroot, which amazingly Andrew had forgotten about. But then he has been doing everything else and was on Saturday building us a lovely gravelled parterre path on 14b. We really wanted a big tonne bag of the stuff but had to be happy with some smaller bags as the deliveries were over for the day at the depot. However he did a fabulous job.

Plus the Blackberries or as I like to call them Bramble berries are fruiting like crazy over there, it really does the heart good to see that one bush so big and healthy this year when so much else is a little disappointing.

Anyway, back to the beetroot, both yellow and red varieties had been sown direct and forgotten about so I thinned them all out, put the really tiny ones straight into the compost and the rest into our harvest bags. Oh did we have a feast! Now the rest will have more room to grow and become big and beautiful.

Lastly, I missed my own Blog Birthday. It was on Monday and it passed me by in a whirlwind. So happy belated 7th blogiversary to me - yay! I must remember to eat cake at some time :)

More photos to come from that day and some from Sunday too when Andrew made a quick visit :)
Love and Hugs
Carrie

Rhubarb harvest / snippets of Spring

It has begun my friends - harvesting from the allotment has taken off already. The rhubarb wasn't forced this year or we would have been enjoying it earlier but the time has arrived and it was worth the wait. I have a couple of recipes I would like to try, fingers crossed this time I actually get further than getting the ingredients out and then having to dump them!

At the two half plots there are many signs of new life and tasty produce to come, it gives one the tingles :)

Left : Autumn Raspberries coming through and the Blackthorn hedge taking root and sprouting leaves

Middle : Just one of those amazing little 6 headed Daffodils I have been mentioning

Right : Beautiful fat buds on the Cherry tree, it's covered in them and the Garlic growing strong

******

Naturally we also have opened up the Gault seedling nursery and even after the incident with the mini greenhouse, our spirits are up and pretty much everything is doing well. They're all exciting to me so even if you log off now in boredom of my giddiness, I am going to show you  more seedling photos now.....well, loads of soil and maybe a few specks of green, hehe.

Top

 Left : One of 3 (so far!) Mangetout 'Oregon Sugarpod'

Right : The Dahlia 'Bora Bora' tubers are all doing good, this is just one

Bottom 

Left : 2 Kohl Rabi hiding in a corner of a big seed tray full of more waiting to burst through

 Right : One of many many Zinnia 'Jazz' babies (boy these grow fast!)

Love and Hugs
Your Carrie x