What have you done on the plot today?

[jamesld8]

Cut down autumn raspberries and massacred pruned hard an old apple tree---it was getting choked out some have put `some` extra light into centre thro` extensive pruning 

[ElyDave]

that reminds me - need to do my raspberries as well.

Leeks coming on well, chard still going.

Bought some seed for this years planting.

[spindrift]

An echium seed has germinated in the front garden and is now a foot high. To my knowledge no echium has matured and set seed in the front garden for 15 years, and the soil hasn't been disturbed. *reads thread title* oh.

[jamesld8]

Cut some broccoli (actually all the sprouting heads) to go with Valentines DIY meal (garlic and lemon chicken avec rice avec home grown runner beans from freezer)  with OH at home 

[Wobbly John]

Lifted the last of the leeks. Changed the oil on the rotovator and rotovated all the clear area of the allotment (about 15 pole) most of it had been done in the autumn, but I decided it was worth churning it up to let the frost in.

[ElyDave]

Still got lots of standing leeks to harvest.

Need to clear some parts of the veg plot for the early sewings though.

This morning before the wife left to take daughter out for breakfast I finally got round to pruning the grape vine, fig tree and cutting down the autumn fruiting raspberry canes.  By the time I got to that my fingers were too cold and wet to feel their prickliness.

Still need to prune the gooseberries and blackcurrants.

[SteveC]

We have started a custom of placing a suitable plant over the ashes of our deceased pets (we've lost two of our three cats in the past eighteen months).
The first was quite straightforward. Dolly died on Michaelmas day and MrsC found a Michaelmas daisy called Dolly.
Wes went just before Christmas. He proved a bit more difficult. Nothing suitable called 'Wes' or 'Wesley'.
In the end we've gone for this weigela as he was black and white (officially a 'tuxedo').
So far, so good.
"But where is it going?" asks I.
"Well, that flowering currant's past its best and a bit in the way..."
It took over an hour with a fork, spade, crowbar, two pruning saws (breaking one in the process) and an axe...

To get a quarter of it out....

The beer will taste good later I suppose.

[jamesld8]

slightly off plot -- but cut the lawns yesterday pm to remove the flush of grass grown during mild December; first opportunity of ground being dry enough since then too. Last cut was late November

[ElyDave]

Haven't even contemplated the lawn yet, but I know I must.

General tidying up this morning, nice cold crisp morning.  REmoving last years dead stems in the borders, pruning the gooseberries, tidying the veg plot, a bit of weeding.

Pulled up last years chard plants, still growing, but making room for this years plantings. In any case I'll have nice chard omlette for lunch.

[SteveC]

"Well, that flowering currant's past its best and a bit in the way..."
It took over an hour with a fork, spade, crowbar, two pruning saws (breaking one in the process) and an axe...
To get a quarter of it out....

The good news was that the next half of the thing was much easier to deal with. The original bole had died back entirely and had largely rotted away, and the smaller piece in front of that came out quite easily. We've decided to leave the remaining quarter as it's in a sensible place at the back of the bed.
Then we attacked one of the ponds. Very smelly!
And this afternoon will be the first grass cut of the year and the first with my new lawnmower, bought this morning.

[ElyDave]

last of the leeks harvested

Brussels and parsnips sewn.

Dahlias dug up ready to split and move.

[mcshroom]

A quarter of the garden is no longer gravel as I've now bagged it. More to do tomorrow

[Ruthie]

A quarter of the garden is no longer gravel as I've now bagged it. More to do tomorrow

Wow!  That must have been a heck of a workout.

[mcshroom]

A quarter of the garden is no longer gravel as I've now bagged it. More to do tomorrow

Wow!  That must have been a heck of a workout.

I'm still in the shallow end, so it'll get harder as I work down the garden. My arms are a it sore though. I'm currently thinking of plans and seeing how much of the bottom of the garden I really need to clear.

After I've moved the gravel, it'll then be the small matter of digging over the compacted, stone embedded garden underneath

[ElyDave]

A quarter of the garden is no longer gravel as I've now bagged it. More to do tomorrow

Wow!  That must have been a heck of a workout.

I'm still in the shallow end, so it'll get harder as I work down the garden. My arms are a it sore though. I'm currently thinking of plans and seeing how much of the bottom of the garden I really need to clear.

After I've moved the gravel, it'll then be the small matter of digging over the compacted, stone embedded garden underneath

 That's where I was ten years ago. After 8 years of digging in compost and grit, last year I went from sub-standard clay soil that I was struggling to get much out of, to raised beds with good friable, nutritious topsoil.

[ElyDave]

More planting - PSB outdoor sowing, cucumbers and courgettes in pots to germinate.

Pruned the tree hydrangea - I give it a hard hack every couple of years - and tidied up around it, fallen leaves etc and removed the stalks of last years perennial chrysanths and geraniums. 

Then the hail started

Spring is still just around the corner

[Pancho]

I've blitzed the garden this week - between icy frost and showers of rain/hail/sleet. No amazing progress or milestones - just clearing beds and doing the stuff I was too busy to do last Autumn (too busy for the last decade, actually).

Did first mild cut of about a 1/3rd of the lawn today. Not ideal conditions but I'll be absent shortly and cannot risk leaving it until after my return.

It's been fantastic to be able to start gardening jobs knowing that I can complete them tomorrow. Or the day after. Or however long it takes.

[jamesld8]

Thought about planting out some what may be onion sets (ie very very small onion bulbs from seed in 2015 which I gathered and have stored dry) but as it`s just 3c , raining and a gale decided to delay.

Nevertheless under a plastic tunnel cloche placed for onion bed found a couple onions left over from 2015 sprouting up; so added some dried chicken manure, hoed it all over put cloche back and plan plant next week. Worst that can happen is they`ll fail best is actually get a crop of sorts 

[Bledlow]

Fixed up a raised bed in the one patch that still had a slope. Planted some carrots of a variety that's supposedly resistant to the depredations of carrot fly. Did some digging.

Our allotment site is being devastated this year. On one side there's a road running across the top of an 18th century dam which holds back a lake in what is now the grounds of the university. That dam has been deemed by the Environment Agency to require reinforcement, lest it collapse & unleash a flood over eastern Reading. The road is expected to be closed for about four months.

So the allotments along that side must be temporarily vacated, half their topsoil scraped off & piled up on the other half until the work is done. Two other plots are also being taken over to provide working space. Recently vacated plots have been kept unlet to provide land for the displaced tenants to store stuff, including temporarily transplanted fruit bushes. A patch left overgrown for assorted reasons has been cleared of brambles (our blackberry source is lost & gone forever, along with poor allotment fox's hidey-hole) & will be given to the one tenant whose plot will be permanently lost, but for the time being he just has enough ground to heap up his stuff on. He'll lose a fine old apple tree.

Our plot isn't directly affected, because of where it is (we wouldn't even be flooded if the dam went), but everything's going on around us. One bloke who's been on the verge of eviction for ages for neglect of his plot (he's never really got the idea that one's supposed to grow things, & keeping the plot tidy with lavish applications of weedkiller doesn't really count as looking after it) has realised that lending half of it to one of the displaced for her to cultivate will earn him yet another stay of execution. The newly cleared patch borders us on one side, & the biggest storage area on the other.

[Pancho]

Don't worry, the brambles will be back. I'm fighting a perpetual war with the things. Post apocalypse, the world will populated with, we're told, cockroaches feasting on a diet of blackberries.

[ElyDave]

Don't worry, the brambles will be back. I'm fighting a perpetual war with the things. Post apocalypse, the world will populated with, we're told, cockroaches feasting on a diet of blackberries.

The two most pernicious weeds in my garden are the brambles, shat out by the birds and the ivy from the previous owner's attitude to ground cover.

The brambles I'm just about keeping on top of, but it's taken me 5 year of serious effort to remove the worst of the ivy from one patch

[Bledlow]

Don't worry, the brambles will be back. I'm fighting a perpetual war with the things. Post apocalypse, the world will populated with, we're told, cockroaches feasting on a diet of blackberries.

No, that patch will be a new allotment for the bloke whose plot is being turned into hardstanding. He's quite keen, so I don't see him allowing it to turn into a tangle of brambles again.

[SteveC]

Good news: mowed both lawns, the back one for the first time this year.
Bad news: I 'did' my back earlier in the week and getting the lawnmower out of the garage, past the trailer tent, up onto the lawn, back down, past the trailer tent again, up onto the back lawn and back down into the garage involved a certain amount of hurt.
More bad news: the back lawn really, really needs some serious TLC this year. Seeds or even turf will be involved.
More good news: I found the two missing perspex panes from the greenhouse. They'd not blown away but had obviously been found and put somewhere safe by the builders.

I suppose I should go back out while it's dry and still light.

[Wobbly John]

I planted parsnips and carrots.

Since spotting that the grounds from the coffee machine at work were being chucked in the bin, I persuaded them to save them for me to use in the garden - I'm bringing home about 10 litres of coffee grounds a week!

As an experiment, I planted the carrot seeds in a bed of coffee grounds.

If it works, I should not only be able top see in the dark, I'll be up all night to make the most of it. 

[ElyDave]

I planted parsnips and carrots.

Since spotting that the grounds from the coffee machine at work were being chucked in the bin, I persuaded them to save them for me to use in the garden - I'm bringing home about 10 litres of coffee grounds a week!

As an experiment, I planted the carrot seeds in a bed of coffee grounds.

If it works, I should not only be able top see in the dark, I'll be up all night to make the most of it. 

ICBA with carrots this year, never had them work.  Coffee grounds though, very good, I've had them from Waitrose in Ely before.