29th March 2019 - Walking to the plot & clearing the fruit bed

This week I've been without a car and so I've walked to (or from) the allotment a couple of times.  It's exactly 4km (2.49 miles) from my gate to my house.  What this picture doesn't show you is that coming home it is about 60% uphill and they're really steep!  Once upon a time it wouldn't have

occurred to me to walk, I would have stayed at home or maybe got a taxi but since I lost some weight I've been feeling much more able to do more.  It gave me a great sense of achievement and, as you can see, it helped me to meet all of my Fitbit targets on Thursday!

I'm not sure that I'll keep it up once I get a car again but I'll continue to feel proud of myself for as long as it lasts!!

One of the other benefits of not having a car is that once I get up to the plot I have to stay!  I can't pop off to do something or stop off somewhere on the way to the plot and end up spending loads of time (and money) before I even get there.  As a result I have got so much done in quite a short space of time.

One of the main jobs I wanted to get done was to sort out the fruit bed in 85a.  The raspberry canes needed to be cut back in February and I'm always late doing it so I only just got around to doing it.  Last year I neglected that bed and all I can say is that it had gone a bit feral!  I didn't really take any fruit even from the bed, never mind weeding and mulching.  The raspberries had sent out millions of runners that were trying to take over the full 13' bed - argh!!!  

I forgot to take a before picture - doh! but on the right side I had 2 gooseberries that I've removed.  I decided to take them out because I have another big gooseberry and I couldn't get to any of them to prune (or harvest the fruit) and so I decided to take the 2 smallest ones out and give them away.  My arms look like I've been attacked by a mad cat (note to self - wear long sleeves when doing something with gooseberries) but it is worth it to sort this bed out!

In this space I have the remaining gooseberry, a blackcurrant and a blackberry.  At the end of the season I'm going to move them so that they're not all along one side and so that I can easily move between them.  Closest to the camera is where the raspberries will grow.  I cut it down to the ground (because this is autumn fruiting) and all I need to do is keep an eye out for any canes growing in places that I don't want them.

In 86a the spring flower bed is really coming alive.  There are 2 types of hyacinth at the front of the bed, the picture really doesn't do the purple justice, it is a really deep colour and so unusual.  The daffodils are also starting to bud up but the idea of this bed was to use it as a crop and so far there aren't enough buds for me to harvest them for the house.  I will keep an eye on them but it looks like I'm going to have to enjoy them at the plot.

I've also started to prepare the bed for the asparagus.  I had to weed it and unfortunately it has marestail growing in it.  All of the beds in that plot are going to suffer with marestail and bindweed so I'm just going to have to manage it.  As you know I don't dig (and it's not even worth trying to dig marestail out because the roots go so deep).  My main worry about the marestail is that it will be difficult to pull up when the asparagus starts growing because they can look similar to start with and I don't want to be pulling up the asparagus tips!

In case you were wondering, I'm currently between jobs and so rather than just going to the plot at the weekends I'm being able to get there in the week.  You might therefore see some additional updates from me in between the normal posts (you might not as I'm also busy with a job search).

Until next time...
Happy Gardening x