Over a pretty soggy winter and early spring we have been doing the groundwork on our newest allotment plot. Over the past few weeks as the threat of Coronavirus has loomed ever larger over the country, investing time and effort in developing cultivated ground has been a great comfort.

We’ve put up new fencing and joined this plot to its neighbour to make a full size 10 pole plot.  The fencing is necessary as we have rabbits, deer and badgers on the site.  The last of these are voracious feeders on sweetcorn and have noses that are sensitive enough to work out the sweetcorn cobs are ripe a day or two before we’re ready to start picking.

New plot looking north 31 March

We’ve built a frame for growing squashes in the hope of increasing yields while reducing the amount of land that the plants take up.

The picture above also shows a run of fruit bushes that will eventually be protected with a fruit cage and a neighbouring rhubarb patch as well as leaf mould and compost bins.

We’ve also established a new raised bed for alliums.  The other two plots both suffer from White Rot so we’ve dug this new bed out, lined it with thick cardboard and filled it with new compost and rotted manure.

New onion bed 31 March 2020

We’ve turned quite a lot of the main body of the ploy over to poatoes for this year and as the picture below shows we’ve gone for a split between growing them in open ground and in bags.

New plot looking south