Sunday 19 May
Arrived on site with a collection of cauliflower plants to plant out. This is the range of coloured caulis I had bought online. 
On the way in I checked in with our President, Hugh Merrett, in the Association greenhouse as earlier in the week I had been given a wooden greenhouse bench and shelf. He immediately thought he had a use for them so I drove down to the plot and carried them from there where I had stored them to the greenhouse where they were found to fit nicely.
I then returned to the plot and went to the brassica cage where I had to pull two cabbages, one small and the other a decent size, that had recently hearted up and were in the way. I set the cauliflower plants in their pots out on the ground to check they would fit in the space and had to make a minor modification from the plan I had on computer (courtesy of Suttons).
​Just as I was about to start planting I had a visit from Tina from the far track who described finding a hedgehog that had been injured by a strimmer. She initially left it alone to see if it could recover but checking later found it was seriously injured so took it to the Hedgehog Hospital in New Milton.
Shows how careful you need to be with a strimmer!
By the time we'd finished it was 11 o'clock, time for coffee and cake - delicious coffee and raisin cake this week!
Returning to the plot I started planting out the caulis using, as they are quite large plants when mature, my normal system of digging a 4 inch deep hole and then using a bulb planter at the bottom. As usual each plant got a good dose of lime in the hole.
I managed to plant 5 plants each of:-
'Veronica', a green Romanesco,
'Graffiti', a purple cauli,
and 'Sunset', an orange one.
I still have to plant 5 ' Clapton f1' which are normal white caulis but club root resistant - as well as 10 kohlrabi.
I had run out of time so picked the purple sprouting from the lone plant covered in yellow flowers left to seed for next year and, after trimming the cabbages went home for lunch - late as usual!

​I had taken home the kale plants after my last visit and stripped them of leaves and sprouts for the freezer, so there was room to plant a row of seed potatoes. 
No-dig does mean I didn't have to dig over the patch but just hoe the weeds and cultivate the surface. I then buried the seed potatoes just beneath the surface with a tiny ridge to ensure the chitted shoots were covered. Then I drew a small ridge of soil over the row ready for mulching with a thick mulch of horse litter.

​I mulched the early potatoes, carefully covering the emerging shoots, and covered all that patch including the second earlies and Cara potatoes. Not tidy but effective!
I then had time to pick yet more purple sprouting, this time from the dwarf plants on the new cabbage patch inside the newly constructed brassica cage.

​I finished off by putting the finishing touches to the cage with a pair of hooks to hold up the batten the door netting is wound round.

Saturday 13th April
Having missed a visit or two with a throat infection and the installation of my wood stove, I made an extra visit today. With the Working Party tomorrow, Sunday, I will get nothing done on my plot then.
My main target was to finish netting my half completed brassica cage. Both sides are pigeon proof but the top and door are open. The old netting was stored rolled on its batten in the shed, with the runner bean canes. A couple of staples held the end on the back rail and I rolled the batten along to top and dropped it down the front over the doorway. With a bit of adjustment I was able to staple the netting to the top side rail, folding the slack with a stapled 'Hospital corner' at each end where it bent over the end hoop. The end, rolled on the batten, lays on the ground and held in place with stakes and a couple of short post ends laid to trap the netting against the stakes. That covers the doorway.

Having completed the framework of the cage I retrieved the netting from the shed and started stapling it onto the frame. Starting at the back I fixed the side strip of buttefly netting. The other side has a lower strip of 2 inch square netting that lets the small birds in to deal with the greenfly with the butterfly netting above. Butterfly netting covers the metre wide strip above this wide netting.
​I had to be quite careful measuring and checking before stapling the netting in place so it took me some time. However, I was happy with the result when I had to go home without doing anything else. It only remains for me to cover the top of the cage.

Sunday 7th April
Returning from a trip away, I wanted to get on with rebuilding the first brassica cage on the new patch at the far end of the plot. I was stopped last time by not having suitable battens for the side stringers so I visited InExcess on the way and collected enough for this cage and the second.
I stopped at the gate and the Trading Hut to put up notices for next week's Working Party so decided to have my Sunday morning coffee straight after unloading the timber. It was great to see that the Wildlife List on the cabin was already very long -and it has only been up a week!
After coffee I returned to the plot and sorted the best battens for the stringers. They need to be in line with the edges of the netting for stapling so I spent some time measuring and marking where to fix them. Even so I had to make some adjustments while fitting them.
Once I had finished the structure felt quite strong and stable so I hope to do without any diagonal struts.
All this had taken some time and I realised it was lunchtime when my neighbours settled down for a picnic. Hence there was no time for harvesting.

I got a shock when I started to post my latest blog item! The last post was the beginning of March! Of course I've not been doing nothing, in fact as normal spring is the busiest time and I have managed to write some posts.
The problem has been that transferring the text onto the website is both complicated and tedious. Hence this post is being tipped onto the website direct!
However the problem that stopped me in my tracks a few weeks ago was when I accidentally deleted the programme (Sorry - app!) I use to write the text. When I tried to download it again they had upgraded it so my tablet can't use it any more!
With help from Karl Foreman (? Plot 100) I am now trying out another app - Google Keep - so I'm posting last Sunday's entry. No photo but the text seems to work!
​Just need to post date the entry to get it to display in order!

Saturday 2nd March
Given that I am told our President, Hugh Merret, normally sows his leeks in mid-February, I thought I had better get some sown. Having run my cultivator over the surface of the onion bed near the fence in line with my new 'no-dig' policy, I sowed a packet of Musselburgh in the first row next to the fence. I then sowed some 'Joliant' early leeks next to them, though there were not enough seeds in the packet to fill the whole row.

Next I carved a strip for the path through the horse litter on the bed nearest to the shed. This is the bed I shall use for brassicas once I have moved my huge net tunnel. I will probably have to dismantle it and rebuild it as it needs quite a bit of repairs!

Next I pulled the last of the cauliflowers in the current batch. It has grown well in the last week with the good weather and looks ready to 'blow'. It is big enough for a couple of meals and I pulled it so I can hang it in the garage for a couple of days while we eat the 'Autumn' broccoli that is still producing!

​One January King has started going to seed and will contribute to the broccoli and its blown partner will make nice spring greens.

​The last cabbage is hearting up and hopefully will give me a good cabbage.

​I then turned my attention to the second bed of green manure. This patch of Phacelia has survived the winter rather better but I was still able to rake off the top growth fairly easily making a generous contribution to the compost bin. There is still enough leaf mould left to mulch this patch.

​Finally I was able to harvest a few leeks and some purple sprouting to take home.
Once home I had time to prepare some buckets for growing extra early potatoes in the greenhouse. I cut out three panels round a cheap plastic bucket from Wickes using a hole saw and a sheet cutter.

That bucket then nests inside a second bucket before I part fill it with compost and plant two Casablanca seed potatoes.  Once they have grown (and I have earned them up with more compost) I hope to lift the inner bucket out and extract potatoes before my earlies mature out on the plot.
​The first one I manufactured a week or so ago, as a test, already has a shoot emerging from the compost.

Monday 25th February
It was such I nice day I set about tying in my Loganberry. It went quite well until I had nearly finished when I mistakenly cut off one of the longer canes while trying to remove a short, weak one. I had pruned out a number of thin canes and planned six stronger ones each tied to a support cane. Now I have only five!

At that point I wandered up the track to offer a neighbour some Jerusalem artichoke roots. In the short time he has been on his plot he has doing wonders and it just so happened that he likes Jerusalem artichokes and wanted to grow some. I was about to clear part of my patch as it was growing through onto my neighbour's plot. I only grow it to shade the greenhouse in the summer as it gives me terrible wind if I eat it. I therefore returned to the plot and dug a trench along the fence removing all the root as I went. I finished with a bucket full which I gave to my friend. Enough for him to plant some and eat the rest. I found it interesting that I could distinguish the two varieties I had growing. The red skinned roots which I bought in and the white ones which someone gave me.

​I finished up with a strip along the fence that was clear of the roots and a patch next to the greenhouse where the new crop will come through.
Then I spent some time moving bags of leaves from next to my leaf mould bin so I could undo the netting. Then I fetched my barrow and dug out several loads which I spread as a mulch where the green manure had been growing. This patch is now ready for sowing the first row of peas.

​While I was doing that my friend from up the track came by and offered me a Honeyberry bush which I was happy to accept and try alongside my other soft fruit. Unfortunately it took quite a while to dig out the bindweed roots that had established themselves

It is a tiny spidery bush at the moment (just visible if you look carefully!) I smoothed the soil and then mulched with horse litter.

Sunday 24th February
Having dropped by the Trading Hut to buy a bag of Vermiculite for my seed sowing and helped deal with a dispute between allotment neighbours, I arrived on the plot very late.
I had looked back through my blog photos at home I finally could sort out which leafmould bin to empty this year. However that meant I had to clear a stack of poles and bricks from on top of the rescue of last year's leaves so I can move them out of the way to get at the bin. That done I could drag several bags out of the way and up on top of the others and then open up the chicken wire retainer.
That enabled me to dig out a few barrow loads of part decomposed leaves and spread them over the bed that used to be covered by the Phacelia, green manure. I also spread some 'leafmould' under the blackberry vines to improve the soil and stifle the weeds - with the help of the worms etc.
I was then called home to have lunch at the beach hut which, given the weather, was impossible to refuse.

Thursday 21st February
Another warm day so when, I started clearing the green manure from the bed for peas and beans, I realised that it would be better to do something less strenuous and more fiddly. So when I had cleared one half and moved a heap of dying greenery to the compost heap I left the second half and started fixing the canes for training the Loganberry.


​The poles have been there for some time and, after adjusting the position of a few screws and nails so the canes rested on them easily, I wired them into place. There was then only time to wind the Loganberry vines round the canes. I will tie them in later.

While doing this something unexpected happened! I looked up from my work to see an adult fox in the next door but one plot. The animal totally ignored me, stopping to sniff something by the fence. Perhaps I should have whipped out my phone to photograph him but instead I grabbed a stone and threw it at him. Far from dashing off he just moved away a bit but the second stone sent him running towards the main road.
​Shortly after I saw a rat dash across the next plot as well!



​I then spent a while dealing with the disposal of the heap of blackberry vines.

​Once that was done I returned to the other half of the bed and pulled out a second barrow load of greenery and heaped it into the compost bin and the patch was ready to be mulch with leaf mould.


To finish I checked my cauliflowers and was horrified to see that they are swelling and ripening at a tremendous pace with the warm weather. We still have to eat the last one!
​I also checked the beetroot and pulled up the whole row as there were lots of tiny and useless roots. The few good ones were bagged up to take home.
As I cleared up I noticed a Mooli radish that was very exposed with 5 or 6 inches sticking out of the soil so I pulled it.

​The rest of the root was huge and so I had a radish that was a foot long or more and was almost as big as those on sale in the market, imported from the continent!