Believe it or not, we have only had the allotment two weeks but we are powering ahead. The rain certainly hasn’t stopped us. This weekend we concentrated on turning over the soil on the right side of the allotment.

Unfortunately, the patch of soil is a little lower quality in comparison to the left due to being overrun with various weeds. The ivy and bineweed have been quite a challenge for us. Some of the bineweed roots have been almost 3ft deep! A lot of the roots are stuck behind the fence and we are unable to reach them so I imagine that this is be a recurring problem.

You may have noticed that the monster artichoke has gone! We believe that the next door neighbour cut it down, but that’s okay. We weren’t really sure about keeping it and it was planted by him, so it has saved us a job. There was a rhubarb plant hiding under the artichoke and unfortunately did get stood on when it was cut down. We had to move it earlier than we had planned, but we didn’t have much choice due to the damage that had happened to it. Usually, you would move rhubarb in early spring or autumn. We have decided to turn plot six into a fruit plot, the rhubarb will sit with wild strawberries.

After turning the top right patch of soil over several times, we have finally started planting the herb garden. Even still the roots just kept on popping up! We have sage, parsley, thyme, rosemary, mint, peppermint and tarragon so far.

After planting the herb garden, we started laying out the position for the potatoes. Using a dibber and a trusty old set of sticks and string did the trick. Potatoes need to be planted about 3 inches/8cm deep.

It is great to see how it is all coming together in such a short space of time. We have started to position the path, although the ground will need to be levelled before we fix it in place.

We have changed the layout of the allotment slightly. We decided to put hardy shrubs at the front of the allotment, such as lavender, as they will be better suited to the quality of soil there. The trees have been moved back into the second plot by the path. The soil is much better here and also we realised that trees would obviously outgrow the original plot we had planned for them.