So much has changed in our little plot of paradise.  It is now spring and almost all of our growing spaces have been tamed and reclaimed.  Behind me (in the photograph below) is the long raspberry bed (now dormant) and black wire arbour which last summer was absolutely dripping in small red roses.

Clearing and preparation for the shack continue – slow and steady wins the race!  The overhanging branches of the hazel tree at the back of the plot were trimmed, and on Saturday 2 March super-G cleared and levelled more ground from the scaffold pole base which will form the floating frame for our eventual ‘raft’ of a deck and found-object shed.  I kept busy preparing the far growing bed by removing the black fabric, turning over the manure we had spread in the autumn, and mixing in some bone meal and another bag of manure.  This will sit for a week before I plant the whole bed with early direct sown broad beans.

Allotment with early spring colour – 2 March 2019.

Pots were filled in autumn with a selection of spring flowering bulbs.  Crocus are up, as too are some very early tulip!   Amazing for very early March.

We planted garlic and onion beds in the autumn and though dormant those beds are weed free and looking good, as is also our straw-strewn new strawberry bed.

The Damask Rose at the edge of ours and Hugh’s plot was fed with plenty of manure in the autumn and is now sprouting a very healthy show of early foliage – purple tinged and full of promise.

Allotment 2 March 2019, from top corner.

On Saturday 2 March 2019 I also dug out the yellow flowering iris and transplanted the divided clumps around Hugh’s water pond (just next door at the upper level of our allotment).  Super-G dug and then replanted at the front edge of our upper level some of the wild growing blackberry.   This was hard work and in the process a garden fork was broken – wooden handle simply snapped in half.  But the hard work should be worth it as he wants a privacy hedge of blackberry at this level – and it’s handy that it produces enough fruit to cook up small batches of jam throughout the summer!

Doing this leaves a small patch of what I think likely to be wild bluebell in what is otherwise the path along the side edge of the allotment (shown above in the photograph). This edge side of the allotment is presently planted with attractive hexagonal terracotta pots, full of spring flowers including cyclamen and crocus.  (One pot has edible sage).   That little patch of bluebell will be transplanted once the flowers have come and faded.  And once the path is better defined, more plantings can be made in between the pots.

So while there’s still so much to do, it’s undeniable the place is almost unrecognisable from the wild overgrown space we first saw late May 2018.  Yowza!