Spring has well and truly arrived here in Kent, bringing a healthy dose of sunshine along with it, it's glorious down on the allotment. However the hose pipe ban is to be enforced as of the 5th of April so we have until then to fill the new water butts that I took delivery of last week. (Thanks to Serena and Marcus from The Kent Cider Company who make awesome cider by the way) for helping me out with a couple of nice cheap barrels :)
Today we again took advantage of the free babysitting service in the guise of Phillipa's mum. Fenn was dropped off with a bag of food and toys, and the pushchair so they could go out for a walk and we headed off to the plot for a couple of hours.
Phillipa got on with more digging whilst I marked the plot out into five sections for our crop rotation plan. When I was happy that I had spaced it out evenly it was time to erect the bean frame and dig the trench.
I had harvested some local Hazel a few weeks back and the poles were lashed together to make a frame for the beans to grow. I need at least four more poles to make another two upright sections in the middle of the frame to make it more sturdy. When covered in beans it will be like a large sail and the last thing I want is for our plot to sail off into the distance!
Once the frame was up I went about digging a trench. This was then filled with bags of vegetable peelings we had collected from home over the past couple of weeks. I also shovelled in a good few spadefuls of well rotted horse manure.
The trench was then filled back in again, the waste will compost away ready for when we plant the beans. I will be saving bags of peelings again to do exactly the same for a pumpkin plant later on in the year.
After this it was time to head back to pick Fenn up from his Granma's house, and for us all to have some lunch.
We plan on getting back up the plot a couple more times over the weekend to hopefully get some onions and early potatoes planted.
Also, both the cabbage and brussel sprouts seeds have germinated. Exciting :)
I put soaked newspaper in my bean trench.
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