Allotment | Sunday All Week

New to the allotment? Fearing the committee trawling around and pointing out that your plot is not up to scratch? Read on. I am on my first ever allotment journey and will travel with you through the year.

Onions in the ground has been my biggest accomplishment this week. Fun work to do with my little helper on Easter break.

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Allotment time and work is supposed to be fun, nutritious, practical and therapeutic. I cry inside when I hear people giving it up because of time. Plant something easy! Don’t care about your neighbours beds being weed free. My theory is to eradicate weeds by growing other plants and vegetables where they have a tendency to take over. Well, time will show!

After several spells of snow and winter, Spring is upon us. Last weekend we could even see cherry trees blossom in the snow. This time I believe the coin has turned and yesterday’s Spring equinox (20th March 2018) promises that we are going into the lighter, sunnier season.

I am also lucky to have my Tim Foster course work and book «Good Earth Gardening» by my side for advice. I have put down some broad beans as I was told they germinate better when it is cold. A fact I picked up from BBCs iconic Gardeners World. Another helpful place to find some tips about seasonal greenery work. I watch it from time to time on BBC IPlayer.

Bookshelf in the shed:

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Today my main ambition was to put woodchip on top of some black plastic that was left on the ground around my blackcurrant bushes from the allotmentier before me on what is now my plot. I presume the black plastic was put there to keep weeds away, and I therefore decided to leave them in place, but they need covering up. For aesthetical reasons I will help myself generously to the free wood chip reservoir on our allotment site. I had to carry around fifteen of these boxes. My pink box revealed:

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End result and I think it looks better. Fingers crossed it will last.

71F7FE47-3639-4F7D-8322-AC95DD70A4DA Surrounding my beautiful blackcurrant bushes. Let’s hope the committee notices and are happy 😃

I’m now on Gloucester Road #Bakersandco checking out their brunch, filter coffee (black, a must have for any Norwegian!) and reading Tim Foster’s book. A book review will come some time this year! But the coffee was too thin ☕️

Happy Easter from Bristol!

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I could smell the blackcurrants as I was pruning the bushes back. Beautiful smell with slight sharpness, but still sweet warmth in the snow. Fresh, sweetness. They are FEBRUARY JOBS TO DO ON THE ALLOTMENT (whoops! it’s early March already)

In the pictures above: Gooseberry Bush (left) Raspberry with Autumn Fruit (right)

Spring Pruning it’s called! Who would have thought that with two or three days with snow you would do work on your allotment? Well, this time it was not my suggestion! I have signed up for an Organic and Allotment Gardening training course over the next four months, and I am ready to learn! Today we were going to learn about pruning fruit bushes and with expert guidance from Tim Foster decided to go ahead. He usually does all his pruning in February and now it has tipped March, hasn’t it? It needs to be done. Today was fresh, but pleasant and the practical training was so helpful that I after the session went down to my own allotment to check on all the mistakes I had probably made when pruning in Autumn. And I was actually going to do something about it! So whilst the kids could use the plastic bag trick for “sledging” (check my Instagram or twitter for videos!) a very defined path at one end of the allotment, I could get on with the work!

I have been told that my great-grandmother used to have gooseberries (stikkelsbær) in her garden on a sunny Norwegian hillside. The season was short (Summer from June-early August), but it paid off. The gooseberries are delicious. Individual gooseberry pies are a favourite dessert in our house. And I have become so fond of the ones had during this first season. When it comes to pruning it I take a less traditional approach of pruning like an apple tree; to(wards) something… I will not go into details on how to prune on this blog as I am very new to this, but I appreciate any advice and comments on my approach!

Before and after pruning the gooseberry bush (above)

Gooseberry pruning is not flawless and some blood was spilt over it! Even though I am doing it “the apple pruning way” which mean I am only removing bigger branches and not cutting off up to half the length on each new growth, traditionally done.

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My small Apple Tree doesn’t need much pruning in the future, but I decided to give it a go this year. Always pruning to something! (the bud here is maybe not really outward facing hmmm)

Blackcurrants

6C52856E-ADF2-4F0D-BF43-4EB56D2B3304 You recognise the blackcurrant bush from the white buds, whilst the very similar redcurrant bush has black buds. I aimed to open it up from the middle, removed quite a few older and dead wood and noticed lots of young shoots from the ground.

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Dead ends waiting to be removed.

Not all of my three blackcurrant bushes were doing very well. I probably cut back a bit more than the 1/3 of the buch that I am supposed to. I decided to put some manure on two of the weakest ones. The manure I have will be fine this spring, but has really too much straw content still. This will degrade with time and it is nutrious even if it doesn’t quite have the right texture.

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