The allotment gets sown!

Potatoes and onions are sown already

This is what my allotment looks like today. As you can see, we've built those three beds since last month. The idea is to build a fourth one before the trees, and something else behind (will post on this soon). I may even find a new home for the black bin, as there is a big communal compost bin on the site, but I'm still deciding on that...

You can't really see much at the moment, but use your imagination: From front to back, the first bed (closer to the communal path) is sown with potatoes (my arran pilot that I had chitting since last month), and the second has the onions - half of which I pre-planted also last month. They're covered with horticultural fleece, so the birds don't pull out the tasty green shoots! The ones I had in compost had all of them sprouted (they had a nice bunch of roots, and some of them green shoots!), but I had enough space to plant half the bed with dry bulbs too. I wonder if they'll mature at different times? I'm intrigued to see if the extra few weeks' head start will make a difference to the harvesting time. I planted these two on Saturday, and because the beds aren't very big (and the bags I bought, in a last minute panic, were too big!) I had spare seeds of both potatoes and onions; luckily two of my fellow allotmenteers were around, so I could rehome all the spare seed, which felt really nice :-).

There's two things that the photo doesn't show very well, so I'll point them out: First, at the back, next to the black bin, are some flowers, the first thing I planted (last month): perennial purple wallflowers, lunaria (aka honesty) and foxgloves. The lunaria has flowered, but the rest are still tiny! And second, have you noticed a white "box" sticking out from the potato and onion beds? It's a milk bottle with the name of the crop written in permanent marker - free, recycled, and big enough to not get lost!

Esta foto de la huerta la saque hoy. Como veis, ha cambiado bastante desde el mes pasado! Las jardineras (o mas bien marcos de madera, haciendo bordillo) las pusimos este sabado, y he sembrado (empezando por el frente): en la primera, la que esta mas cerca del camino comunal, tengo las patatas arran pilot que tuve germinando desde el mes pasado. En la segunda tengo las cebollas, cubiertas con manta termica para que los pajaros no las levanten y se las coman. Las que plante en compost el mes pasado habian todas echado raices, pero me llego el espacio para plantar tambien de las secas. A ver si se nota algo la diferencia a la hora de madurar, en teoria las que germinaron unas semanas antes deberian de madurar antes tambien, no? Me sobro semilla tanto de patatas como de cebollas, pero por suerte un par de vecinos de huerta que andaban por alli las recogieron para plantar en sus huertas, asi todos contentos :-). 


Hay un par de cosas que si no os las digo seguro que no las veis en la foto. La primera son las flores al final de todo, junto al tubo negro del compost; fue lo primero que plante, el mes pasado. Tengo: unos alhelies morados, unas lunarias (que estan floridas) y unas digitalis, todavia enanas. La segunda cosa son esas "cajas" blancas en las esquinas de las patatas y las cebollas: son unas botellas de leche en las que escribi el nombre de lo plantado - un sistema gratis, reciclado y lo suficientemente visible para no perderse!