A Busy Week

It has been a busy week. Bill Callaghan and I gave Terry Goody a hand to start cleaning up his overgrown allotment. As you can see from the picture it had started to get away on him.

It was basically a scrape off the top with a spade method and moving soilfrom some of the beds that had been raised to form a pile for the planned boarded raised beds at the top end of the plot above the flooding level. Having moved the soil from one bed the plan was to sow grass seed on it and later plant some fruit trees. However, we thought as this would give an instant usable planting area that it would be better to wet it and then rotovate it and get some plants in.

Weeds were scraped off the top of a couplr more beds before the rotovator was brought in and two raised heap beds created ready for planring some brassicas kindly donated by Nev. We ended up putting in almost 80 brassicas including red cabbage, cabbage, cauliflower and sprouts.

Behind the netted brassica bed are the garlic nicely hoed, and in the far background the compost bin has almost been filled.

A second brassica bed planted and netted. in front of it Terry has set up a number of short rows, you can just see the white marker tabs. Two spare gardener's delight tomato plants on the end of the row. In the foreground another bed scraped off and waiting for rotovation, probably next week. Planking frame to make the box raised bed will probably be made next week and filled from the pile of soil behind the netting.

Having made good progress on Terry's plot we rotovated a large area on Bill's plot and then got his sweet corn bed ready for planting. In the meantime my own plot was in need of a bit of weeding around the Parsnips and then resowing of the Beetroot that had been savaged by the sparrows. I covered the sowed areas of beetroot this time to keep the birds off when they germinated. Friday was spent moving the contents of the compost heap by the fruit cage and levelling the area to take some brassicas I have waiting to plant out. It is raining this morning so that is why I am sitting here writing this blog instead of being out at the plot getting the brassicas planted, maybe this afternoon.

Barry's Tree Stump Succesfully Removed

Having got the tree stump out, Barry has put together the framework of his aluminium greenhouse. Tomorrow it will be the removal of the plastic greenhouse and get the aluminium one positioned and glazed up.

Barry Who Isn't Allotment Association Treasurer

As I was planting out some brassicas this morning, 6 Calabrese and 22 Cauliflower, I could hear a clunking and banging from Barry's plot. So when I finished planting and watering I went over to have a look and see what was going on. I found Barry chopping and digging at the stump of an old Elder tree to make room for his greenhouse. Compared to the soft nature of Elder branches the stump seemed to have an iron like quality and was resisting strenuosly against attemps to remove it.

More later this afternoon, probably.

Tree Blossoms - Magnolia and Berberis

Magnolia in bloom these past few days with the Berberis Darwinii just behind it.

Berberis Darwinii started off very small a few years ago and has now grown into this bush with a profusion of flowers.

Allotment Association Treasurer

Early morning Saturday, I startled Barry our allotment association treasurer and snapped him just as he looked up from his tray of plants he was dealing with.

Raised Beds Area For Restricted Mobility Users

A few plots away from us was Brian, a keen plot holder we saw most days when we went down to the allotment. Unfortunately Brian was taken ill and his mobility severely restricted resulting in him giving up his plot. This didn't stop him coming down for a chat a couple of times a week and saying how much he missed his plot. With this in mind Ann approached the local councillors for Heworth ward and Judith Ward the allotments officer for the council and set in motion a request for a grant to create an area of raised beds for people like Brian who had been active and had their mobility retsricted. Money was allocated by the Heworth Ward committee for the project and finally came through towards the end of the financial year for the Glen Allotments Association to get the project up and running. An area next to the car park was set aside to provide easy access to the area.


Work started a couple of weeks ago levelling the area next to the car park and placing a top soil covering and rails around the area. Three fruit trees were planted along the edge of the roadway into the site to mark the edge of the area. The box constructions were made in Mac Mitchell's yard at Malton and transported to the site for painting with green timbere preserve and put into position for filling with topsoil. Once filled with topsoil the paths around the beds were filled mith bark mulch. The finished beds look really good now and the next stage will be to get them occupied. A big thank you to Mac and his gang who did the majority of the heavy work to get this up and running.