3/5/26 - Emptying Out and Filling Up

Good evening, and thank you for dropping by my regular (ish) weekly (ish) allotment diary.  We're in the time of year where you could easily spend half a day every day on the plot, and still come home each evening with a list of things to do.  But then, there is also the social aspect.  This morning and in fact the past week in particular, the allotment has provided me with so much more than just the chance to crawl around getting my hands dirty.  Chatting with fellow plot holders about anything and everything other than allotment growing.  Or just the simple pleasure of sitting in the sun, with a freshly made cup of tea and watching the world go by as other plot holders beaver away at their own list of jobs.  The art of knowing when to stop, relax and just watch is every bit as important to me as to know when to sow seeds and harvest the crops.

The weather over the last week or so finally seems to be hauling itself into the start of Summer.  I get the feeling that the risk of frost is now fully left us.  We still have overnight temperatures of only 4 or 5 degrees, but we're well into the mid to high teens on the most average of days.  That means a growing confidence in emptying out the polytunnels and filling the remaining beds.  So, lets start with the big polytunnel.

I've had a push over the last few days of getting things, flowers in particular, out into their places in different beds, or taking them home for use in the garden.  One of my objectives for the year is to introduce as much colour as possible into the allotment, but to also use it as a way to try and deter as many pests as possible.  I've grown a lot of calendula, marigolds and nasturtiums to help with this, along with seed dahlias.  Many if not most beds now have at least one type of flower in them, often 2.

This means that I've been able to remove one section of the staging in the main polytunnel.  It might not seem much, but there feels like there is already so much more room in there.  There are still a few things left on the last piece of staging like beans, sweetcorn, cucumber, squash, watermelon and cucamelon seedlings.  The beans will probably be ready to transplant out next week, and then the rest not long after.

One thing that has really kicked off in the last week is the strawberry harvest.  We've had between 3 and 4 full punnets of fruit from them, and there seems to be plenty more fruit developing.  Yield is already up on last year, so the decision to split the plants into individual pots really seems to be paying off.

In the smaller polytunnel, most things have now been moved out apart from the tomato plants.  It's pretty much weed free, but hasn't received much water over the winter period, so before the watermelon crop goes in later in the month, I'm adding 4 cans of water to the soil in there every couple of days to make sure there is plenty of moisture in the ground ready for the plants.

This weekend, the leeks have also made their way into their bed too.  I have two varieties sown, and initially, I was going to spread them out over a couple of months.  But, as it happens, both sets have come ready to be transplanted to be done at the same time.  To see how I went about planting them, see my separate page on how I plant and grow leeks.  We found last year that leeks tend to store really well in the freezer after harvest, so I have no issue with them all come to be ready at the same time together.  It just means they all get harvested at the same time, and the bed is cleared in one go.  But that's for autumn.

There are some signs of broad bean development coming on those plants.  I noticed them earlier in the week while having a close look at the parsnip bed adjoining the broad beans.  Hopefully I will be able to start picking those towards the middle of the month.  The parsnips seem to have germinated OK, but there are signs of animals scrapings in the bed, so some of the seedlings would have been disturbed, and I have a feeling that some of the scrapings might be down to mole activity which does put the rest of the crop at risk, but we can only wait and see.

The last couple of weeks have also seen the blackberry bushes really put on a growth spurt and bush out considerably.  This will be their second full year of growth, and the plants have continued to mature nicely.  We had a pretty big harvest from them last year which we are still working through and I have no reason to expect this year to be any different.  Those blackberry bushes encase the area where the potato tubs are being kept, containing the first early sowings.  While some on the allotment have already started harvesting potatoes that they have been growing under cover since the earliest part of the year, ours are still some time off yet.  There are good signs of growth though with green foliage starting to overflow the containers, while the main crop potatoes are just about starting to break ground out in the main beds.

The carrot bed seems to be having a bit of a time of it this year so far.  From the half bed that I sowed first, only around two thirds have come on to any extent.  The plants that have come on are pretty good though, so no need to panic.  In the other half of the beds, I first thought germination had all but failed, but this week, there is clear evidence of germination starting to happen.  The seedlings are still too small to consider thinning out yet, but I'm still not convinced that the second sowing will be any better.  In contrast, the carrots in the main polytunnel are going really well and might be around 3 to 5 weeks away from starting to harvest them.

The final major thing for this weekend was to build the bean structure, ready for the French climbing beans.  Most previous year, I grew dwarf beans, and while they did really well and cropped heavily, it was awkward harvesting them as everything was being harvested on hands and knees.  Last year, I did a mix of climbing and dwarf varieties, to check how well the climbing varieties did in our soil.  They too did incredibly well, so this year, to cut down on the amount of crawling around at harvest time, we are only growing the climbing varieties.  I've got about 15 plants that have germinated.  I need around another 5 or 10 more, but rather than sow more, the ground is almost warm enough to direct sow.  That will also mean that we will prolong the cropping time too.

This week is a bank holiday week and I also have some added time off work as well, so I'll be spending some more time on the plot as we go into the new week.  I'll be continuing to water in the mini polytunnel and should the weather stay dry enough, will do some mowing too.  The big job though will be to finally plant out the tomato plants.  They are just coming to the point where the compost in their pots is depleted of nutrients and the leaves are starting the lighten in colour.  I have fed them, but that will only be goo for so long.  It's time for them to get their feet into the ground.

So that's where we are for this week.  Another busy week planned, but also several very much needed days of rain too.  Until next time, thanks for reading.