The Marley Hill allotment

The above photo is of Dad's allotment in Marley Hill, the next village up the road from us. It was taken in April. Dad has not been in the best of health recently so we have agreed to run his allotment for him until he is able to get back into action. It is only about a fifth the size of our allotment.

The allotment is partly divided across the middle by a line of blackcurrant and redcurrant bushes so this neatly creates two beds which we are unoriginally calling Marley Hill Beds One and Two. I spent the whole of today in Marley Hill on Bed 1. This is what Bed 1 was like in late April:



The rotovator came with me today though most of the day was spent weeding the bed. It took less than half an hour (and that included a tea break) to rotovate the bed once I had cleared the weeds. Here's the result:



I haven't touched Bed 2 yet and I suspect Dad didn't use it last year. It has more weeds and, rather annoyingly, a great deal of dock. This can be difficult to dig out as it is a plant with large, thick and deep roots. We haven't touched this bed yet but we will need to clear it soon. This is what it looked like today:



And this is what it was like just over a month ago:



I have all of Dad's seed potatoes and onion sets. They should have been planted earlier but we will get them into the ground in the next few days and aim for a late crop. We have also bought some more soft fruit to plant there as well.

There is a large amount of mint on the allotment so I'm going to be checking out mint sauce recipes soon.



The fruit bushes that partly divide the allotment have a good quantity of fruit on them. These are the blackcurrants: