Budsandborders.co.uk

Yesterday I decided I wanted to sort out my hanging baskets. It is getting late for some people, a neighbour has had theirs out for three weeks now! Still, they bought theirs and I am making mine up myself.

Here is a sequence of pictures of me planting the parsnips last weekend. It’s good to get them in and plant things at the plot

I went to the local brewer last week and collected 10 bags of spent hops for the plot. They give them away, so it has to be the cheapest brought in soil improver I know. Of course you have to go collect them and that can be heavy work if you’ve no one to help you lift the bags.

I then took them to the plot and had fun spreading them at the weekend despite the constant rain and wind. As they were still moist they didn’t fly about. It was too dark to take a picture by the end, so you will just have to use your imagination.

The last lot I put on have totally disappeared form the soil as they break down really easily after the boil.

Good old hops!

I just thought you might like to see the other plots on the site. They are just as overgrown and weedy as mine. So I’m not being lazy, honest.

Someone was asking about Borage and composting the other day. Well, yes you can compost Borage leaves. They act much like Comfrey and speed up the process and help make a lovely loam.

If you want to eat the leaves then they seem to have a cucumber-like flavour which is nice in salads. Some - if you have seen this summers adverts for Pimms O’clock’ - like to put it in drinks, though I don’t see why you should waste the leaves this way.

The blue flowers are more showy than Comfrey and attract bees and butterflies. to your garden.

If you want to grow Borage, then you are best served by sowing directly in pots or seed trays in good seed compost. Keep them out of strong sun light until they have germinated and produced true leaves. Then plant out or pot on when seedlings are large enough to handle.

Well, as you can see from the rest of my plot, I haven’t given much time to rotavating or getting too fine a tilth of soil. It’s not that I’m lazy, just that it is a lot of work to do with that and my garden at home. Yes, while it would be good to have a good fine soil, it is not always necessary. Also it kills worms down to a good depth and worms are good for the soil.

In an ideal world I would give it a double dig every five years, but the soil is good and I add manure, compost, hops, etc., so I don’t need to. I also leave different areas fallow year on year and follow the rules of crop rotation.

I didn’t rotavate last year and everything was fine. However, as summer has taken over spring and there has been little rain, if I didn’t get some of the soil turned over, it would be nigh on impossible later on.

So, I bribed someone with beer to do it for me.

As you can see, they did a good job. It will really help me to plant things easily as and when I need to.

Well, as you can see, we need to dig the allotment at this time of year. It has over-wintered well, but the soil needs to be broken up and we have to remove some of the grass that has grown with the mild winter.

We could have put a carpet over it like some of the other allotment holder, but we didn’t have a spare 50sq ft carpet to hand.

So we dig!

As you can hear it was a very windy day. Perhaps we will use a rotavator next year?