Spring is officially here; the tulips are beginning to flower, the clocks go forward at the weekend and the evenings are beginning to get lighter. Bring on after work allotment time, I can feel the skip in my step already!
Even spending just 30 minutes at No.27 after work completely changes my mood and more than anything helps me keep on top of the weeding.
I gave myself a rather long list of activities to get done in February which you can view here, and surprise, surprise, they didn’t all get done. I hold my hands up, completely guilty, but I do have a very good excuse…I submitted my last 24 page uni paper to the board for marking! Now the wait until June for result, so keep your fingers, toes and anything else crossed please.
I can’t quite believe it, but after 3 years of hard work, yawning, tears and endless wine and iced cinnamon buns, my university life and juggling studying with work, the allotment and the blog is officially over…I have finished!! I will admit I did shed a tear when I put it in the post, it certainly hasn’t been easy at times.
Now it’s time to realign my focus to what I love the most, talking to you and sharing my allotment journey.
It’s also time to get my butt in gear and get cracking on the allotment, so much to do now but with a few full days planned including this Saturday I will be on top of it in no time.
So here is my to-do list for March with a few jobs carried over from last month. As always I will include a few extra monthly tips, ideas and shameless plugs to help keep us all on track and inspired.
- Start warming up the soil for sowing broad beans direct by placing cloches out over the desired beds.
- Plant out the broad beans I sowed indoors last month which are currently in my plastic pop up greenhouse.
- Start sowing indoors: tomatoes, peppers, chillies, salad leaves, early variety beetroot, leeks, peas, squash and basil. I am currently waiting for all my leeks and tomatoes to germinate.
- Start sowing flowers indoors, this month I will be sowing two of my absolute favourites Sweet Peas and Cosmos.
- Dig up an old blackberry bush I inherited on the plot.
- Position my two Grow It slot together raised beds ready for some upcoming activities which will be revealed in the coming months.
- Plant fruit canes; I have two Lubera Raspberry Salmonberry ‘Olympic Double’ to get planted.
How beautiful are their flowers!
- Do a big woodchip haul from my local tree surgeon for my seating area and paths.
- Dig over the final beds which have been covered since I got the plot and get on top of the weeds.
- Finish potting up my dahlias ready for #dahliawars on Twitter. If you are on Twitter and growing dahlias, come join in the fun. Did you watch Monty on Gardeners World talking about potting up dahlias? If not, it is certainly worth watching here.
- Finally, if you missed my monthly allotment radio chat at the beginning of the month discussing jobs for March, the latest on the plot and the Garden Press Event, catch up here and zoom to 1:43:00.
Think I will stop there, as that’s a pretty extensive list and we are very quickly heading towards April. Eeekk! I promise I will start trying to do these ‘To-do’ list posts at the beginning of each month as that would make a lot more sense!
What are you up to in the garden or allotment this month? Comment below and let me know.
Ooo..one other activity for the list before I go, check out my guest blog with Michael Perry, aka Mr Plant Geek when he recently asked me ‘What is it that gets you going?’. Find out the answer here.
Have a great rest of the week and I will be back to let you know how I get on at No.27 on Saturday. Let’s hope the forecast for sunshine stays.