An enjoyable lunch and wander round Gates Nurseries prompted us to buy a ‘flat-pack’ composter. It was hard work slimming down Marjory and getting her moved in, but it has made such a difference to the plot. It looks so much tidier and the Marjory’s bottom had turned into the most lovely compost so we were about to use it where the ground had sunk a little.

The rhubarb is coming up really well and the raspberry canes are going mad, so we’ll be ok for puddings this year!

Tonight we completed the weeding around all the crops, so it looks so much better now. Just the rest to dig over and a strip of grass that previous owners had as a path to get rid of – we may have to cover that over for a few weeks to help shift it.

Looks like we’ve got ants back in the compost bin… might try the cinnamon technique on them, it worked well in Lisa’s wormery so is worth a try.

As it was such a lovely sunny evening we took them up to their new home…

We have high hopes for the worms and for their task ahead having bought worms from Wiggly Wigglers once before… we’ve never had to replace them in Lisa’s wormery which is quite a few years old now, so we’re sure they’ll do well in the compost bins on the allotment.

(Sorry the pic isn’t so good, only had the phone with us.)

The diddy black ones seem to get half-eaten by birds and/or frogs so their numbers seem to be dwindling naturally, but the others are, I presume, busy laying eggs in the compost bin…

Is it worrying to have so many slugs around the compost?

We knew we’d been bad, so do pass on our apologies to fellow allotment owners – we already had a plan to get things sorted, so this morning we put the plan into action.

We’ve started to clear the main plot of the worst weeds and we moved Marjory’s excess (the compost heap extension) into the newest darlek.

Found quite a few slugs’ eggs so scooped them up – not quite sure what to do with them though – bin them? or squish them? or what??

Bindweed is a big problem, but we’ll just have to dig out what we can and makes sure we keep on top of things…

All this mess is because last year we thought nothing happened over winter on an allotment and we’ve struggled to keep on top of things – we’ve learnt our lesson!

We’ve topped with black bags, weighed down with some of the pulled up weeds – with this and our darlek of a compost bin our plot is looking remarkably similar to a remake of Doctor Who starring Marjory from Fraggle Rock.

Anyway, the weeds are gone (for now) and we’ll get something planted next week… we haven’t quite decided what, but we have a tub full of seeds to choose from!

Lisa’s wormeries both came from Wigglers – starting with a bog standard wormery, which has since become a water-butt, before moving to the fabulous Can-o-Worms which is so easy to look after and maintain.

On the allotment we have a big black darlek which we got from the local council for a tenner – if you’re after a compost bin it’s worth checking your local council to see if they do these offers.

We decided it was time to get up early and do some exercise… after much debating about going running we convinced ourselves that morning allotment sessions instead would be best as we’d get the exercise and the allotment would become lovely again!!

No-one told us it was dark at 7am!

So Lisa traipsed through the streets – looking guilty with a muddy spade and a blanket! – to pick up a sleepy Siobhan, who struggled putting on wellies – firstly on the wrong feet and then one of Lisa’s wellies! Maybe the early mornings were not such a good idea!

But we did ok, a good half an hour spent feeding the darlek (moving the unruly compost heap into the proper compost bin) and tidying up the bed that we’re preparing for garlic, onions and leeks.

We picked some of the Applemint for a healthy first drink when we got into the office… very tasty actually, everyone should try it! Back to the tea and biscuits now though… until Thursday morning.