New season's greetings

Ahoy there. You'd be forgiven for thinking we'd given up on the old allotment game, what with the complete dearth of gardening-related entries on this page. Not a bit of it! Although the fluctuating priorities of life have prevented us getting to the plot - never mind writing about it - as much as I'd like things, are still happening. Now that that we're at the point in the year at which stuff is starting to grow, I'll show you what we've got going on so far.

Toms are in

The aforementioned lack of time to lavish over our patch has led to us taking a few sneaky shortcuts this year which we'd probably not have considered previously. We were shopping for seeds and compost in B&Q when we clocked their range of veg plants, ready to pot-on. We decided to get a head start by buying a set of six tomato plants for £2. I know, I know we're a bunch of lazy shysters for not sowing our own, but whatevs. We've now got a variety of interesting plants, most of which have RHS AGM awards, and they've all grown on nicely on our windowsill. I planted them out into our allotment shed on Sunday.

Broad beans

Also bought as baby plants were some broad beans. They've been in the ground for a couple of weeks now and are starting to grow on again. We've never grown "The Sutton" before, so it'll be interesting to see how this standard variety gets on.

Shallots

Shallots, garlic and onions were planted in Autumn and are kicking on well now, encouraged to reach skywards by the recent clement weather.

Garlic

Spuddage

A few weeks after having been buried alive, both the first early and main crop potatos have raised themselves above the surface, which is always a nice thing to see.

We've got a whole bunch of stuff (all sown by us, I'll have you know) such as chard, cabbages, celeriac, peas, and beans. Those empty patches will be filled before long.

While our current allotment is doing fine, our previous site is in a sad looking state having been razed to the ground. While in the fullness of time there will hopefully be allotments here again, I can only assume that the way the place has been flattened and cleared must have caused a lot of damage to the wildlife that called the site home. A sorry picture.

Flattened