4th August 2021, A new seating style emerges
We have arrived!! The first chance to use the terrace albeit in an incomplete state… but now at least the chairs do not sink into the ground and we are sitting in the same place that we will be when the finished article is unveiled.
More produce is also beginning to come in. 5 courgettes, broccoli, kale, cabbages, chard and runner beans in this picture. The hard work of all the digging, weeding and preparing the ground over the past 10 months or so, finally showing results and jolly tasty it all is too!
The “Haven” is taking shape now… This year has been a full-on year:
Finishing off all the digging and preparing the soil for where we were going to plant;
Erection of the polytunnel (and rebuilding after May when it almost blew away);
Creation of the compost bins and area to work in next door to compost bins;
And now the terrace is beginning to take shape…
Plus planting, managing and taking care of all the different veggies we are growing this year -it is starting to be a full time job!
From this different view of the terrace you can now see that we are adding sand on top of the ballast to enable us to get a level surface to screw the decking onto. So far so good, but another three pallets to align and level- it might be a long day!
The cabbages are doing really well, so are the runner beans. It is a shame that the slugs like the cabbages as much as we do. Fortunately, the runner beans appear not to be bothered too much (a bit of black fly attack in the early stages by now nothing much is bothering them) so they are very prolific! Looking for things to do with courgettes and runner beans, innovation rife in the kitchen…
However, all is not rosy everywhere… Check out the tomatoes! We believe this is blight beginning to make its presence known :( The weather has been particularly damp and humid, ideal conditions for blight and it seems that it is sweeping across the allotments. Once it appears, it spreads like wildfire, and as the story goes, it has only taken a week to get everywhere. And as potatoes are in the same family as tomatoes, looks like it has probably spread to them as well, or vice versa. (Desi's dad in Bulgaria refers to this fungal, air-born bacteria as "potato blight".)
The final picture here is a different angle of the terrace construction on this day. Some plants are already in the raised bed. We can’t go overboard planting out there as yet because there will still be disruption as the raised bed needs to be screwed onto the pallets. So, still a lot of work to do!
