Plot update

 Hello everyone! It's been a while since I wrote about the plot and a lot has changed in that time. The main bit of progress you have seen about the plot is about my carrot bed. If you haven't read that yet, go ahead and read that and then you can come back here and finish this post.

In March my parents came down to Essex to help me clear as much as we could and I would say we got just over half of the plot clear of grass and weeds. My boyfriend and his dad have also been down, helping me clear the ground, rebuilding my fence, building me a compost bin, and disposing of dead rat bodies! Yes, you read that correctly. One day I was clearing out my shed and I bent down to pick up a plastic bag. As I got closer, I realised that plastic bag had LEGS. Now, I am very familiar with plastic bags and was well aware that a plastic bag should not have legs. Upon further inspection I realised I was looking at a rat's dead body... Mostly decomposed so the skin had gone very leathery, there were no eyes and the bottom half of the body was just skeleton. Gross. I love animals but seeing a dead rat body made me feel a bit sick. As I was digging a hole to bury it, my boyfriend's dad showed up to dispose of it for me and when he bent down to pick it up, he realised there was another dead rat body right next to it. Clearly I was too traumatised by the first to notice!

After the trauma, he helped me to fully clear out the shed, he swept away the spiders and helped me dispose of some rubbish. I am forever grateful for the help I have received on my plot. It is because of this help that I have been able to get things in the ground. Aside from the carrot bed, I have planted broccoli (green calabrese) seeds, purple sprouting broccoli seeds and leek seeds. My flatmate gifted me a couple of strawberry plugs so I have plonked them in the ground. I have planted my nasturtiums in a couple of lines so that when I pop up the pumpkin arch, the nasturtiums will be on the inside of it lining the pathway. And then I also planted some potatoes in a trench.

On the way out of the plots we made a little stop at the 'seed exchange bus stop' to see what had been left there. This is relatively new to our allotments so I did not expect there to be much around but let me tell you.. it was FULL. I ended up taking 2 blackberry bramble plugs and we immediately turned around to plant these in my plot. I also took the February edition of Kitchen Garden magazine which I will read and then put back for another person to have a read of. And I took a few packets of seeds including white round radishes and black round radishes... two sets of radishes I did not know existed! I also added Turks Turban winter squash to my pumpkin seed collection. What a love idea and a lovely community to be so giving. I will be returning the favour and taking some of my seed packets there and old magazines so that other people can enjoy them.

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