Well, we’ve been having some lovely weather here over the past couple of weeks, you can really feel the sun getting warmer! So, this morning it seemed just the right time to start preparing the allotments ready for planting in a few weeks!
I love this time of year when it’s time to start planning what we are going to grow and getting the seeds ordered. We have 2 allotment plots, luckily both very close to each other, in fact only divided by the hedge!
One of the plots is much larger than the other but we have ‘squatters’ at the moment so can only use half of it, which is frustrating to say the least but hopefully will be resolved ready for next year.
On one side we’ve been doing some general tidying up of the hedges, clipping them back so that they don’t completely engulf our little bench!
We have also made use of a wooden crate we found on the builders skip (they allow us to take anything from there that we may find useful!) and will be turning it into a compost bin – sadly lacking on our allotment last year.
It also seemed a good time to start digging the plots over with our fabulous Mantis 4-Stroke Classic Petrol Tiller
CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION ON THE MANTIS TILLER
These are brilliant little machines (I will put a full review on our Reviews Page very soon) that will save an awful lot of spade work and time as well as your back muscles! These 2 plots, which measure about 8.2 x 4.2 metres each, we’re dug and raked over easily within 1 hour – imagine how long that would have taken digging with a spade!
This really is one item I would not do without and one I would recommend to everyone who has a plot or garden, whether it is large or small – it does the job so quickly and gives you much more time for planting, picking and pottering! It’s very economic too – the petrol tank holds a smidgeon over ½ litre of petrol (about 1 pint) – all of the digging today used about half a tank so ¼ litre (½ pint) and at 108.9p per litre that works out at less than 30p!
So, that’s about half of the allotment ground dug over now, the other half will be done this coming week as the weather seems set to stay the same – cold starts but we can cope with that as long as the sun keeps shining!
Well, that’s where we have got on the allotments so far – I feel like we are really on track this year. Just got to get my seed order in now!