Freecycle rocks!

I’ve been a bit rubbish updating the blog recently, I admit, but we’ve had Stuff To Do - Mothers Day, an indoor-sky-diving father, a long lost marine returning from the depths of the Welsh borders, and a terrible and tragic head-cold which almost made my sinuses explode, I'm not kidding (sorry for creating that image, by the way).

I should explain my heading… Freecycle does indeed rock. 'Tis true.

A few months ago I contacted a woman called Jill, who lives a couple of streets away from us, via Freecycle as she was offering some strips of carpet For Free, and we all know how good old strips of carpet are at suppressing weeds at the edges of allotments… Anyway, a week or so after we’d got the carpet she emailed me to see if we wanted the compost out of her compost bin For Free. She said it was quite a small bin, but when we went round (this was the weekend before last - seems an age ago now!) it took us three trips with the wheelbarrow and 5 rubble sacks to shift it all to the plot. About half of it has gone into our allotment compost heap, which was looking a bit pathetic and twiggy, and not the dark, moist, crumbly stuff we were hoping for. (But then it is the end of winter – come spring it should all kick into action.) The other half which was really well-rotted and lovely we’ve kept separate, and we’ll use it when we plant greedy things like runner beans, squash and courgettes. Thanks Jill!

So, last weekend the weather wasn’t that great but we went down to the plot briefly last Saturday to have a poke around and check that our little pallet fence hadn’t blown down in the gale-force winds. Everything seemed to be in order, and we gave the compost bin a good stir. Was it our imagination or did it look better already?

Good news too - we've got loooooads of garlic growing nicely. The little green shoots front right of the pic are apparently a red garlic variety which nearby allotmenteer Phil gave to us. And - more good news - we've got at least ten onion sets poking their little green points above the soil. Hope they don't mind the recent sub-zero conditions. No sign of any broad beans and shallots, though I'm keeping hopeful that they're just being sensible until it gets a bit warmer. I would if I were them.