A new pane of glass

Wednesday 21st April

Well it's been three weeks since we did any proper work on the allotment. This week the weather has been beautiful and we spent about 4 hours there today. Peter was able to borrow John's rotavator and dug over some of the previously dug areas ready for planting. The new rotavator doesn't dig as deeply as the old one, but at least it saved me from doing any more digging. I was able to get in all the second early potatoes - tried Estima this time. I haven't bothered with the first earlies this year. I planted another row of peas and protected them this time as the first row are struggling - they've probably been eaten by the mice.

Peter had made me a bug box earlier in the week and so we put that up on one of the old bean posts, to encourage the ladybirds. If you look closely you can see it in the picture.

Peter put in a new piece of glass to replace the broken pane in the shed, and I cleaned up the debris from the fires they had started to light. The fire in the corner had been worse than we had thought, and if it hadn't been for the quick thinking of one of the allotmenteers who noticed some of the sheds smoking, ours might have gone up in flames too. He had thrown water to put the fire out and stop it spreading. We've put a padlock on the shed and the gate now but many people say that it will be counter-productive.

We were both exhausted by the time we went home.