I took advantage of the half-term holiday to get down to the allotment three days in a row. The weather has been lovely, although a little chillier as the week progressed.

This was taken last Sunday, 17th. Jenny was helping with labelling the beds. Rosie had disappeared down to the lottie shop, helping with pricing up goods and working the till.

We were pleased to spot our first shoots for 2008: our onions.

It is a nice healthy green, even if it looks a bit yellow here.

I have been trying out the planning tool on GrowVeg.com to draw up a plan for our plot. Yes, I could use a pencil and paper, but what I like about this is the ability to move the shapes round. I did a lot of measuring at the plot over the last week, and it’s amazing how that moving around a space with a tape measure in your hand makes you appreciate the subtleties more. I haven’t worked out a way of displaying the plan here yet, but I’ll share it when I can.

These little beauties aren’t on our plot, I’m afraid, but as I was having a wander with my new camera I noticed these and had to take a picture, as they looked so cheerful.

More digging was done today, as we’re getting the ground ready for the potatoes. In the next couple of weeks, we’ll be sowing parsnips, carrots and beetroot as well.

I love seed packets. I love the potential of them.

These are just some of the ones I have at home, purchased last year, but never sown. Julie and I ordered some more through the allotment scheme and were reviewing our planting plans for this season. I drew out a rough plan, and will transfer the information to a previous plan, on which I recorded more precise measurements.

Here is the rough plan:

As I said, it’s very rough and I made a bit of a mess of the scale and relative positions of things. The bottom left-hand corner is where the shed is, and the round shape next to it is the not-yet purchased water butt. We’re planning to put a raised bed of salad leaves around it and install a seep hose, so that we don’t have to panic about getting down there every day.

The other round shape is the composter, which may not be ideally situated but is central (more central than my slightly skew-whiff plan would have you believe). We keep thinking of other crops we want to grow. Not yet on this plan is space for beetroot, which we enjoyed last year. I was also reminded earlier, when reading Flighty’s Plot, that I would like to get my herb patch underway. Not sure where we’re going to put that. Perhaps I need to think about situating it at home, where it will be it will handy for the kitchen.

Last weekend, Hubby came up to the allotment. He doesn’t often come, as Sunday tends to be the day we go and he’s usually occupied with baseballish type things. It was a good opportunity to chat about our plans and mark him down for a few manly jobs (no gender stereotyping here), such as putting the guttering on the shed and sorting out the shelving inside.

P.s. Do you like the new livery? I liked the previous template design, but some of the text was difficult to read in that lovely lime-green colour.