Spuds, Squash and Sparrowgrass

OMG weeds

The above, by the way, is what this patch looked after a 10-minute weeding session. Just so you know. But there is something so exciting in it that it merits wheeling out my extremely basic photo-editing skills to point at it with four arrows. Not to mention all the contemporaneous shouting.

Asparagus!

This asparagus bed was planted four years ago and although it didn’t get a lot of love last year (which explains why it is so overrun with dandelions, couch grass, buttercups and other invaders) it is officially ready to harvest right now. These are the very first spears, found today, and they’re not quite worth picking yet but I’m hoping to get back there at the right time in a few days and grab some.

Awesomeness!

In other news, we finished digging the potato patch and preparing the squash patch today, and we had two under-age weeding enthusiasts who helped out loads amongst the onions and garlic. We are going to have so many alliums – we planted some and there were plenty of feral ones left over from last year’s sadly neglected harvest.

 

The first of these two pictures is our potato patch (that’s a currant bush in the foreground) and the second is our squah patch. Both are now completely ready to plant! We’re putting the potatoes in this weekend – traditional Easter planting – and the squash will go in sometime from mid-May onwards, after all danger of frost is past.

It’s just as well the squash patch will have a few weeks to settle down, because the fertiliser (chicken poo) has been maturing in black plastic bags and is still fundamentally pretty ripe. These flies were having an orgy within minutes of our getting the thing set up – the smell of poo obviously makes them feel sexy!

FlySex (TM)

What with one thing and another, our allotment is really starting to shape up. There’s still a lot to do, but from certain angles, in the right light, it is beginning to look the way it should. We are content.

Shaping up