Its all about the weeding...

This weekend so far has been spent digging out the weeds which have appeared everywhere.  During the week we had a lot of rain, the heavens totally opened and for almost 12 hours did nothing but rain.  Now my allotment looks very happy and healthy, albeit there are now weeds, weeds, weeds...

Thankfully though my strawberries are looking fantastic and ive finally been able to try my very first home grown strawberry and as you can see it looks brilliant and tasted even better.

I have taken some advice from other plot holders and put a netting over them to stop the bird pecking at them and of course the kids that lurk around!

 So here is my netting and here is the strawberry that I ate...  the only thing I am unsure of is the trails which run off the strawberries, do I cull them back or do I let them grow? So far they are all under the netting and not yet gripping anything else.

And finally the other things that I weeded around was the sweetcorn.  This is the biggest prop that we have so far and it was grown in a propagator and then transferred to the allotment where it seems to be flourishing.  To date we have planted 40 props, so I am hoping they all turn out really well this year.

 And the weed problem, I am assuming everyone gets them and has them.... but these specific weeds drive me insane...

Ive spent hours this afternoon digging them both out from in and around plants and generally just everywhere!

How it started

That there is our allotment plot, well that is how it looked when we took it over last June.  As you can see it is covered with grass, weeds, nettles, brambles and things I have never come across in this lifetime.

We got an allotment plot as a project to do together, we are a husband and wife team and we both enjoying gardening, but we live in a flat with no garden. So this is our work in progress.  

To get things started we bought some tools and began to manually clear the plot, starting at one end and working our way north towards the end.  Our plot measures at 10 poles, those of you with a plot will know what that means, it is around 250 square meters and our plot is fairly long and oblong shaped and it sits between 3 other plots.

And so we begin digging...

Started to look like an allotment plot 6 weeks into the digging and weeding process, by which time we had planted some potatoes.

More digging and raking continues and it looks like we are getting somewhere.

And we begin to look like an allotment plot as the crops go in...this picture was taken 4 weeks ago.