I had the perfect day for doing the apple tree at last. Cloud cover, not too wet underfoot – though it was pretty squidgy by the tree. There are some dips and holes that are going to need to be remedied in better conditions.

I used my loppers for the first time. They take a little wrangling as you have to get the cut in the back of the blades, but they did the job beautifully. I took off some pretty big branches, but didn’t need to use the branch saw, which was a great bonus. Only one large branch fell into the abandoned part of the back plot.

Tomorrow the sun will be out, and I’ll do the pear tree and take some branches off the elder to stop it being a nuisance. I need to look at the hawthorns too.

 

It has been so unbelievably rainy and wet this year. I think there are a few places in the country that haven’t seen a dry day. Today was sunny and cold and the water had drained enough for me to get down to the allotment. The path and grass were wet and muddy, but my plot wasn’t underwater at all.

I’ve booked Friday off to see if I can finally do my apple tree on a cloudy day.

A few bulbs are coming up in the borders: some crocuses in multiple beds and a single white crocus in the pot by the shed. There were a few yellow crocuses; let’s see if the sparrows eat them.

The pulmonaria are flowering very nicely and there are a couple of tiny snowbells at the end of the bed.

Over in the wetter left border, a few scilla are coming up. They’re quite robust and look a bit like hyacinth at this point.

The garlic looks pretty good – has it grown more?

The remaining parsnips have started regrowing their tops. I dug up what I could fit in my bag / comfortably carry, which included a couple of very big ones. The rest will be much smaller and it will probably be possible to bring them all home at once.

It was cloudy all day today, so it could have been apple pruning day, but it was more important to get the bulbs in the ground. The nut feeder had fallen out of the tree, so I placed it in the pear tree and the blue tit soon arrived and seemed perfectly happen with the new location. I could hear at least two robins singing for quite a while.

I’ve finally put some more chaenorrhinum seed in the soil around the pond – mostly along the front, but also some thrown on the other two edges. The ones that have already grown have stayed nice and stubby.

Bed 3 – miniature tulips, front corner. A few crocuses at the back. There’s really not any room for more in this bed.
Pear tree – some crocuses, possibly some Siberian squill?
Front border – large alliums at the back
Shed pot – crocuses

Fern bed – bluebells, mostly along the front, with a few further back

Triangle – alliums, back and sides

Woodland bed – Siberian squill (found a wood anemone and other bulbs coming up, and the first pink on the lungwort)

Left border – Siberian squill

Ledge – alliums at back, Siberian squill

The final handful of crocus bulbs has gone into a round terracota pot at home. I put a bit of leaf litter over it to deter or invite digging.

The mole is making lots of holes outside the gate; it’s starting to look like a little network that might cave in one day.

The garden centre was promising half price bulbs, so I headed there to see if there was anything that appealed. It then turned out that all the bags were £1 each. I came away with £40.95 worth for £5. I really need to remember the end of year/season sales for plants and seeds. Crocus and the RHS and busy offering all kinds of reductions too.

• 5 x miniature tulips (mixed) – March/April
• 10 x English bluebells – May
• 50 x siberica (Siberian squill) – March/April
• 60 x crocus (species mixed) – February/March
• 25 x alliums (border mixed) – May/June

Tulips – 10cm tall; they can go in the front left corner of Bed 3.

Bluebells – 30cm tall; in the fern bed. A few of the previous bluebells are coming up in the pots. We’ll see if they do anything beyond a bit this year.

Siberian squill – 15cm; some can go in Bed 3. I’ll put them in groups in the borders where they won’t be too much of a nuisance.

Crocus – the photo shows mostly white and purple. It was the yellow ones that were destroyed in 2024. I’ll put some in Bed 3 and near the pear tree. They’d suit the ledge too.

Alliums – 60cm; purple, lilac and white. They look like they have quite rigid stems, so hopefully they’ll be fairly upright. Front border, ledge and triangle.

 

The plot is now done for this year. I’ve tied string around a couple of branches on the apple tree as a reminder to evaluate them for removal. I think the one at the front would make a big hole, so it might just be shortened. The one on the right would probably help to thin things out.

Bed 1, half of Bed 7 and Bed 11 have been weeded and covered. I took the rudbeckias out of Bed 1 and moved them to the left boundary, particularly to the rough spot by the shed. We’ll see if they come back next year.

I weeded Bed 6, and the garlic and anise hyssop are now left to see what they do in the spring. I dug upa few more parsnips for Christmas. The first ones were quite small, so I kept going until we had enough. Next time, I’ll head to the left end of the middle row; it looks like there’s a big one there.

About half of the triangle still needed weeding, so that’s now done, with lots of rubbish is gone. The big geum has died off in the middle, so I dug up the woody bit and am left with two smaller, separate plants.

We saw a sparrowhawk chase a small bird, which dived around the elder, meaning that the sparrowhawk couldn’t follow. Otherwise, I was accompanied by a couple of great tits, a couple of blue tits, and the robin. I also spied the dunnock through the fence.

The pond is set for the winter. The candytuft has gone great guns at the back. In the spring I need to sprinkle some seed among the pebbles I put on the front shelf to try and get some roots holding all that together.

A beautiful day after a lot of rain and cloud. The plot was no longer underwater and not too squidgy, so that was good. The veronica by the pond had some flowers on it and I saw a creature of some kind in one of the pots, so there’s still life in this corner.

I’ve straightened the robin’s nestbox at last. The lining has ripped away so I don’t know whether it would be worth trying to make it more windproof. Moss maybe?

I had to cut back some very overlapping branches to get my ladder in and that led to my starting to prune the apple tree. It’s huge compared to what Matt reduce it to in early 2023. It’s going to get a big haircut this winter and I’ve made a start, with a pile of branches now growing on Bed 9. It’s difficult to see in the photo, but the fence side already lets me through more easily.

I dug the self-sown foxgloves out of Bed 11 and planted them in the boundaries. The antirrhinum from Bed 1 has gone into the front border and the coreopsis has been moved into the terracoota pot where the chive seeds never grew.

Mum and I covered most of the beds between us. Just Beds 1, 6, 7 and 11 to weed and finish off.

We’ve had a lot of rain and the plot was underwater for the first time this winter. Back to the old way of walking round the right hand side and/or just having soaking feet.

I pulled up all the carrots and all the beetroot. A couple of the carrots were white, which was weird. The beetroot were a mix of big and small; only a couple were a little damaged. The carrots were quite damaged by carrot fly, so need some doctoring. I should harvest them earlier for freezing. I also battled some more parsnips out of the ground, which are wonderfully crowded and a range of sizes.

There’s new fungus on the compost heap. It took a while to identify, but it’s wood blewit. It’ll fade to brown with age and often appears after the first frost, so that adds up.

I was accompanied by multiple blue tits and great tits while I finished weeding Beds 2, 4, 5 and 8, and then raked them over. Any good greens have been left to rot. They’ll be covered next week. The other beds aren’t that far off either, so I might get done next weekend if it’s dried up enough.

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Today’s main job was digging up the callicarpa. Fortunately it didn’t have a very big root ball and it was easy to pull out the few seedlings and bulbs contained in the soil. I’ve planted it in a big pot at home with some crumbly sticks and chopped leaves mixed into the compost. Most of the compost was wet and it is going to rain tomorrow, so no need to water – and hopefully it’ll be able to drain better now.

I cleared the rest of the calendula from Bed 1, leaving the rudbeckia just in case it manages to flower again. There’s a snapdragon that I want to transplant and I’ve finally worked out what the mystery plant is – a new coreopsis. That’s worth potting up for the future too. Other than those jobs Bed 1 is pretty much ready to cover.

The front paddlestone had fallen all the way to the back of the pond, so I’ve stuck pebbles into its mud instead. The paddlestone now forms a new hidey hole. Maybe I can get some ground cover or more creeping jenny to take among the pebbles.

The ditch log is very much part of the boundary now, with plants nestled either side – and even growing in its crevices. I’m so pleased I went the extra mile and rescued this one.

I harvested a three more reasonably sized parsnips for family, plus a few carrots. I need to take up all the carrots next time as the carrot fly have rather taken hold.

     

We’ve had some very very cold, frosty nights in the past week, so all the annuals were done when I got to the plot this morning. One nigella had a flower and there was some candytuft in the left border still going though. The coreopsis is about done and I need to cut it back now or in the spring. The peacock orchids have been finished off by the frost; they’ve been flowering since September.

I chopped up all the cosmos in Beds 1 and 4. Bed 4 could do with a top-up as an amount of compost stayed in the cosmos root balls. I’ve taken up all the marigolds in Beds 2 and 8 (and the one in 7) and chopped them up. The few zinnias were done too, but the anise hyssop looks ok for now.

All the nasturtiums had melted and it was crazy to pull up the curtains of foliage for the trailing ones. The other nasturtiums were much smaller plants. They were all pretty wet and didn’t need any chopping, so armfuls of them went straight to the compost. I’ve revealed a lot of weeds now, which will be the next job.

Since we’d had some frosts I decided to pull up a test parsnip. The top looked about 2.5″ across, but starting to dig showed it was going to be much heftier than that. I had to dig and dig and eventually I was able to pull it out. It left a tiny bit of its thin root in the ground and was 36cm long. Halfway through the digging some long-tailed tits visited the efeder and tree, closely followed by blue tits and a great tit on the feeder. I’d also seen a kestrel hovering over the allotments, so it was a good bird day.

It was a bit colder today and next week temperatures are due to drop to give us our first frosts. Therefore no deadheading at all. I found the last coconut of last season in the shed and put that up on the fence.

Something had had a little poke at the corner of the bug hotel, displacing a few bits of wood. I pushed them back in to place and noticed that the big terracotta pot had an amount of grass growing on it. In pulling that out I found that the bluebell bulbs have actually started to sprout. So maybe  they’ll do something next spring?

I weeded the fern bed, which wasn’t too difficult. The next job there will be to add a bit more bark. I found some new fungus – yellow stag horn, growing on wood at the back of the bed. Turkey tail fungus has been on the front leg for a long time. I checked under a log and found a couple of slugs, so my logs are indeed encouraging food for wildlife.

I carried on along to the triangle and weeded half of that. Next year I need to prop the everlasting pea  up better and make some space for other things further forward in the bed to do better. There are little animal holes all over the place. I imagine that they’re about 50/50 mole and vole.