13th Oct - A Fruity Weekend

We tend to be quite a busy couple or at least there aren't that many weekends when both Simon and I are at home and this one wasn't one of them. When you factor in that timber merchants are only open on Saturday mornings, you can probably understand why I asked Simon to help me get the remaining 14 lengths of gravel boards before he disappeared at 10 am for the weekend. It wasn't the best day to do this but thankfully Hurricane Callum had a little rest for our 20 minute journey!

With the timber safely unloaded at the allotment and Simon out of the picture I headed for Plants Galore which was a top tip from Dean at the allotment (thanks for the rhubarb the other day Dean, delish). I came away with more compost and soil conditioner and more importantly additional raspberries, blackberry and tayberries for my cane bed.

First point of the day was to get my second blueberry bush in and then plant the fruit bushes into the fruit bush bed. As before, I dug a huge hole and filled it with a bag of ericaceous soil and watered this in. I planted the pot, filled more soil around the pot, removed the pot, removed the plant from the pot and reinserted the plant into the ground. More soil added, pressed the plant and surrounding soil in gently and then watered it..

Blueberry safely in the ground, I repeated these steps with the blackcurrant bush, redcurrant bush and two gooseberry bushes. All of these don't need special soil needs so they went straight into the pre-prepared ground.

I had a slight interlude with the arrival of the promised manure to the allotments. I believe this is for all the allotment holders to share and it was arranged my another allotment holder who recently lost her horse. I know everyone will be making great use of this so thank you. Dean was on hand to receive the load so we chatted and shoveled and chatted some more.

Back to the cane bed. I still had to dig in the compost and soil conditioner that we had put in the bed under cover of darkness in the week. It was a lot easier to dig it all in to this smaller 4m x 2.4 m bed which meant I could get cracking with the fun bit of planting. Canes don't need to be placed as far apart as the bushes and don't need special soil. I measured out 50 cm spacing and started to plant the canes into the ground following the same process as above. I think we will have to build the uprights and wiring for the cordons sooner rather than later as the plants from Plants Galore are already quite established and one has flowers already.