Pig Sty Avenue

Still playing catch up at the allotment, after those 6 weeks away. I cropped the 2nd earlies, and got 1 1/2 coffee sacks full. Which is satisfying, from 2kg of spuds from Lidl, costing less than £1 in total. But, I must say, maris peer are not-bad salad potatoes, but somewhat bland in flavour. The main crop desiree are still in the ground, some of the foliage showing signs of yellowing, so ready to crop in a few weeks perhaps. And the last couple of evenings, I've gone back to the Northern boundary. On the east side, the hedge is pretty much planted, but badly needed weeding, which I did. On the west side, near the path are a couple of gooseberries and bramble plants which I had to cut back when I was doing some emergency weeding during a visit home a few weeks ago. They've took that treatment well, and are flourishing better than ever. On that part, there's only the front row of the hedge planted; the back row will be all gorse. I planted 4 of them tonight. I was tempt...

There'll be beds ready to plant by early March, inshallah. But most plants (tatties excepted) will go out in May after the last frosts. So I want to get ground cover to keep the weeds away, fix some nitrogen, and help my much-shuffled and sodden soil to recover. Also to provide some cover for the frogs to resume their slug hunting duties. What I want to do is to cover the entire allotment in something to cover the ground whilst I'm planting. Some places just want to be rested until I plant out the hedgerow in autumn, or the winter and spring vegetables later in the summer, so I need something to feed those areas and keep the weeds at bay (somewhat). I'll sow some phacelia, but the default plant is going to be white clover, (Trifolium repens) . I remember local authority green spaces in the 60s used to be mostly grass, but there was a lot of white clover, too, and bumblebees loved it. In fact I got my first bee sting from one of them. By Forest & Kim Starr, CC BY 3...