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well with a title like that i bet you can guess what we've been up to today. That right we've been down to plot 33 weeding, planting, watering feeling the sun on our backs and the soil beneath our fingers, watching nature do her thing plus our first proper harvest that we grew all by ourselves and a bit more rhubarb.
images: Anne planting some 2nd early potatoes, weakened cooch grass underneath the cardboard on the rhubarb bed, cardboard mulch to weaken weeds, Anne harvesting our first radishes, radish and rhubarb harvest, flowers on the currents and gooseberries, bud on the apple tree
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Monday 12th April What a day the shops and pubs are open, you can get a hair cut and there was snow on the ground this morning ! (well ive seen pictures of snow it was gone before i looked outside) So what is a girl to do on such an auspicious day? A bit of pottering around the plot of course. Anne wasn't able to join me today so i was left to my own devices. Having looked at the weather forecast i decided to go to the plot in the afternoon. The sun was shining by lunch time as i set about weeding the flower bed and around the no dig bed attracting the attention of the friendly robin.
 a bucket of weeds, a couple of conversations with the neighbours, and a few seedlings potted on and 4 hours had passed time runs differently on the plot i'm sure and theres no better place to be Ps i also eat one of the first crops we've grown from seed a beautiful crunchy radish ;)
With much appreciated help from James we demolished the shed! We then loaded Rachel's car with the obvious rubbish to dispose of. We now have to work out what we can salvage to use to make compost bins etc. and what is so rotten it will have to be ferried down to the dump ... that's a task for Wednesday.
  Look! Our radishes are forming. The cold frame together with warmer weather has warmed up the ground enough for planting shallots and carrot seeds in alternate rows to help prevent 'pests'. We moved the cold frame along the bed to warm up the next bit of ground.
We have decided to venture to the beds above the greenhouse, that we have been trying to ignore! We cut back the weed growth on the 2nd and 3rd bed and covered it in cardboard. our plan is to plant a load of free spuds we've been given through the cardboard and weeds to, at the very least, improve the soil and also increase our potato harvest. Fingers crossed.  We had a wee peek under the upturned barrel to see how the 'forced' rhubarb is doing. Oh yes, it has grown enough for us to pick (lesson for me in how to pick rhubarb properly...been doing it wrong for years!?!) and take home to make ...stewed rhubarb with yoghurt and rhubarb, orange and ginger sponge. Yum yum!
It has been quite hard work in many ways so far, so on Wednesday, a beautiful warm day we collected a shelving unit we used in a previous Greening project and installed it in the greenhouse to lift our trays of seedlings and growing plants off ground level. It looks rather lovely and more importantly does the job. We then made cups of tea and just sat on our plot in the sunshine plotting to demolish the shed...... very lovely.  Friday 26th March what an exciting week its been at plot 33! today Anne finished digging over bed 5 and planted all the first early potatoes, while continued to potter around the plot weeding the other beds and having a bit of a tidy up (resting up and taking it easy is sooooo difficult).  earlier in the week while sorting out the spare cardboard in the greenhouse I checked on our hot bed experiment unfortunately its not been a complete success the heap has quickly cooled ( i think the manure wasn't fresh enough) it has rotted down more than the rest of the muck we have and retained enough warmth to be an ideal house for what looked like a field vole who scuttled around the greenhouse before disappearing off into the wild. We decided to move the heap outside to our new designated composting area just behind the greenhouse incase it came back to nest. Started adding non cooked left overs that we are collecting every Friday from B'arts Bread in Common free food scheme.
We ended the week by planting the oregano moved from bed 4 in its new position next to the lemon balm and rhubarb all in all the plot is looking really good as long as you dont look past the greenhouse!
So far a busy week, making the most of the good weather. On Monday we did more digging on the potato bed and clearing on rhubarb bed, planting our first two rows of first early arran potatoes and admiring the wonderful growth in the greenhouse!
 On Tuesday we picked up a load of bricks from my daughters' back yard. Wednesday: more digging in potato bed, preparing it for second earlies spuds. We boiled an egg on the camp stove, and added it to our salad along with some of our own chives #eatingfromthe plot.
After sustenance we planted the rest of the first early spuds, continued with digging and clearing and Rachel used the bricks to create a cold frame, to warm the ground so we can hopefully get some of the beans planted outside a bit earlier.
Friday 19th March I'm not allowed to dig this week :( Doctors orders and well i cant lift my arm anyway its most frustrating . However we got to the plot bright and early for a cuppa with our social media guru Val and sat watching the birds flit around the plot After Val left we set to on the fiddley and not too strenuous task of pulling grass out of the rhubarb crowns using hand forks to loosen the soil and before we knew it we had removed a big bucket full of roots
we noticed a little grass poking through on the no dig bed and also a few seedlings had popped up so Anne raked the whole bed over spreading out some more compost we found and disturbing the seed roots at the same time. Then on to the bed by the greenhouse my shoulder was feeling much better so I though I'd give digging a try alas no one fork full and I quickly swapped to cleaning a sheet of pollycarb from home to help warm the soil ready to so some seeds direct in a few weeks time leaving Anne to the heavy work (although I did come and help picking over the previously dug bits with my hand fork so I didn't feel too useless )  We decided to use an existing compost bin to put the free manure into (it was piled up on bed 5) to allow it to decompose for next year. It soon filled up so we spent time emptying a second bin full of weeds, a mass of roots and old compost. It took some doing but we dug it out and sieved through it . It gave us more compost to put on our no dig bed and an empty bin for the rest of the manure. Bed 5 now ready for for a dig over, the plan being to plant the first early potatoes that are currently sprouting on my bedroom windowsill.  We are really looking forward to welcoming people onto Plot 33 and to involving them in our growing and making projects. One of our on-going groups is Wonder Women, a very diverse group of women who meet to do creative stuff together for our sense of wellbeing. We get involved in arts projects across the city. We are currently collectively making a bold decorative sign for the plot. I went out on my bike and delivered a bag of materials to each of the women (who come from all over the city) so they can each create three decorative letters that will make up our sign. Watch this space to see the result and to find out what our next project might be. This series of activity with Wonder Women is funded by a Stoke-on-Trent City Council Covid Grant.  Monday 8th March First task: remove the oregano from Bed 4 (some things have to go) and give it a final dig over ...oooh it's looking good, ready for planting when things warm up a bit.  Having done some hard digging we had a break over a cup of tea and using high tech scrap of paper and pencil we thought about what we would like to grow and Rachel worked out what should go with what and where. So thinking realistically that we will have 5 beds prepared. The first one will be for flowers, the second for rhubarb and herbs, the third for potatoes, the fourth for cabbage, kale and kohlrabi, the fifth for onions, leeks, garlic and carrots and we will create spaces for a pumpkin, courgettes and kuri squash.  We are going to remove some slabs from the greenhouse to make more growing room for loofahs, tomatoes, aubergines and cucumber. What a plan! And a blackbird keeping an eye on our progress.  We had an over the fence meeting with our colleague Deb Rogers and Liz, an arts student from Staffs Uni looking at how we move into face to face sessions once we are able. Looks like our first one might be with a student placement from Staffs Uni working with out Wonder Women group....watch this space. We will be introducing The Wonder Women next week.
Friday 5th March March is the month for sowing and growing things on. I spent the morning pottering around at home in my greenhouse setting tomatoes, potting on Aubergines and the exciting crop of Loofah plants. Each year i like to grow something new and loofah has been on the list for a few years now. In January i got some seeds and set them. Having never grown them before id asked about and been told the take a while to germinate and have a lot of seed failure, need a long hot season to mature the fruits. not all this advice is true within 2 weeks 7 of the 8 seeds had germinated and were growing strong . According to the radio as i pulled up to the allotment sales of loofah seeds has rocketed this year! and the advice was to set them now. I wish i had known they're starting to get big now.
monster loofahs in need of canes tomatoes starting to show through Once on plot 33 it was a day for digging carrying on with bed 4 where we left off last week. we managed to finish the bed apart from the last corner which houses a Oregano or Marjoram plant (im not sure what the difference is )that will need lifting and the roots cleaning before replanting somewhere we've not quite decided where to put the herb bed yet.
Once again we left with a feeling of having accomplished something
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AuthorsGreening Stoke is a project run in partnership between Festival Stoke and Letting in the Light. We are based in Stoke-on-Trent. COVID SafeWe are starting this adventure in January 2021 in the middle of a national Lockdown. Until things change and begin to open up we are abiding by all the Covid-19 Government guidance and for the foreseeable future only Rachel and Anne will be working, in a socially distanced way, to prepare and maintain Plot 33 for when we can invite the community to work with us. Archives
March 2021
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