Allotment - take two

The avid readers of this blog will both know that a little over a month ago - 15th February to be precise - Chris and I rejected an allotment at Daventry's Drayton Field site. Today we were shown another plot and this turned out to be far more 'doable'. It is rather smaller than the first one but appears mercifully weed-free (although there may turn out to be rather a lot of that gardener's curse, 'twitch') and there is a bonus: a row of raspberries is already in situ. Anyway, we'll give it a bash!
The first job was to put in another row of raspberries together with our ready-chitted potatoes. As soon as we put a spade into the soil we found another surprise: the ground has been heavily manured and somehow reminds me of a Daily Mail front page but I can't work out what it is. Margaret Atwood once said: 'In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.' She would have approved of us as we departed the site!

The rake's progress; Chris puts her back into it. 25 March, 2017

The weather has been glorious today and the soil broke down well. Once Chris had raked a suitable area two rows of onion sets went in too.  Next will be more potatoes, not because we consume large quantities of spuds but because of all the digging and ridging they are traditionally regarded as a good way of 'clearing' a plot.