Roping the Family in!

The family getting stuck in

Last Saturday was a mild day with broken sunshine, a gentle breeze and no more than a light shower forecast - in other words, great allotment weather! I bribed my family with a picnic to come and join us down on the allotment, expecting maybe a little light weeding from them for an hour or so, and nothing more. They arrived about 1pm, however, and stayed until gone 6:30pm!

The age range of our family helpers stretched from 8 years to 77, and everyone got stuck in. The mare's tail is by now in that fir-tree like appearance phase and is so invasive and such an eyesore, yet so easy to pull up, that I think everyone was determined to get rid of as much as possible!

My little niece was delighted to find countless frogs, and she was tasked with moving them out of harm's way to the far end of the allotment where it's very damp and dark. Approximately 20 square metres of the bottom of the plot is filled with towering brambles so I think it'll be a while before we get to work on that!

As there was a team of people dealing with the mare's tail and the overhanging brambles from a neighbouring plot, we decided to make a start on clearing the broken glass from the greenhouse area.

The remains of the greenhouse :-(

Mare's tail for days...

I've no idea what happened to the greenhouse but I suspect it was been completely smashed by vandals at some point as we didn't find a single sheet of intact glass. It's disappointing not to have a greenhouse or shed but I guess if the plot was better equipped, someone else would have snapped it up and we'd still be on the waiting list!

We still haven't decided what to do about the greenhouse - the site secretary told us originally that it would still be fine to use if we got hold of some replacement glass but after taking a closer look at it, a lot of the metal frame components are very bent out of shape. We managed to clear a lot of the glass and rubbish from the greenhouse area, but there's still a long way to go!