(Almost) spring on the allotment

I'd be enjoying this run of warm, sunny weather much more if it was, say, early May than February, but it's certainly been nice to get down to the allotment more than usual at this time of year. While it's a bit unsettling to get sunburned in the north of England in what is technically still winter, we've at least managed to get a head start on our spring jobs.

We've had quite a hectic social calendar over the last few weekends but have spent a few hours each week at the plot whenever possible. Last weekend, our progress included:

• Digging over and covering four beds
• Cutting back several smaller fruit trees
• Digging up a very old redcurrant bush
• Extending our woodchip and paving stone path
• Marking out new beds

But perhaps the thing I'm most excited about is the fact that we finally tackled The Mound. When we took on our plot, the ground was incredibly uneven. We've made good progress at levelling it out over the past year, but a huge mound near the entrance remained untouched. Well, we finally decided to tackle The Mound last weekend. It's hard to see in photos how big it was, but I estimate it at around 4 feet high, 5 feet wide and 12 feet long. The Mound was covered in about 6 layers of plastic and weed membrane, some of which had started to disintegrate. It probably took longer to remove these layers than to do anything else as there were so many plants and roots growing through the various layers, some many feet long.

Before we started tackling The Mound...

...and after!

Once we had removed the bulk of the coverings, we started digging. What we found was a mixture of soil, bricks, rubbish, large shards of glass and lots and lots of stones. It took several hours to get there, but the area is almost levelled out now, which we are delighted about! Now just the several visits to the tip to get rid of all the rubbish and broken glass!

The bricks we found will be put into use elsewhere on the plot, while the soil was used to fill in some of the other uneven patches of ground.

Love a productive Saturday

This weekend's plans include digging over more beds, trying to get hold of a ladder to prune the huge cherry tree, burning as much waste as possible and building some more raised beds. Let's hope it's a dry one! In other news, I planted some crocus bulbs before winter and had completely forgotten about them so was pleasantly surprised when they started appearing recently. So nice to have some colour at this time of year!

Crocuses adding some colour