Shall we stay or should we go?

I realise I have been quite quiet on the allotment front recently. It's not that we haven't been busy – indeed far from it. In preparation for our first growing season ahead we have been making use of every spare bit of window space around the house. On the ledge in our bedroom we have broad beans, sweetpeas and potatoes growing.

Since the bedroom space was used up very quickly and we have a lot of allotment space to fill I came up with the idea of bringing the greenhouse staging indoors. I bought it from Wilko a couple of years ago but it seems to have tripled in price since then! I did think it was rather a good deal at the time.

Since our house thermostat is set at 15°C you can probably tell I'm not the sort of person to waste energy. I wasn't keen on spending money to heat the greenhouse and since it also doubles up as the local cats shelter I didn't think it would be safe to so. What I have noticed is how warm it gets by our patio windows when the sun shines. Free energy! So a for couple of weeks at least the dining room is doubling up as germination HQ.

My cunning plan seems to have worked as yet more sweetpeas and broad beans are looking good along with various tomato varieties and the first tray of purple sprouting broccoli. A lot of potting on and thinning out is due to be done this weekend!

Turning to this post's blog title you may recall that just after we took on our allotment in November another plot on our site became vacant. We found out the tenant had moved up to the great cabbage patch in the sky but that the plot he had left behind was a rather good one. There were hypothetical pros and cons about switching plots but since the council wasn't even aware he had died when we contacted them (ahem) we decided to leave the matter. Of course now 3½ months we have been formally offered this plot by the council!

We went back this week to have a look at the other plot again. Everything has been left as we last saw it in November. It has two sheds and greenhouse whilst we have an open fronted former chicken shelter and a shed full of chicken poo. It has a two very secure structures for growing beans and a sunken boat for keeping strawberries from spreading. On the minus side it is now rather overgrown and we have prepared our own plot for the coming season. It seems more enclosed than our plot and means we will have neighbours on both sides so that's double the amount of people to annoy and upset me (it doesn't take much). It has no walled border but this does mean the local louts won't be lobbing their cans over onto our plot.

The council has given us 14 days to decide whether we want to switch plots. I'll you know of our decision next week!

Hosted by Fable and Folk