This year has been a year for much needed renovation work on the allotment. One such project was the renovation of a large flower bed at one edge of our plot.
Regular readers may be able to cast their minds back to the beginning of the year when the bed looked like this.
It was swamped with couch grass, Bindweed and all manner of other weeds.
This was the allotment so we didn't want to spend a fortune, rather it needed a cheap and cheerful look. With this in mind we spotted an offer of 172 perennial plug plants at a very reasonable price. It was a pot luck collection which meant that we couldn't choose the plants to be included.
These arrived at the beginning of April. They were tiny plug plants and so they were potted up with three or more plugs to a pot.
By the 4 May we had removed as many weeds as possible. The black elders and roses had been severely 'pruned'.
| 4 May |
Couch grass and bindweed are persistent and so I kept going over the bed to remove any pieces that were reappearing.
| 11 May |
Plants that we wanted to keep were dug up, tidied and replanted.
| 14 May |
These included centaurea montana - perennial cornflowers, some penstemon and some bearded irises.
We then planted out the potted perennials which although they had put on quite a lot of growth still didn't make much of an impression. We guessed that this year the bed would look sparse.
| 14 May |
| 30 May |
| 3 June |
The new perennials grew surprisingly quickly and in June lupins and poppies were flowering but the bindweed was also making an appearance sometimes courtesy of the tiniest fragment previously missed. |
| 10 June |
| 13 June |
| 7 August |
| 7 August |
| 7 August |
I still keep spotting bits of bindweed but I am determined to stay on top of it - wish me luck.
If you have about 20 minutes to spare you may like to watch the video that I made showing this and other flower areas on our allotment. I recommend viewing in full screen. There is a commentary so turn your sound on.
Copyright: Original post from Our Plot at Green Lane Allotments http://glallotments.blogspot.co.uk/
author S Garrett
