The bad news first ...
This is what one area of my allotment looks like right now. The mass of green plants are some kind of chicory or endive, self seeded from last year. Which wouldn't be so bad, if I actually liked chicory or endive, but I don't - too bitter for my taste.
The good news is in the second picture. Slowly but surely, tiny baby in tow, my partner and I (well mostly my partner) are getting the plot back in shape. There are still swathes covered in weeds but there are also areas planted up with tomatoes, sweetcorn, beetroot, lettuce, onions, shallots and squash.
The corn was bought in but erverything else we've sown from scratch, either in situ or in a propagator.
The soft fruit - blackcurrants, whitecurrants, redcurrants, raspberries and strawberries - are all coming along well. Our strawberry patch was overrun by perennial weeds last year when the allotment went on the back burner during my pregnancy. It's wise to move your strawberry bed every three years and replace the plants with new ones as a way of staving off diseases that can take hold on older plants. So we took some new plants and put them in one of our raised beds (made from Link-a-Bord by the way .. .not sure if I've mentioned this before but it's a very good method for raised beds), where they'll also be easier to cover with netting to protect from pests.
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