Popped up post-work last night for an aspirational digging session. I had to spend about 20 minutes in the car waiting for the rain to stop – obviously praising myself for my commitment on a Monday night.

I did do a bit of digging as well as pottering about and noticed 2 things:
a) the rain doesn’t seem to be making many inroads into the dryness of the soil, and
b) there are hardly any worms in this bed. The ones that are there are big, fat and almost totally inert. There is hardly any vegetable matter that I can see, other than tree roots, some couch grass and some creeping buttercup.

So I think that I will be manuring heavily this autumn to encourage a worm population explosion – and relying on the purportedly magical properties of my vitax supagro for harvests this season.

I don’t know whether this is an allotment no-no or not. My new neighbour hasn’t been seen for a few weeks and the horsetail her plot is infested with is loving the weather. It’s all along one of the beds a foot away from my permanent fruit bed, so my confession is that I have pulled out as much as is close to the path as possible. And I did feel like I was trespassing the whole time. I don’t think I’ve ever seen horsetail on my plot, and I really, really don’t want it either.

I do really feel for her – she has one of the largest plots on the site. While it’s not covered in blackthorn, like the worst-looking ones from last year were, it is a proper carpet of horsetail and bindweed. I had thought we’d agreed as a Committee to get it sprayed with something professionally lethal before re-letting it – but maybe my memory’s faulty and that’s just what I was hoping for. I hope she doesn’t give up – but unless she covers some of it soon she’s going to have a huge battle to get/keep it cleared.