A Productive Weekend

Over the past two days, we have made huge inroads into the jungle of weeds which used to be our plot.

On Saturday afternoon, I headed down and focused on clearing the nettles, doc plants and other weeds from the back of Geoff’s plot. The nettles are lethal and it was challenging to cut them down without getting stung! A sensible person would wear trousers, a long sleeve top and gloves but it was far too hot for that! I moved onto attempting to rescue Geoff’s trees from being overgrown with nettles. I left all the nettles in a big pile with the aim of coming back mid-week to finish off the job.

Whilst I was on site, Cliff popped by to let Steve know that one of the hives had swarmed again. Poor Steve has been run off his feet with swarms in the last couple of weeks. I offered to help and ran off to don my bee kit. It’s been ages since I helped catch a swarm and although I was boiling, I made sure to have everything on, including my gloves. Fortunately, the swarm was hanging off a tree on Rachael’s plot which made it easier to catch.  Steve led the way armed with a large plastic bag. Between us, we placed the bag around the swarm without touching it. We both took a deep breath before Steve shook the branch whilst I quickly closed up the top of the bag. I never cease to be amazed at the weight of the bees and how they all move as a solid mass in this situation. Next we walked the bees back to the Community Garden to put them into a hive. This is definitely a two person job with Steve having the unenviable job of shaking out all the bees, who were already extremely unimpressed with being caught in a bag, whilst I stood by with the queen excluder ready to stop the queen escaping. Amazingly, as I pushed the queen excluder across the top of the brood box, I spotted the queen. She was on the underside of the excluder clearly trying to get out! In all the swarms I have helped Steve and Phil to collect over the years, we have never managed to spot the queen. Usually she is in the middle of the swarm and there are so many thousands of bees, it’s like looking for a needle in a haystack. Before I left, I headed back to Rachael’s plot armed with dilute jays fluid which is important to spray on the branch to help any remaining bees find their way to their new home. After this, we left all the bees to settle in and as of today, they are still there!

Cliff kindly dropped by the greenhouse and gave us some yellow sungold tomato plants. They are some of my favourite tomatoes and are absolutely delicious. It is great to see the raised bed in the greenhouse with plants in, especially as we haven’t managed to grow anything in it this year so far.

This afternoon my husband and I headed back to the allotment determined to sort out the big beds on our plot. With my husband busy hoeing the weeded beds, I worked on clearing the others. It was so hot and the sun was completely relentless so we would regularly retreat to the shed to try and cool off. It took a couple of hours hard work but when we stopped, all of the beds were weed free for the first time in months. The plot looks vastly better and although there is still lots more to do, it’s a great start. We plan to plant our seeds and remaining seed potatoes after work this week.

I walked over to Geoff’s plot to check how the Nettle Mountain was doing and I was pleased to see it wilting in the heat. I loathe nettles! Our final task was to feed the chickens in the main coop and new coop. We topped up their food and water and collected half a dozen eggs.

Exhausted but very satisfied with our hard work, we set off back home to have a cold shower and collapse – although not necessarily in that order!