Thieves soil allotment paradise

Last night our shed at the allotment was broken into and our mower and strimmer stolen. We were alerted by an early morning phonecall from our friend James who walks his dog past our allotment every morning before work and noticed our shed door swinging open in the breeze. The police arrived to take a look, and found that 5 other sheds on neighbouring allotments and 15 on another allotment site nearby had also been raided. Luckily it turned out that the culprits were far from criminal masterminds and were arrested just a few streets away later in the day, and all the loot was found stashed in an empty house next to our allotment. After they'd been dusted for prints we brought the mower and strimmer home for the moment, while we consider how to make our shed even more secure. We'd already relocated the door hinges so they couldn't be unscrewed from outside and covered the window with mesh and wooden battens, so I'm not really sure what else we can do to deter thieves. Perhaps some extra reinforcement where the hasp attaches to the shed would be a good idea, we're also mulling over what would best sort of booby trap to install.

More allium love

Planted 4 bulbs of garlic today, 2 rows of early purple wight and 2 rows of mediterranean wight. Another 6 bulbs are ordered and should be here soon, but best to get these 2 autumn planting varieties in now. The leeks have been weeded and earthed up. Hopefully that'll help them withstand the fierce winds that whip across our plot all winter. Picked a few for tonight's dinner, along with parsnips, carrots and celeriac from the plot. This will be combined with our own rosemary, garlic and mint jelly and a organic leg of lamb from Mansergh Hall who have a stall on Wednesdays in Lancaster. Perfect Sunday roast dinner.

Glorious autumn sunshine

The autumn planted onion sets are on their way. Onions were a major sucess on the allotment for us this summer, so we're hoping the good luck with alliums will continue. These were planted in on 1st October and weeded today.

We also harvested the rest of our potatoes. This bed had bigger potatoes and higher yield than the others, a fact we attributed to our unscienfitic mini experiment of lining the trenches of this last bed with comfrey before planting the seed potatoes in April. We'll have to expand the already massive comfrey patch if we want enough to line ALL the potatoes trenches next year.