St George's Day (& also the 2nd anniversary of my mother's funeral). Lovely gardening weather though. Lots of digging and planted shedloads of onion sets (Turbo). My oppo (Chris) has had a vast load of manure delivered - took hours to get it off the road into the plot and at one point a car tried to drive over it and got stuck. Hey Ho.

I've also had a massive bonfire at home as we tidy the house up before putting it on the market. It was a bit of a good/bad/good news story. Good becasue I got rid of so much rubbish in a heap so old it had at least 2 Xmas trees in it. Bad because I lost my glasses in the fire, but good because I found the glasses I thought I'd thrown away in a bag of hedge trimmings two years ago. What goes around comes around!

And here is how it looks now, after lots of effort to get the hedge down to a reasonable size, most if it dug over, and a shed built (on Walter Segal, minimum impact principles). Latest action has been to get some raspberries and blackberries in and, today, to put in (rather late) some salad potatoes (Nicola) and some red onion sets - Red Baron, very scabby becasue I'd left it too late). But the onion sets and garlic I put in last October are doing very well.

This is my first post to Allotment 81, from my allotment known, surprisingly, as Allotment 81!. It faces due south on a steeply sloping site in south west Sheffield, so gets loads of sun, not much frost and is free draining - ideal for a vineyard some would say, indeed I've often said just that. It was pretty derelict when i took it - grass waist high and hedges twice my height. I've had it since summer 2004 but it's taken 18 months to get the infrastructure under control.

There are two plots side by side with a central path and a shared gate. For most of last year the 'other' plot was empty. It's now been taken since autumn last year but the tenant is only just beginning to work it. Anyway, here's some photos of how it was.