A Good Time at the Golf Club

Yet another successful Allotment Dinner held at the Creigiau Golf Club yesterday evening 10 January.  Over half of our members attended and enjoyed excellent food, a fun quiz and a raffle.

Thank you to the Social Committee, and especially Nia, for arranging this event which has now become a firm favourite in our social calendar.

Happy New Year! And Top Tasks

I hope you all had a good Festive Season and are keen to get started out on the allotment and garden – the weather has not been too unkind, plenty of rain but we’ve managed to avoid heavy snow and prolonged freezing; so with the days getting longer (OK not very noticeable yet …) our thoughts can turn to next season.

We start 2018 off with our Social at Creigiau Golf Club on Wednesday 10^th – this is always a good night so see you there.

It’s still very wet underfoot at the allotment, but hopefully you can still manage to clear the old crops and dig over the soil, adding in compost or manure as you go.

If you are lucky enough to have winter veg on the plot, it’s a good idea to net the brassicas to protect them from pigeons.

A few ‘fruit’ jobs – if you like early forced rhubarb, now is the time to cover the crown with a forcer, or even a large bucket or pot, for sweet early crops. You can also prune gooseberries and redcurrants, reducing sideshoots back to three buds or so from the base.

You can also start sowing hardy annual seeds, such as cornflowers, cerinthe, pot marigolds etc, in trays to give you some early flowers.

Finally a mention of our feathered friends – keep bird baths topped up, and melt ice with warm water on frosty days; top up feeders daily, and don’t forget to clean out the feeders on a regular basis – food can often ‘clump’ and get mouldy in the wet weather, so clear them out and keep them hygienic.   And then sit back and take part in the RSPB Birdwatch over the weekend of 27-28 January.  Click here for more info.