Today I built the raised beds for our poly tunnel, these were made of scaffolding boards and bolted together with M10 x 120mm coach screws from UK Fixings in Sheffield. The coach screws required 7mm pilot holes to ensure that they did not split the scaffold boards, after that they were pretty easy to put together.

On the left hand side we have beds spanning the full length of approx 6m, in the centre and right they span about 4m in length and we plan to build a small potting station in the right hand corner where we can start off some of our plants and possibly grow a few herbs.

Now the next job is to fill all the beds with manure and soil, and then get planting a ton of vegetables!

Been to the allotment today and done a bit of a winter harvest and to grab a few things ready for Christmas. Grabbed several leeks, some radishes, white beetroot and various leafy greens. All in all a pretty nice selection of veg for the winter, shame the temperature is likely to plummet soon.

Pretty happy with what we’ve accomplished on our allotment this year, hopefully next year will bring us closer to being less reliant on shopping at the supermarket.

Today we managed to put the cover on the polytunnel with the help of James and David. First I built a bit of supporting framework on the inside out of 100mm x 100mm fence posts, we have three posts going vertically and then two going horizontally with a lap joint in the middle.

The timber will help give the polytunnel more stability in the wind and also will give us something to attach netting to and maybe some hanging baskets.

Next step will be to build some raised beds inside, but that will likely be done in the new year as there isn’t much point doing it now with winter rolling in.

Today we finished digging the grass up to clear a space for the polytunnel, and then managed to put the frame up. That is stage 1 complete but it was a little too windy to attempt to put the cover on today so we will come back and attempt that in a week or so.

So today we picked a really nice selection of veggies from our allotment, it’s really great to be able to eat all this freshly picked food and it always tastes fantastic in comparison to the stuff you get in the shops.

Today we’ve got various types of peppers, fennel, flat custard squash, crookneck squash, cucumbers, carrots, beetroot and radishes.

Been down digging up some veg today and dug up this whopper carrot, one of the bigger ones we’ve managed to grow so far. They don’t seem to have grown as well as the ones we grew last year at our old house, hopefully we will have better luck on the allotment next year.

Personally I think we just planted them a little too close together this time and didn’t thin them out enough, but we shall rectify that next time.

Today we went to the allotment and the courgettes which only a few days ago were tiny are now monstrously huge. It seems all it needs is a downpour of rain and courgettes can grow to 2kg in the space of a couple of days.

I have a feeling we are going to get very bored of eating courgette at some point!