Taking the time to water the fruit and vegetable plot...

When you are offered an allotment lots of questions will come into your mind. One that I did not take into consideration was the distance between my plot and the water tap. I would have picked the plot I did anyway because it is nearer to the gate and that is just about the limit of the distance I can walk from home when carrying gardening tools. However -

In the summer months when you hit a dry spell the distance from the water tap to your plot seems to grow further apart each run you do between the two.  To make best use of the water you use you need to water early morning or evening time; it is better for the plants and more effective too.

With a watering can in each hand and the warm weather it feels like a challenge to complete enough trips to water everything that needs watering at this time of year. We are not allowed to use hose pipes to water our plots and I can understand why, our rent is very reasonable and any excess use of water would put up the rent for everyone.

I have tried putting the watering cans and a trug in the wheelbarrow and ferrying them back and forth between the tap and the plot in that way. Neither method is perfect, so I am looking for solutions to this situation before next year. Oh well, off to water the salad, the peas, the potatoes,the raspberries and the fruit bushes. Even the onions need watering this year, my sandy soil is so dried out. Another job for the future adding muck to the plot, in the form of well rotted horse muck or compost from the composter I have on the vegetable plot. That is a job for the autumn when the growing season is over and I am tidying up the plot for the winter and preparing it for next spring.  Watering, weeding and harvesting are the jobs taking up my time at the moment - early July no time to sit in a deck-chair and admire the view.