Planning my 2012 plot

Today I've been sat at my desk, with my cat Bob (can you spot him?), planning my allotment for this year but I keep getting distracted by the lovely sunny day and the view from my window which looks out over some allotments and over to the most famous landmark of Huddersfield, Castle Hill.

Sadly I couldn't get one of those plots behind my garden, that would have been ideal. The end plot was not being cultivated very well and I tried and tried to see if I could get it but each year the bloke who had it would come for a few weeks plant some potatoes and then leave it again for the rest of the year, so in the end I gave up and asked for a plot on another site. Its only a few minutes walk so its not too bad, but one day I would love to get one of these!

I've been up to my plot today but there has been a hard frost this morning and that combined with the wet weather we have had nothing much can be done there today so back home to plan!

So now that I've reviewed what I grew last year I've sorted through my seeds and whilst I still have lots of seeds left over from previous seasons I like to try and few new varieties every year. Here are my new ones.

I bought some from the flower shows that I went to last year, including some from W.Robinson & Sons, those of the famous mammoth onion who create amazing displays of vegetables in the great pavilion. Some from T&M and some from Sow Seeds. Finally some from a seed company who have heirloom tomatoes (http://www.heirloomtoms.org/), they came to do a talk at my local allotment society meeting last year, bringing lots of tomatoes for us to taste. So I'm trying two of their tomatoes, one with a great name called 'Auld Sod', which is supposed to be good for outdoor growing and one called 'Red grape sugar plum' which on taste was amazing, so sweet.

I'm going to try some crimson flowered broad beans, to add some colour though I love the flowers on the ordinary broad bean too, they are so pretty. Some round yellow courgettes, and a very weird looking courgette called 'Trombocino'. Some mangetout peas, Crystal Lemon cucumber, a yellow beaned dwarf french bean and a purple beaned climbing french bean. Basically I'm adding some colour to my plot this year, it will be interesting to see if they taste good too! Maybe I've gone a bit off course, but I'll be growing lots of my usual tried and tested varieties as well, these are just some extras!