Although initially overwhelmed, a productive afternoon spent on the allotment makes the whole project seem a lot more do-able. The main reason why we're confident to tackle this overgrown, rutted meadow is that our neighbouring allotment holders have just been fantastic.
Brett, the chicken man, offered some great advice and helped us to work out which bit is ours. Arthur, with the allotment facing ours ("you know if I'm in if my flag is flying... there's always a brew on") told us who was who and who we could ask to borrow stuff to get started.
John, the guy next to us, has let us use enough of his good quality black plastic to cover about two thirds of our plot. We're just going to let this cook and die down so that it's good to go next year. We're just tackling one third this year.
Gary, the gas man was amazing. He made a special trip back to the allotment on bank holiday Monday to mow our plot before we put the plastic down. And he kept us right and offered muscle by helping us get the black plastic in place.
Bear in mind that we don't know these people from Adam. They seem to just be happy that there are people wanting to tend to one of the empty plots and are going out of their way to help us.
So Monday was spent clearing, weeding, mowing and shifting. And if you check out our pictures, you will see that our overgrown, rutted meadow was transformed within a couple of hours. Looking on while the four of us and Gary worked at it was Watson, our black lab, who was happily chewing a stick, and Isaac, our baby who was contentedly watching us from the comfort of his buggy.
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Since Monday, we've been on the lookout on Freecycle, Freegle and Gumtree for bits and bobs that we need. We want some bricks to weigh down our black plastic (no luck yet - just using rubble bags of garden waste at the moment); compost bins (there were some on Freecycle but somebody nabbed them!) and a shed. We'll keep an eye out to try and get these bits and bobs for free, but we might end up just buying them. Not a problem as long as we can do it cheaply.
This week has been horrible, weather-wise, but has been book-ended by some glorious gardening weather so today, with two of us being off work, we tackled a bit more. Today's aim was to get a good look at the quality of the soil. We decided to work at a small patch that we'll be making into a bed to try our first experiments at planting crops.
The soil does not seem bad - lots of worms, which is a good sign. Lots of weeds and roots to dig up and the soil was quite clay-ey, but Arthur (flag, brew) came across and weilded a pick-axe masterfully to help us break up the soil.
Our complement of tools (initially scrabbled together by asking parents) has been boosted by a trip to B&M Bargains so now we are the proud owners of two forks, a rake, two spades and other sundry items. (Really need to get on with getting a shed to store these in. It'll soon become a chore to keep dragging them back and forth).
And we're getting together seeds and plants to get into the ground to hopefully get some food to harvest later in the season. Laura has lots of seeds (onions, various herbs etc) that she is starting off in seed trays at home, we've bought a rosemary plant from B&M and another allotment neighbour (Angela? Andrea?) has given us some celeriac seedlings.
Can't wait to get these into the ground.
- Claire
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