Tuesday, 6 August 2013
Sorry about the lack of updates! Allotment is still a work in progress! Getting there little by little.
We have plants to nurture now. A bargainous apple tree, a chilli plant, strawberries, sage, coriander, parsley, basil and lollo rossa lettuces. We did have carrots too, planted from seed but they seem to have withered in the sun, poor things. Unless I weeded out carrots nor weeds the other day?! :-\
Grass remains an issue: we have a push mower now which will do the job but only once it's been strimmered again. But chicken guy Brett has given me a lead on petrol strimmers for a tenner! Hope it works out as that'd make life so much easier. My arms are probably going to kill tomorrow as I hand clipped the path with shears.
We have storage now too. It's making life loads easier. It's not a shed, but is pretty roomy. It's called a Keter Store It Out. Just hope no swines break into it.
Really need a compost bin. Keep trying to nab one off Freecycle but they always get snapped up too quickly! I have a plan though involving free wooden crates from the garden centre.
Lots more to write, but alas no time except to say that I have allotment envy when I see what other people are achieving on theirs! Pretty sure they don't all work full time though or have a 10 month old! Makes no odds though as I'm thoroughly enjoying chipping away at ours. Love the fresh air and headspace and that it"s so convenient.
Must go - apologies for typos (I know there are loads). I'm on my phone and it's awkward to navigate to go back up and change them.
Keep gardening!
C x
Monday, 10 June 2013
A man's home is his castle - we have battlements
Just a brief update as I'm watching Mad Men!
Done : another bed dug up; drainage ditch dug and supported by buttresses.
To do: chicken mature to dig into first bed then we're ready to plant! Woo hoo!
Done : another bed dug up; drainage ditch dug and supported by buttresses.
To do: chicken mature to dig into first bed then we're ready to plant! Woo hoo!
Friday, 31 May 2013
Slowly slowly catchy monkey
Bank holidays may have a new tradition for me and my gang from now on. Rather than contemplating whether we should go for a day out somewhere and risk getting stuck in traffic, we can now simply go around the corner and spend a few nice hours in our allotment.
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.
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
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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| Before |
 |
| During |
 |
| After |
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
Sunday, 19 May 2013
Land!
This weekend I've been excited and daunted by the prospect of sharing an allotment with a couple of friends, Jon and Claire, who've made it through the council list. Actually it's half an allotment, but it looks huge to me. It may have looked bigger because it's an overgrown wilderness of foot-high grass, thistles, thorns and mystery weeds.
We had a look on Friday, the four of us plus one baby standing in the grass looking a little lost before trying to figure out how to tackle it. The consensus: cover most of it in plastic sheeting to kill everything off, test the soil, weed, feed and dig a corner of it and try to get some late cropping potatoes into said corner to break up the ground.
It's going to take a lot of work, and I'm sure at least one of us will put their back out at some point, but I'm looking forward to when we've got the space cleared and the soil up to a good standard, ready for planting. With it being so neglected we'll have a blank canvas to play around with and when we actually start growing our own food it will feel like a real achievement, especially as gardening in an allotment is a step into the unknown for all of us.
Next steps? Get a pair of dungarees and headscarf for the Felicity Kendal look and decide whose car to use to fetch manure from the local stables...
Laura
We had a look on Friday, the four of us plus one baby standing in the grass looking a little lost before trying to figure out how to tackle it. The consensus: cover most of it in plastic sheeting to kill everything off, test the soil, weed, feed and dig a corner of it and try to get some late cropping potatoes into said corner to break up the ground.
It's going to take a lot of work, and I'm sure at least one of us will put their back out at some point, but I'm looking forward to when we've got the space cleared and the soil up to a good standard, ready for planting. With it being so neglected we'll have a blank canvas to play around with and when we actually start growing our own food it will feel like a real achievement, especially as gardening in an allotment is a step into the unknown for all of us.
Next steps? Get a pair of dungarees and headscarf for the Felicity Kendal look and decide whose car to use to fetch manure from the local stables...
Laura
Eggs and cress and flamethrowers
This past week, my wife Claire and I were handed the keys to our very own allotment. But the only thing I’ve ever grown in my life is some cress out of an eggshell with a face painted on it called Fred.
It’s all very exciting, but it quickly dawned on me that I barely know which end of spade is meant to go into the ground, and that I know next to nothing about how to grow things – especially things that I plan on feeding to my family.
For the last seven years, we’ve lived in a terraced house without a garden, so the idea of having a little bit of green space we can call our own and grow stuff in is a very attractive prospect. Especially as we now have a son who is almost eight months-old.
It’s quite a big plot, so we have decided to share the space with our friends Laura and Colin who seem to know a little bit more about growing things than we do.
On Friday, we went to survey our estate – sorry, that should read ‘state’ – it’s quite a mess. The plot has been left overgrown with grass and weeds, so we’re pretty daunted by the initial steps.
I was having a read through a book about starting an allotment that Claire took out of the library, and it said that I could use a flamethrower to clear the ground. A flamethrower! I thought that people only watched gardening programmes to stare at the breasts of Charlie Dimmock/Alan Titchmarsh (delete as appropriate) – I had no idea that there was the prospect of incendiary weapons.
Of course, flamethrowers were vetoed by every other sane person around, so instead I think we’re going to roll some plastic sheet over it and let everything die beneath. I prefer the scorched-earth policy, but this is a democracy and I was clearly outvoted.
But we’re not going to let it stop us growing stuff. I had the idea of getting loads of eggs, filling them up with cotton wool and growing cress in them. But the idea of getting some grow-bags to grow some potatoes for our first season seemed like a more popular idea.
- Jon
It’s all very exciting, but it quickly dawned on me that I barely know which end of spade is meant to go into the ground, and that I know next to nothing about how to grow things – especially things that I plan on feeding to my family.
 |
| Dummies? How rude. |
For the last seven years, we’ve lived in a terraced house without a garden, so the idea of having a little bit of green space we can call our own and grow stuff in is a very attractive prospect. Especially as we now have a son who is almost eight months-old.
It’s quite a big plot, so we have decided to share the space with our friends Laura and Colin who seem to know a little bit more about growing things than we do.
On Friday, we went to survey our estate – sorry, that should read ‘state’ – it’s quite a mess. The plot has been left overgrown with grass and weeds, so we’re pretty daunted by the initial steps.
I was having a read through a book about starting an allotment that Claire took out of the library, and it said that I could use a flamethrower to clear the ground. A flamethrower! I thought that people only watched gardening programmes to stare at the breasts of Charlie Dimmock/Alan Titchmarsh (delete as appropriate) – I had no idea that there was the prospect of incendiary weapons.
Of course, flamethrowers were vetoed by every other sane person around, so instead I think we’re going to roll some plastic sheet over it and let everything die beneath. I prefer the scorched-earth policy, but this is a democracy and I was clearly outvoted.
But we’re not going to let it stop us growing stuff. I had the idea of getting loads of eggs, filling them up with cotton wool and growing cress in them. But the idea of getting some grow-bags to grow some potatoes for our first season seemed like a more popular idea.
- Jon
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