First task on the allotment was to do some serious digging. The ground hadn’t been turned over for nearly a year and grass and weeds were rife. We didn’t have access to a rotovator so the whole area had to be dug and turned over by hand. This took around 3 hours or so with 2 of us working on it. We then decided to roughly mark out where we thought beds might go to enable us to do a planting plan on paper. Important tip – make sure you have a tape measure, paper and pencil with you on site as guessing just isn’t accurate enough when it comes to drawing up a planting plan! Our first attempt (because we didn’t have a tape measure with us) was miles out necessitating completely re-doing the plan once we had properly measured up.
The first bed to be prepared would be for carrots, lettuce and sweetcorn. It actually wasn’t too difficult to dig over as there were no grass or weeds on it as a weed suppressing membrane had been placed over it. All that was required was for the area to be turned over, broken down and some good quality garden compost dug in. The approximate measurements of this bed are 3m x 1.5m.
Next job to be tackled was fencing off the whole patch as there is a substantial rabbit population on the site. We certainly didn’t want to be planting up young, tender plants only to provide a free meal for a bunch of bunnies. Fencing proved to be a weekend job. Cloddigger and Dan spent the best part of two days sinking in posts and attaching chicken wire and creating two gated access points to the plot. The picture below shows the results of their labours. Well done lads !!!
#2 - fencing around whole plot
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