About 3 weeks ago we took My Folks up to have a look round our bit of the allotment and to have a look at the set up of the site. They seemed quite impressed; so much so that it set them thinking. A couple of days later I had a phone call from them saying that they had found that there were some vacant plots on the allotment site near them and would we be interested. So, we arranged a visit a few days later and found a half plot which needs a reasonable amount of work to get it up together ready for use but nothing that the 4 of us can't handle.
My Folks said they would make enquiries and as it was the start of a bank holiday weekend we thought we wouldn't hear anything for some time. Well, surprise, surprise a couple of days later had a phone call to say that the plot was ours!!! Wow - couldn't believe how quickly this had happened.
That next weekend we descended on the new plot (I'm calling it "Site 2") armed with tape measure, paper, pencil and camera to begin planning out what to do with it. This is what we're faced with:
#10 - Site 2 is approx. 12m x 11m and hasn't been worked for some time
#11 - the view from the rear of the plot is superb (shame about the waist-high weeds!)
#12 - existing compost bins will be moved to free up space by shed
So the plan of action is to strim down the worst of the grass and weeds before killing them off and rotovating the whole lot. Luckily one of the chaps on site has a heavy duty rotovator and is happy to go over the site for us. Once this first pass has been made, we (there it is again - the royal 'we' !) can go over it with a smaller, finer rotovator to break the soil down a bit more. At that point we should be able to begin planning where beds will go and how the plot will be divided between us.
Cloddigger also had a conversation with Deb and Dan about our original plot ("Site 1") to reassure them that we will continue up there for the foreseeable future as we would really like to see at least one success harvest from there.
We're looking forward to working Site 2 with My Folks. They have been growing veg and plants in their home garden for many years now, so I think they will have a lot of knowledge which we can tap into and learn from. I think we're all in agreement that we'll take our time fixing and preparing the site and accept that we may not get much done in the way of planting this year. It will also be interesting to experience the different challenges the two sites throw at us over the coming months.
Watch this space ...
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