two days, two allotments

Its been a bit of an "allotment fest" this weekend with us managing to hit both sites over both days. Before going any further, I must apologise for this post being rather photo-heavy; my excuse being that I'm feeling rather fatigued from all my efforts and so too tired to compose a proper post. Anyway, the photos pretty much speak for themselves!

a treat for me - new pair of Town and Country leather and fabric gloves. So comfy and no more cuts and stings. Pricey but definitely worth it. And no, they don't look this clean now!!!


Yesterday we went to Site 2. The fruit bed is now planted up. Against the fence are a loganberry and 2 redcurrant bushes. The rest of the bed is taken up by gooseberry bushes courtesy of Deb & Dan who popped up yesterday with them as an allotment warming present (very much appreciated). At some point we'll construct a fruit cage over the whole bed to keep the birds off the fruit.


Our Nicola potatoes have started making an appearance already! Not shown, but the first of the onion shoots have also come through and all only a week after planting.


Today we went to Site 1 and were greeted by a huge sunflower smiling down at us as we walked along the path to the plot. Cloddigger is going to harvest the seeds to keep for next year.

The Boyz flower patch is looking particularly colourful. All the plants you see here were plug plants rescued from the compost heap!

Our first pumpkin has started to grow

managed to harvest more runner beans (they just keep on coming) and the spring onion

another bed has been cleared - the remaining carrots have been lifted

So another successful couple of lottie days. We're going away for a few days to visit family so we'll be taking some of our produce with us by way of a gift. I hope they like carrots!!!!!!

not so good old Blight(y)

Disaster has struck. All our tomato plants on Site 1 have been wiped out with the dreaded 'B' - Blight. We had an email from Deb last night to say her tomatoes were diseased and thought that ours might be too. Cloddigger hot footed it up there today after work to find that all our tomato plants had been infected. Nothing for it but to pull them up and remove the plants for burning. We couldn't believe how quickly it had taken hold as there were no evident signs of blight on Saturday.

Looking at a neighbouring plot, Cloddigger could see that their potatoes have been infected. Luckily our last batch of salad potatoes had been spared so these have now all been lifted. We're not taking any chances though, the potato plants will also be burned.

I guess it was pretty inevitable that we would feel some effects as the weather conditions have been perfect for encouraging the disease. I think we will be cautious about planting up tomatoes at Site 2 and just stick with growing them in the greenhouse at home where there is more control over the climatic conditions.

magic beans?

We had rather a lot of runner beans off Site 1 this weekend so I thought I should prepare some for freezing. While doing so, I came across a very large, mature pod which was far too tough to eat so I decided to remove the beans to see if they could be dried and stored for next year.

When I took them out of the pod I was surprised at just how shiny and colourful they were. They almost look magical and put me in mind of how Jack must have felt when he exchanged the family cow for a handful of "magic" beans.

If they do produce plants next year, then they truly will be magic !!!

meanwhile, back on Site 1

It's been awhile since I've posted any updates about Site 1. Rest assured, we haven't abandoned our efforts there. In fact we've been busy harvesting and most stuff seems to be doing really well.

All the potatoes from the main barrow have been lifted, as have the onions. The carrots are still going strong and are now starting to be quite big. The taste of them is amazing - having never grown carrots before, we can't get over how much better they taste compared to shop-bought ones which are insipid in comparison.

The runner beans are consistently providing plenty of pods each visit and I'm having to now freeze them as we are in danger of glut.

sweetcorn are doing very well. Lots of cobs which should be ready to begin picking by the end of the month


the cauliflower have started to develop


a little sad that the potato barrow is now empty and onions all lifted as this signifies the start of the gradual "closing down" of our section of Deb and Dan's plot

some of the many onions harvested - now hanging up to dry in the greenhouse at home

still plenty to pick in the coming weeks

the fruits (veg) of our labour

Fabuloso - we're now starting to bring home fresh veggies on a regular basis. It is exciting that we've been so successful in our first season as allotmenteers.

peas and tender baby carrots


some of the 8+ kilos of potatoes harvested so far - there's plenty more to come!


the sweetcorn is starting to produce cobs. Roll on late August / early September when they'll be ready for picking - yum, yum !!!

spud u like?

Cloddigger harvested the first of the homegrown potatoes this weekend. These have been grown in bags on our sheltered decking at home. They were planted up in March and are Maris Piper (we think - Cloddigger "lost" the plant marker!!!) Anyway, regardless of the variety, I'm looking forward to having these with dinner tonight served simply, steaming hot with a knob of butter melting over the top; yum, yum!



Meanwhile, at Site 1 the potatoes in the long barrow are doing really well. I think we will leave them for another couple of weeks before we dig up the first batch - there are still 3 bags growing at home so we are in no rush to disturb these beauties.



Final note on potatoes - the photo below shows our short barrow of salad potatoes planted up about 3 weeks ago. These were excess seed potatoes from my sister-in-law; cheers Lindsey, we're very much looking forward to eating them when they're ready.

I am a mole and I live in a hole

We arrived at Site 1 yesterday afternoon to find a strange mound cutting diagonally across the main bed. We had been visited by a mole. On closer examination it didn't look as if it had surfaced anywhere so we can only assume it had been passing through.

Luckily it's path mostly went across an area where nothing has yet been planted although a couple of young cauliflower were damaged and one of the jerusalem artichoke was dislodged. We've taken the artichoke back home to nurse it hopefully back to full health in the greenhouse.

In the picture below you can clearly see the mole's route from bottom left, where it just bypassed the broccoli, up towards the artichoke.

blooming lovely!

It's been quite a while since my last post but, as you can see from the picture below, we've been rather busy at Site 1. After a rather shaky start, the lettuce are now well established and growing well. Potatoes are going mad, as are the onions. The beans and peas are finally starting to spread outwards and upwards. We've also planted up some cauliflower and jerusalem artichoke - which is new one for us so it will be interesting to see how they turn out.

click image for full size

learning the hard way

Because allotmenting (is that a real word?) is so new to us, we tend to get very excited about the smallest amounts of growth in the plants and I've taken to recording this achievement on a weekly basis by taking photos of everything. I then upload these on the laptop at home and compare this week's photos with last week's (how sad am I?)

Last weekend I was a bit puzzled. Potatoes are going great guns, as are the onions, beans, peas, carrots (so much so they needed strict thinning out), even the sweetcorn and spring onion both of which were only planted a week before. However, the lettuce were looking very sad indeed. They had been in 3 weeks now and didn't appear to have grown a millimetre - very strange. We had been very careful with their treatment; well nourished bed, fleecy cloches to protect from the wind and frost, regular watering. It just didn't add up.

Anyhow, Cloddigger decided to consult our allotment guru (Deb) who was able to reveal that lettuce are "top feeders" - I thought this applied to marine life, but anyway - therefore spread their roots just under the surface of the soil rather than sending down a big tap root. The penny dropped.

When we planted them up we had kept them in their little cardboard blankets to, so we thought, give them a bit more protection. All we'd actually done was effectively bonsai them, DOH!

So BIG lesson learned there. Will make sure that the next batch of lettuce are extracted from the cardboard tubes before committing them to the soil.

Ah well, its all a learning curve.

"Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence" (Abigail Adams, 1780)

paving the way

We had set out mud paths between the beds but hadn’t put anything down to cover the surface. We had considered getting some hard wearing membrane to put down but, by a stroke of sheer luck, the owners of a neighbouring allotment had taken delivery of a truck load of wood chippings for their chicken coop. There was laurel mixed in at the bottom of the pile which is not suitable for use with livestock, so they kindly said that we could take what they couldn’t use in order to cover the pathways.

This worked out really well as we had enough to cover the paths in our section as well as Deb and Dan’s paths so the whole allotment now has lovely wood chip paving.

#9 – newly laid wood chipping pathways really tidy up the appearance round the beds

lettuce hope something grows

At home in the greenhouse (aka the conservatory!) we have been propagating seeds and bringing on plants before planting them up. We had over-sown lettuce thinking that they wouldn’t all germinate and ended up with loads of seedling lettuce. They looked ready to plant out so we decided that we’d plant some up in vegetable bags on our decking at home and plant the rest on the allotment.

We prepared the lettuce bed by digging out trenches and filling them with well rotted garden compost before transferring the young plants into the ground. We had brought them on in cardboard tubes found in the centre of toilet paper rolls – not only does this reduce cost but is a great way to recycle the cardboard (which The Council does not accept in its recycling boxes). Each lettuce was kept in its cardboard tube when planted into the ground to protect the roots from damage and frost. The cardboard will soon rot down into the soil so there shouldn’t be any worries about the roots not spreading.

As our plot is rather windy and exposed to the elements, I decided that the lettuce needed a little extra protection so I installed some bamboo arches (cheap to buy from local hardware store: 3 for 99p) and covered them in garden fleece creating a warm cloche. The fleece will allow moisture to get through so that the plants don’t dry out while protecting the young plants from the worst of the wind and cold.

#7 – lettuce planted and bamboo arches installed


#8 – garden fleece finishes off the protective cloches

pest control

I spoke previously about the need to fence around the whole allotment in order to keep out rabbits. This has so far proved effective against ground attacks from predators, so the next step was to pre-empt any air strikes. Looking round at neighbouring allotments, we could see that a variety of different devices are in use from traditional scarecrows, to bottles on sticks, to old CDs on string. Deb had plans for creating funky spinning windmills out of old drinks cans which she passed on to Cloddigger who duly spent a couple of evenings with a pile of cans from the recycling box, some wire and a pair of tin snips. The end results have been eye catching and very effective as well as prompting admiring comments from fellow allotment holders.

#6 – drinks can bird scarer

planting up

With all our area dug over, grass and weeds removed we were ready to begin planting! This was a very exciting time as it felt like we were about to do something real and creative. First off, we created a long mound in which to plant the potatoes. Beside this we planted several onion varieties and then sowed the carrots.

Bear in mind that we are complete novices at growing vegetables, especially in an allotment setting, so we invested in an extremely useful and easy to read publication: “Practical Allotment Gardening” by Caroline Foley (available on Amazon http://www.amazon.co.uk/Practical-Allotment-Gardening-Caroline-Foley/dp/1845172523/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1241554268&sr=8-1 ). As newbies to allotment gardening this is an ideal read full of practical advice and great projects. No doubt our library of allotment books will grow through time, but this particular one is likely to become well-thumbed as we use it time and time again.

#3 - potato "barrow" with onion bed to the left. A sun flower is planted at the head of the barrow.


#4 - carrot bed fully prepared and ready for planting up


#5 - a view of complete area dug over and paths set out

dig dig dig dig dig dig dig, we dig the whole day through*

* inspired by the “Dig Dig Dig Song” from Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

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

a seed of an idea

So where to begin? Well, for some considerable time Cloddigger and I had been talking about 'getting an allotment' (since before the period known as "Credit Crunch") and had put our names down with our local council to go on the waiting list.

So we waited, and waited and waited. Phoned "The Council" (can't name and shame cos I still want our bins emptied with regularity) and eventually got put through to the right department only to by told "The management of The Council's allotments is undertaken by a 3rd party". Thereafter was given contact details of said 3rd party but couldn't make contact, grrrrrr!

Fast forward 18 months and the 'getting an allotment' conversation came up again. This time, fortuitously, it was held with a colleague of Cloddigger's who said "we have an allotment which we're struggling to manage, if you help us dig it over and give us a hand to put up some fencing, you can have a section to use for yourselves". So that was it - in March 2009 we took on a small section of Deb and Dan's allotment.

#1 - our first view of our bit of the allotment (click on image for more detail)