Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat
Welcome => Welcome to the Forums => Topic started by: JJDigger on March 29, 2021, 14:10
-
Hello There
I have been allotment gardening for about the last three years, with some success, as long as I grew onions and spuds! My wife gave me some not-too-gentle encouragement to branch out a bit last year and this year we have a planting plan for the whole plot, the start of a proper rotation, as well as a small orchard (all on dwarf rooting stock).
A lot of Freecycled bits and pieces have helped - posts, fencing wire, pallets, waterbutts and the like. Have had to put up better fencing to keep the muntjac out. The soil is great, if a little too well drained in places, and was described to me as "boy's soil" by my elderly predecessor, who was giving up the plot owing to age. Asked what that meant, he replied "Man's soil is when the spade bounces off it!" I doubt he's stopped gardening completely, as he told me that his back garden was twice the size of what is a very large plot.
My fellow allotmenteers have been very friendly and helpful, and I thoroughly enjoy my time on my plot, which has been a real blessing this last year especially.
I think this website is superb, and look forward to joining in the Forum on a regular basis.
Best wishes to the whole community on here.
JJ
-
Hello, and welcome to the forum :)
It sounds as if you are already doing well, good luck!
-
ayreyt n welcome 't' forums.
-
Thanks Lesley and Aidy. Glad to be here!
JJ
-
Welcome to the forums :D
-
Hello and welcome from me too! :)
-
You’re very welcome here. You are quite right... it is a superb web site. :D
-
Thanks for the welcome, Yorkie, Andy and Aunt Sally.
How do you manage to put smiley faces into these messages? When I try, they just come up with :) :D :( and so on.
JJ
-
Ah, now I see! Image not activated until "post" is pressed!
-
Hi there & welcome to the chat. Sounds like you’re doing great, starting off with just a few types of veg is often a good way to go & build your confidence up. I think sometimes people get in a mess as they try too much too soon. So what’s new this year that you’re trying apart from the orchard.
-
Hi Snowdrops
Carrots, parsnips, turnips, spring onions, kohlrabi, rhubarb and salad potatoes (not tried those before as opposed to normal earlies and maincrop). A more extensive range of beans, and another try at peas, though they don't seem to do very well on our site or so we've been told. Our first experience last year bore this out, but my rather variable watering may have had something to do with that. May try bleeder hoses to help with that. Also to plant out some soft fruit bushes.
At present we have first and second early and maincrop spuds in, 62 garlic plants, 40 shallots with more to come, 300 onions about to go in, with a variety of brassicas and some courgettes, sweetcorn and squashes to come. We've cornered the market in those rapid root trainers from Haxnix which open like a book, and are good for about six years if you're careful with them. Very easy to open them and slide the young plants out to go into open ground.
I have some autumn/winter carrots which went in a bit late last year and never got thinned out, owing to a health problem which raised its head. They're still there, and a test showed thin but otherwise reasonably developed roots. Nothing to lose, so I'm going to transplant them into some waist high trugs to see how they do over the spring and summer. Not their natural growing season, but you never know.
Infrastructure-wise, we shall shortly have a fully-fenced and gated plot to keep those wretched deer out, wood-waste paths, and will be putting up a freecycled greenhouse with built in staging and a large polytunnel frame which cost me £40 second hand. It will be covered with fruit cage mesh to house the fruit bushes and some strawberries.
Phew! You wouldn't guess I've got the house to decorate and re-furb as well. Good job I'm retired. ::)
All the best and thanks for your encouragement and interest,
JJ
-
Wow that’s an impressive list, good luck with it all, good bargain hunting there too.
-
It makes a change from growing a fine crop of rosebay willow herb!
-
It makes a change from growing a fine crop of rosebay willow herb!
That’s my favourite weed :lol: :lol: :lol:
-
Hallo and welcome to this lovely forum. Mrs Bouquet
-
Thank you Mrs Bouquet. Smiled when I first saw your screen name. Funny and appropriate take on the original.
Was told rosebay willow herb was called fireweed, Auntie. It sprang up from the ashes after the Fire of London, and again on bomb sites in WWII Saw some near the only remaining part of the old Roman wall in the City of London a year or two ago. Like the history of that, but not on my plot!
JJ
-
Also called fireweed, isn't it Aunt Sally, as it sprang up everywhere in London after the Great Fire, and again on bomb sites in WWII. Looks lovely in the right setting, but not on the plot. There was some growing about a year or two ago on the bit of ground where the last remnant of the old Roman wall of Londinium is to be seen, when I did a walk round the City of London with a friend. Persistent and ubiquitous.
Thanks for your welcome, Mrs Bouquet. Appreciate the nice horticultural twist in your screen name!
-
Didn't realise that a new page had been added, Apologies for the repeated message! ::)
JJ