Anybody like to wade in and share their knowledge with someone new to allotments (but not to growing). I’ve always been lucky and had space to garden in, but obviously you can do as you please then. On an allotment, it’s not so straightforward. Especially with no sensible means of transporting things!
I’d like to build raised beds (I like having the beds and the paths separated) but I’ve previously made them out of old scaffold boards, and they were rubbish. Fell to bits after a few years. I considered half railway sleepers, and much as I would love them, I can’t really get them in (they’d be delivered on a pallet truck, which won’t get up the hill and I’ve no way to transport them up. They won’t go in my little car!) So what else is there, timber wise?
Which leads to the question of what I can get in to put down on the paths. I’d prefer a hard surface, but again, getting stuff in is an issue. In the past I’ve had woodchip, which was great for the first two years, and then made lovely compost for the weeds to grow in (all over my paths! Bind weed, too, wretched stuff) so I put landscape fabric down and we added chippings, which looked lovely, cost a fortune and are probably not really the done on the allotment. I’ve considered grass, although I dislike mowing, and there is no power. But I’d quite like to rotavate as it could do with levelling off a bit. Would I have to turf it then (I don’t really do lawns, so I’ve no clue about grass)
I’m going to buy a shed and get some help to put it up, and there are some conifers which are not to my taste that need to come out, so there will be some machinery involved there. So it would make sense to get all this basic stuff sorted while I’ve got some help around with the heavy work. I don’t mind doing it, but there’s a limit to what I can manage on my own without it taking a month of Sundays!
I’m grateful for all thoughts and input. Lovely as it is to design a plot, I’m finding it a bit of a minefield with the access issues.