When we gave up our last allotment, it seemed like we were giving away a whole life experience, but the truth was that we really couldn't cope with all the work to grow so much stuff, which we then gave away to all our chums!
Now we just have about ten square yards of vegetables and soft fruit at home, a full greenhouse, a place for sweet peas and runner beans and my pride and joy, a 'desktop' garden, which is really just a raised wooden platform, waist-height, on which I grow all the carrots, spring onions, beetroot, lettuce leaves etc., that we need! Watering is a doddle, weeding is non-existent and picking the stuff just means a quick trip out the back and in the kitchen within a minute!
I do miss the joy of seeing a newly-dug patch, the first earlies peeping though, five yards of runner beans and some rarer stuff like artichokes coming along, but something has to give really...