Wonderfull, now I have somewhere to ramble on without sounding like a nutter! There are a few folk who think I'm a bit sad having a lotty, all I'll say on this is that while they're eating they're imported lettice costing 69p and having very little in the way of taste, I'm tucking into mine picked fresh from the garden this morning. The rest of the contents of my salad, peppers, carrots and onions will follow very soon.
A little history. Over the past few years I've become more and more interested in the idea of being self sufficient, not just in a food sence but also water, powder etc. Consequently I decided to build some small raised beds in the garden and try to get a bit of a kitchen garden going. I bough a few propagators from the pound shop and some seeds and gradually fill the conservatory with seedlings. It soon became apparent that there wouldn't be enough space to grow all of this in 3x 1.2m square beds. So I finally decided to call in at the local allotments and see if they had one free. I'd been meaning to do this for the past couple of years but had never got round to it. Fortunately they had one free so I snapped it up without thinking too much about how we'd clear it. That was when I came across this site while looking for advise on how to clear and prepare it all. This was back in March this year.
We started out with the notion that digging by hand would be best, wanting to be organic and all that. Our plot is 86 ft by 30 ft and covered in weeds and grass. So we made a start and skimmed and dug about 15ft in built some raised beds from some old wood and planted some tattie and onoins. Looking up the remaining 71ft of digging left to do and 2 composters full of turf, we decided that a dose of round-up and a rotovator might be a more sensible option as we wanted to plant things this year.
Whilst waiting for the weeds to die we aquired a greenhouse, built a sand pit for the young one to keep her interested, she's only 2 but absolutely loves it down there and tidied up a bit.
We were wondering up there last week and one of the old boys steps out and says "you can borrrow me rotovator you know if you want" word spreads fast when you need help! So I says "I'll take you up on that offer". So it's all arranged for Sat morning and you can see peoples faces...they obviouslt know something I don't. Well you should have seen the size of it! The grin on the old boys face as he's driving it over to me Sat morning. I was just expecting one of those little tillers. This had tractor wheels driving it. The missis was weein her pants. Anyway, I showed them how it was done, but boy did I pay for it on Sunday.
So it's the last week in May now and I've finally finished panicking about getting stuff in. We'll plant what we can and see what grows I guess.
Current stock inlcudesPotatoes 1st earlies
Pototoes main crop desress
Onoins stuttgart
Beatroot
Carrots
Tomatoes beafsteaks
Chillies load of!
Courcettes
Still to plantPea
Broad beans
French climbing beans
Corn
Fennel
Fruit - not sure how much we can afford this year.
Thats it really. Any questions on our experience so far just ask.
On a final note, stop thinking about it and get yourself an allotment. It's fun, cheap, great for the kids, the people are friendly and can't help enough.
Will writw more later.
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