alwayshopeful - your story sounds so familiar.
We've had ours for what is now our second season. We inherited a right mess, full sized plot full of twitch, docks and brambles. In our first year, we spent our time mostly clearing, we didn’t use any weed killers. We managed to get a few crops in which either died or got eaten. It was truly disheartening. We had some personal stuff go on earlier this year which pretty much wiped us out for this year as well (we let our local town council know – didn’t stop other plot holders helping themselves to all our stuff though!!) It was when the renewal came through that we had to have a proper think about it.
Being full time professionals (and at the time I was working away at least 3 nights a week, not anymore thankfully), we had to make a tough call on whether we really wanted to do it. It is very much a life style choice in my book, particularly when the rest of your lifestyle involves going to work full time and raising a family – there’s only a few hours in the day, and the spare ones tend to get booked up pretty quick!
The thing that swung it for me personally was the months we’d spent digging, weeding etc without weedkiller was back breaking to get the plot in to a not even half manageable state. As it would have all been in vain, we decided to keep it on and have a proper go at it.
We, in effect, made the plot smaller, divided up in to 7ft by 11ft beds to make it manageable, laid paths between the beds to cut down the size. I sold my daughter for a fair price on ebay and bought Roundup (seemed cheaper to buy the company) and covered the lot in weed killer to give us a head start. 6 months since we “went back”, the plot is really coming on, I’m double digging each bed, looking forward to planting some fruit bushes down the bottom end, even having a bed of roses (I quite like Bon Jovi) – it’s all about 2013, a conscious decision to just get it right now. Between now and spring, it’s an allotment re-boot. 2013 will be the one.
I now take a different approach. I’ve cancelled the gym and I take my allotment clothes to work. I go straight after work at least 2/3 nights a week. I hoe a bit, clear a bit, tidy up a bit – jut being there, cup of allotment tea etc,- making sure I balance the hard graft of digging (which after some days is an awesome tonic, some days a bind) with just chilling out. I try to spend at least one day of the weekend down there to do the “big stuff”. During lunch break at work I browse around here and work on my allotment Excel spreadsheet, making plans for 2013. When I’m driving about (I go to London quite a bit) I listen to a few podcasts – In my head, I’m “working” on my allotment even when at work.
At the end of the day, few of us actually rely on an allotment to put food on the table – it’s a leisure activity and a hobby – never lose sight of that.
I didn’t really sell my daughter btw. ;-)