The Allotment
After arriving down here from London over 3 years ago we decided to take on an allotment - only one - we ended up with two large ones!
As each year has come and gone we have got to grips with the land and get a little more experienced. We have had quite a few disasters but also quite a few triumphs! This year we are proud to say we have not used one slug pellet, but there have been times when we nearly did. I use plastic bottle cloches a lot and this year experimented with seaweed around young seedlings, which worked really well. For fertilisers we use seaweed home made compost and manure. We managed to order some manure this year before the Foot and Mouth fiasco set in.
This, together with crop rotations have produced some excellent vegetables. I have set up 5 compost bins for kitchens waste, weeds etc with the odd layer of comfrey which is brilliant as it can be cut up to 5 times a season. We put it around plants especially tomato plants as it has a high potash content. You can also make a liquid feed which when diluted down is excellent. I tried, but haven‘t got this one together very successfully this year. Oh well, next year!
We managed to sow a lot of things in succession this year which have been profitable, although the broad beans sown in November were caught up by the ones sown in March. I frantically picked, blanched and froze in that early amazing hot spell, hardly getting to eat any fresh ones.
A few of our cabbages have actually made hearts, astonishing,as we are none too clever with cabbages. One of our big successes last year were cucumbers and Romanesque (a bit like a cauliflower) very delicious.
This year we have had a fair crop of cucumbers and we wait in anticipation for the Romanesque. Our leeks, Brussel sprouts and purple and white sprouting broccoli are in for the winter. Actually the purple sprouting could possibly be curly kale as a neighbour o n another allotment gave us some small plants! They are a friendly crowd up at the allotments and are always encouraging. We found this a great help when we first started. We now grow a lot of our vegetables in raised beds with boards around or heaped up slightly around the edges. We make them about 4 feet wide so we don‘t have to dig at all in between crops, just pop in the next one. This season has been really enjoyable with lots to eat although there is always something that needs doing. I think I‘ll make another compost bin...you can‘t have too many.