2021 PHOTO SELECTION

 

2020 LOCKDOWN SEEDLINGS

So with everything ready we started sowing seeds in February, and the house became a bit of a nursery. 

We decided to grow far more seedlings than we actually needed a) because we had lots of seeds, and b) because of the Covid crisis. With food supplies under pressure we thought that our neighbours might appreciate the opportunity to grow their own, and we were able to donate lots of tomato, chilli and courgettes seedlings.

Of course once these were potted out space (and sunlight) were at a premium:

When the weather got a bit warmer the plants could be left outside in the back garden, but they had to be brought indoors at night to avoid the cold.

This year's tomatoes selection were Radiator Charlie's Mortgage Lifter (an old favourite), the pretty unbeatable, super sweet cherry 'Sungold', Kaleidoscope Jewel, Marmande, Cherola F1, and an old favourite of mine, Radiator Charlie's Mortgage Lifter.

I'll write a report about which were successes, and which weren't, soon.

Allotment Revamp News!

So what's been happening in the five years since my last post?

Well, back in 2012 we took on a plot that looked like this:

And after a tidy up it looked like this:

But this summer it looked like this:

So, what happened?

Well, keeping the plot going has been a real struggle over the last few years. Weeds seemed to grow at ten time the speed of anything we wanted to grow, trees shaded half of the allotment for much of the day, and the soil seemed bereft of nutrients and organic matter. Each year we'd add some compost, but nothing really seemed to help. 

As a family we have been lucky enough to get away for a couple of weeks in April and August each year (pre Covid), but on our post holiday return to the allotment weeds seemed to have taken over (particularly post Easter), and in August the crops had either bolted or dried up through lack of water, and previously well pruned tomato plants had collapsed into a tangled heap, with tomatoes rotting away on the ground. 

It was all quite demoralising, to the point where for the last couple of years I considered giving up our plot.

Fortunately Lucy encouraged me to keep going, and in October 2019 we devised a plan! We'd start afresh by taking up the by now rotten planks that made up the raised beds, and by designing a new plot, one with smaller, but more manageable, raised beds. We also decided to build some more composters to replace this one:

I found enough discarded pallets in my local area.

Next I paid a paved area outside the shed, on what had previously been a mud bath.

I ended up building thirteen raised beds, after dismantling the old ones:

Turf between the raised beds was the finishing touch, and the developing covid crisis and the imposition of lockdown meant the allotment became somewhere to legally escape to in difficult times.