The new year has been quite a challenge for the new allotment holders with extreme weather – freezing icy spells interspersed with seemingly endless rain. The plots are heavy wet clay and quite a few
The new year has been quite a challenge for the new allotment holders with extreme weather – freezing icy spells interspersed with seemingly endless rain. The plots are heavy wet clay and quite a few have been under water. Ours is not one of wettest, but we have had to straddle a huge puddle to access our storage box and replace our weed membrane covering after Storm Cristoph had done its worst.
It is fascinating to see how differently everyone is approaching their new pieces of land and some lucky people have a great deal more time to devote than others! Eight remain untouched and some are just covered, but a few are complete buildings sites of construction. I can appreciate the benefits of raised beds if you have the resources to set up, but it does seem odd that a couple of plots have completely covered every inch of the land with huge planting boxes and paving – why have an allotment at all if you are not intending to use the soil??? Just looks like a giant patio to me…but maybe they know better than I. The corner plot was very well set up, with a beautiful white greenhouse, but the winter storms soon ripped it down. I expect we shall all learn from our mistakes and hopefully help each other….
Poring over gardening books during the Christmas break and watching the repeated BBC2 “Grow your own ” series with Alan Titchmarsh kept me busy dreaming. I have always loved the ‘potager’ style kitchen gardens seen in France and at the National Botanical Garden of Wales, so that is my fantasy for our plot! Vegetables, fruit and flowers in a wondrous array teeming with pollinators and providing a fabulous habitat for insects and bees. Fortunately, I have lots of people to advise me – some of the elderly residents where I work are keen to hear about our plans and to make suggestions and I have two good friends who are real experts – thanks in advance to Carolyn in Southampton and Jim , a full-time professional gardener in West Wales! Hopefully, all these lovely people will prevent us making too many expensive mistakes. The best piece of advice so far – don’t go to the garden centres too often as it is all so tempting and so easy to spend money!
Despite the terrible weather and being back at work , we did achieve our aim for January of getting a fruit section planted out and setting up a little mini greenhouse at home to propogate seeds. In the fruit patch there is now: an Apple Fiesta tree, an Apple Red Devil tree, a vaccinium blueberry bush, a captivator gooseberry, a baldwin blackberry and laxtons redcurrant. We have a bed of 15 strawberry plants and also 15 raspberries wth their supporting wires in place – 3 different sorts of 5 each to hopefully have a little harvest from July through to October. My aim is to underplant the fruit trees and bushes with herbs and pollinators, but the wet has made that impossible so far.
In the mini greenhouse I have two Timperley rhubarb sets, some red onions, garlic and in trays seeds for aubergine, carrots, mini cucumbers and radish. We have quickly become accustomed to saving all our veg waste in a green bin to take over each week for the compost bin and are looking forward to the longer days to come as Spring gets closer.