Winter Project Starts
Day 1.
Good evening (as I write this) to you all. At the start of these allotment diaries in my introductory post, I mentioned that we had just acquired the half plot next to our original plot. The previous owner of that plot had a tough time keeping on top of it. There was a fair bit of weed growth throughout the plot, but by no means the worst condition I have seen plots get into by a long way. Taking on a new plot or an additional plot is a big undertaking, so it's going to keep us busy for the winter months.
Having said that, I've kind of gone at it like a bull in a china shop 😂. During the week, I had the chance to get myself down to the local timber yard and buy all the timber edging that I would need to start bringing some order to the plot. Like we did on the current plot, then plan is to adopt the shape of the incumbent beds rather that reinventing the wheel. It means significantly less digging and no need to establish new grass paths. That said, like we've done on the first plot, I wanted to make that space more manageable.
First thing up was to put edging around both beds. The front bed was fairly straight forwards. 100mm high edging all the way around. Some people prefer just a traditional cut grass edge to their beds, but I always find it takes twice as long to mow and keep tidy. With a hard edge all the way around, it takes only moments to walk around with a strimmer and keep the edges nice and tidy. The back bed wasn't quite so straight forwards though.
The thing with our allotment site is that it is positioned on a slight slope. In itself, not a problem, and actually it can be favourable. It means that even during the heaviest of rain, we don't have surface water that hangs around for long. But, it does mean that if you should ever need a piece of flat ground for say a shed, or a polytunnel, then you have some work to do. We have three options. You can dig down on the upslope side until you get to the level of the downslope side (finding room for all the spoil as you go) or, build up the downslope side until you reach the level of the upslope side. But the option I have gone with is a bit of both. Rather than using the 100mm edging on the downslope side, I used some reclaimed scaffold boards to build a small wall against which I could level out the bed by pulling soil towards it. These scaffold boards won't last for ever, but they should be OK for a couple of years and I'm hoping that when it comes to replacing them, they won't take much to lift and shift.
With all the wood work done, but the urge to go home still yet to take hold, I needed something else to do. A couple of months ago, while walking around a garden centre I was lured in to buying some very late seed potatoes with the sales pitch claiming that I could have freshly harvested potatoes for Christmas! The great potato experiment begun. Then a couple of months later, the great potato experiment came to a short sharp end. What all seemed full of promise with plenty of green growth and even some flowers appearing soon turned into a collapsed mess of half dead plants which quickly rotted. I thought nothing of it and just left them. At the end of day 1 though, before heading for home, I decided it was worth turning over the 7 buckets. The compost in the spud buckets is now over 2 years old, and past it's best, so I just emptied them out onto the back bed. Surprisingly, there were potatoes to be found. All small, and some just starting to rot thanks to the recent weeks of very bad weather. But potatoes nevertheless and a little bonus crop that could easily have been left to totally rot away.
Day 2.
Day 2 was a shorter day. Armed with some longer screws to help secure the scaffold boards to the wooden pegs driven into the ground, I set about finishing the work from the day before. And that initially was all I intended to do for the day. The only thing was that during day 1, we also received a new delivery of digestate compost on the site, and people were getting stuck into it left right and centre. At that point though, I wasn't quite ready for it. All the edging had been completed, but the front bed needed to be split into 5 smaller, more manageable beds before putting down the mulch and covering everything up for winter. Oh well, time to roll the sleeves up and best I start making some beds then.
On the original plot, we created the smaller beds by laying a strip of weed membrane around 550mm wide along the width of the main bed, and laying some reclaimed paving slabs along them. I've used the same principle on the new section of plot to divide the front bed up into 5 smaller beds, keeping the very front of the plot free for other use. The weather has been incredibly windy this weekend, so trying to cut 3 meter long strips of weed membrane in gale force winds is challenging. But it is possible! With everything cut and laid, it was time to bring in the digestate compost. All 10 wheel barrows of it.
Finally, to round the weekend off I pulled out a small harvest. The first parsnips of the year - one of which was a monster! Sneakily meanwhile, in the cauli bed, one of my late season plants had produced a head and was just right for harvest. Along with a couple of carrots from the bath, they came home for Sunday dinner.
That's it for this one. There is so much to do as always on the plot so check back again soon to find out what we get up to next. Cheers!
