Allotment, March 2015.

I have had my allotment for a few years now. It started as a piece of wasteland, covered in nettles and couch grass and over the years it has become a proper vegetable patch. Some years it gives us plenty of fruit and veg. Other years it ticks by. Last year was a quiet year. The weather was grim and I wasn't inspired. This year though, is different. Having had a year of keeping the allotment tidy and ticking over I plan on growing lots. The thing with allotments is that they take a lot of work. Little and often is a good idea.

allotment

 Since I started with my allotment it has been interesting to see people come and go. Of the 12 plots on our site there are only 5 of us who have kept going. Four of the allotment holders have been there longer than me and the other seven plots have been taken over and given up several times over the last few years.

rhubarb, garlic and fruit bushes

 If you start an allotment you need to realise that its a long term commitment... Once the initial enthusiasm has worn off you need to keep plodding along. You never stop learning and some years are better than others.

onions

I went up there a couple of times last week, planting garlic and onions. I have Charlotte potatoes chitting in my kitchen, ready to plant this week. I love having everything neat and tidy and there's nothing better than having veg fresh from the ground.

When the weather gets warmer I shall plant pak choy, lettuce and beetroot, as well as French beans and cabbages. I shall start reading through my books too, to give me ideas as to what I might fancy trying to grow this year.

At the moment my rhubarb is starting to sprout... All is good!!

rhubarb

How do you know when sweetcorn is ripe?

Someone asked me the other day ... what do you do to relax? My answer was that I go to my allotment and I dig. If you had told me 5 years ago that my idea of relaxation would be digging manure into soil or shoring up Brussels Sprouts I would have laughed at you!

I have fallen into my allotment.Well, when I say that I've fallen into it, I mean I started it accidentally. I still wonder now - what on earth am I doing planting potatoes and building fruit cages? Who knew that growing fruit and vegetables could be so enjoyable? And I have learnt so much.

I know how to dig. I know how to set leeks and I know when sweet corn is ripe enough to pick. I know that you don't plant 35 lettuce seedlings on the same day, unless you plan on eating a heck of a lot of salad a few weeks later as they will all be ready at the same time!

There is a sweet logic about growing vegetables. You plant, you weed. you harvest, you dig over and then you start again. There is something so satisfying about seeing a plant grow strong  and tall, then bare fruit. And I love making sure that the earth around them is clear and weed free - deep chocolate brown and rich in nutrients.

My latest discovery is sweetcorn. I grew them and they bore lots of cobs. But I wondered ... how do you know when they are ready to eat?? Do you peel back the leaves? What do you do?

Well ... each kernel has a little filament attached to it and when the cob is ripe and ready to eat they all turn brown like the photo above. Inside the leaves the kernels are sweet and yellow and the filaments creamy, but at the sharp end of the cob they are dark brown and shrivelled. Cue butter and melty sweet goodness!!

The season is coming to an end. Soon all of the green you see above will be in my compost bin. I will cover my raised beds with weed mesh and just keep a few things going over winter. In October I will plant garlic and onions which will be ready next summer.

We have had meals this year where all of our veg have been grown on the vegetable patch ... potatoes, lettuce, beetroot, French beans, broad beans, cabbage, cucumber, courgette, marrow ... although not usually on the same plate at the same time ...

Now Autumn is drawing in and when the frosts come I won't be doing any digging, but I still love to go up there, just to have a little look ...

And you never know ... before long the garden might look like this again ...

Summer on the Vegetable Patch.

I am sad tonight. But I am not going to bore you with the ongoing saga of teenage bolshiness. Instead I am going to bore you with share with you some news of my vegetable patch. There you go.

We are currently bathing in the delicious warmth of a summer sun I thought had gone away forever. With the grey skies and cold temperatures banished for now my allotment is waking up and beginning to flourish.

Not long ago the earth was hard and cold, hostile to seeds and seemingly sterile. With the glorious summer weather the soil has turned to rich, warm chocolate that nurtures new plants and smells of happiness. I tell my husband that I have to go down there to water or weed or plant. I guiltily make it sound like a chore ... but really its a joy. The vegetable patch is the place I go to be alone with the sun and the breeze and the birds and the bees.

Especially the bees ... how many types are there? There seem to be so many. Just behind my compost heap is a bees nest now. I don't know what type of bees, but they live in the mound, bumbling in and out of tiny tunnels and buzzing drunkenly to the raspberry flowers, oblivious to everything but their love of nectar.

I have learnt so much this year so far. I bought a pot of leeks from the garden centre, planted them, but realised something was wrong. Having spoken to my allotment angel Len I learnt how to set them. (That is a technical term I like to drop into a conversation ... setting seeds, setting leeks ... ) 

I dug up the big clumps, separated them and then pinched out the roots and stems. Then I laid them out as you can see above. With my dibber I made a hole, held the leek in it, poured water onto the earth around and there it was, bobs your uncle, planted.

The scent of leeks ... oniony and rich was delicious. I can't wait for the time when they will emerge from my oven, bubbling in a cheesy sauce, sweet and tasty.

One of the clever things Len has taught me this year is how to make a cheap frame for my netting. He looked at my neat, garden centre bought hoops that cost a fortune and suggested canes and hose pipe ... I tried it for my Brussel Sprouts ...

In the net tent above I didn't have enough netting to create a box shape, but the canes still allow for a much higher enclosure than hoops. This gives the plants more room to grow. You just use a short length of hose pipe to connect canes as you can see above. Its so very simple!!

Autumn Gold raspberry ... yellow when ripe ... sweet & delicious.

red currants

Everything is starting to look tasty. My fruit bushes are heavy with jewel-like redcurrants and raspberries and the gooseberries and blackcurrants are starting to emerge shyly from the foliage.

Lettuces and courgettes are green and succulent, while my sweet corn and butternut squash are just beginning to wake up and think about putting on a show...

As I said, going to my allotment gives me peace and time to think. There is something about dipping my watering can into the trough again and again, plodding up and down the grassy path to water my plants, that gives me great satisfaction. I took my son down there the other afternoon and we worked together watering and weeding. It was wonderful. I cherish moments like that. I just wish they came more often.

My Little English Garden ...

When I was a little girl the garden meant nothing to me. At least, when I say nothing I mean that the upkeep and general hard work of a garden meant nothing to me. When I complained of having nothing to do my mum would offer me the chance to do the weeding ... a chance I always declined.

Our garden was big and sloping, dotted with fruit trees that gave us heavenly apples, pears and plums each year, with the the top of the garden hidden away from the house by a screen of trees. Behind those trees was my favourite part of the garden ... at the end of a narrow, shady pathway lay a secret vegetable patch.

I remember lazy days alone in that secret garden, making stables from long, dried grass for my toy horses and lying under the fruit bushes sucking the sweet insides of gooseberries until my tummy was full and my fingers sticky. My imagination ran wild up there and in my memory it was always summer ...

That garden is gone now, bulldozed to make a swimming pool the long hot summer of 1976. Our garden was still lovely, with the added bonus of free swimming every day, but it had lost its magical quality.

I forgot about gardens for a long time. They were the haunt of old people and I did not understand the complexities of planting or weeding... And yet that garden of my childhood was always there at the back of my mind ... the secret club house in the depths of the laurel tree, the golden rod, alive with bees, and, of course, that vegetable garden, now buried under tons of white, chalky soil.

It may be because I am heading towards being an "old" person, or it may be that I am trying to recreate the feeling of calm and beauty that the garden of my childhood gave me. Whatever the reason, gardening fills my life more and more... whether its my postage stamp of a back garden or my allotment, my time at both is time spent happily.

I am not a brilliant gardener, but I read and listen to people who are good gardeners and, as if by magic, plants grow. There is nothing more beautiful than to sit in my garden on a balmy evening, glass of wine in hand, nibbles in a bowl, watching the blackbird hopping about the wet grass searching for worms.

I love the butterflies on my buddleia and the bees around the lavender ...

Its difficult to put into words, but if you are a gardener you will know ... There is order and tranquility and a feeling that everything is right with the world.

My allotment before ... and after.

Its been a little while since I talked about my allotment on here. Some of you may be relieved about that ... However, I think the time has come to shake the mud from my gardening gloves and do a little bit of typing so that you can see how its coming along.For those of you who are not into gardening, allotments, vegetables ... well, what's wrong with you??? Pull up a chair, pour yourself a glass of wine/ cup of tea and prepare either to doze off or ... well, probably just prepare to doze off really.

Just to remind you, if you haven't been here before, or if you had forgotten, this is what the allotment plot looked like when I took my husband to see it in August 2010. Needless to say, he thought I had lost my mind.

I, however, had a picture in my mind of how I wanted it to look and we are beginning to get there. 

We started by chopping everything down as far as we could. Then we covered it so that the couch grass and nettles died down. When that was done we slowly began to dig over the plot in small sections.

That first year I really didn't think we would be able to grow anything, but we did. The other allotment holders were wonderfully supportive and generous and before long I had been given Autumn fruiting raspberries, blackcurrants, strawberries and lettuces. An elderly gent, L, who has spent his whole life in the countryside and who could definitely be called a rough diamond/rogue has adopted me and without him I would be way behind where I am. He and I spend the happiest afternoons together, digging, chatting, planting ...

Last year the season was dreadful and hardly anything grew. I lost a bit of impetus really. But this year? This year I have renewed enthusiasm!!

This is what the allotment looks like today ...

This photo was taken from the same spot as that first one. We, well, my husband, has made raised beds and we have put down weed mesh and gravel pathways. You can see in the foreground my herb and rhubarb bed. On the left of that I have leeks and cucumbers.

Behind that bed is one with beetroot, lettuce and more leeks, all interspersed with French Marigolds.

On my big flat bed I am growing summer cabbages under netting. I have sussed how to net my produce this year! In previous years it has been somewhat disastrous!! Around the top sides of the plot are my fruit bushes. The pigeons tend to come and sit on the branches if you're not careful so I spent a lovely afternoon creating a Heath Robinson-like netting cage to protect redcurrants, gooseberries, blackcurrants.

The top edge of the plot is full of raspberry canes. I have Autumn fruiting ones which are yellow when ripe and beautifully sweet. There are also Summer fruiting which I put in last year.

This long bed has strawberries growing down its side, but will soon be full of climbing French beans which are currently in my little stand up green house at home. In the background you can see my blue water butt which will soon be full of liquid feed. My lovely L ( my gardening guru) has told me to get a little bit of horse manure or maybe some chopped up rhubarb leaf in a netting bag suspended in the water and liquid feed will ensue!

Here you can see my summer raspberries and then in the earth I have planted Charlotte potatoes. I am hugely late with these, but they will either grow ... or not!! In the netting are my Brussels Sprouts, again given to me so kindly by another allotment holder. Hopefully we will be able to eat them this Christmas!

This is the view from my raspberries with sprouts on the left, cabbages on the right. The first bed on the left has a courgette plant, as does the second bed, this time donated by my lovely sister-in-law. At the end is a bed with a marrow plant and a butternut squash.

From here you can see my courgettes on the right and marrow on the left. Both will grow massively soon ... I hope!! On the left you can just see my composter, made from pallets I got for free from a timber yard.

When we first got the allotment there was so much rubbish to dig out, amongst which was this old broken wheelbarrow. This year I have filled it with compost and planted nasturtiums. I plan to add salad leaves too.

I cannot tell you how much I love being down there. Spending an afternoon alone with my veg with only the sun, the breeze and the birds for company is wonderful. Some days I get down there and the lovely L is there doing some weeding, some digging. He is over 80 now, but the most amazing man - so interesting, so full of knowledge. We often work alongside, bantering together.

If you had said to me 5 years ago that I would have an allotment I would have laughed at you. It always seemed the realm of old people!! Maybe I am getting old ...

But there is something magical about turning a neglected and rubbish strewn plot of weeds into a thriving vegetable garden. I started knowing next to nothing and I still have so much to learn, but every day, every season I learn more and more. I still can't quite believe that I can actually grow things to eat!! I just wish my house looked as neat!!