So, I have an allotment. Hooray! It's about 11x6m, so not huge, but plenty big enough for us at Damned Towers.
We got it in 2020 but there were some issues, namely:
- it was a temporary allocation - this was in fairness to new people moving into the town, so we didn't want to invest loads.
- the ground was a dumping ground and parking space for heavy machinery during build phase of the town.
This means it was *truly* compacted soil from about 2 feet down (consultants confirmed). From about October, the site flooded - and stayed that way until April/May ish. We moved our compost heap to the car park area to preserve what we could as the council promised us the site would be deep ripped in 2021.
Honestly though, it's not so bad. The soil is clay with lots of stones and rocks. That sounds bad but clay is good here - it gets hot and dry (we hit 41 degrees I think in 2020?), but clay hangs on to moisture extremely well. It's also fairly fertile - there is an abundance of weeds across 60 percent of the plot. The other bit is even more stony and... Dead. No matter.
Here is how it looked in early July 2020. I'd love to say we weeded that clear brown bit, but that's the dead bit!
We had lots of beautiful green pumpkins, lovely sweetcorn, beans and tomatoes. Lots of bagged manure was purchased, about 15-20 bags, but it did good. The row of spuds got very little - just a few spadefuls - we were not expecting much but they did pretty well, cementing my opinion the soil was good, despite being heavy clay.
2021 - nothing happened really. The council arranged to have it bulldozed and "deep ripped". This means basically dragging a big scoop a few feet below the surface to ease the compaction.
2022 and the work is done. I threw a lot of green manure seed in winter to try to get some life, it sort of worked. This week, I took time off and we managed to use our rescued compost heap and 8 bags of manure to do this (plus 2 bags of wood chip!).
In the tunnel thing is some red cabbage, broad beans and a handful of peas to make up the space (for pea shoots). I have bark paths around the beds, about 1m x 1.5ish metre in the pallet collar things, and a bit longer for the others not in a collar. Fine for salads and stuff. They are surrounded by a bark path.
So this side is no-dig this year, mostly, sort of. I have only enough compost and money for that.
Then the other side will have some dug beds to get some things growing. 2 rows of spuds (1 main crop, 1 second early), a giant pumpkin for the kid, another bed with a few green Italian pumpkin plants, some peppers in the ground and tomatoes/tomatillos.
Feeling quite proud. It's a big ol project, but saving home made compost is totally worth it. It's already filled 2 small beds and topped up a third (both pallet collars have about 15cm home made compost). Super cool.
Hopefully I'll be posting another update in a few weeks, when modules of beetroot, onion, bunching onion and radishes go out.
Comments
I’ve tried composting before and really enjoyed reducing my waste so we just got a proper one sorted today.
Honestly, composting rocks.
I love that I have several barrowfulls of delicious soil food that came from vegetable peelings, weeds, coffee grounds, shredded receipts and bills, torn up amazon parcels and more.
They vary depending on where you are. I have a colleague who has a "10 pole" plot - it works out to about 240 Square metres if I remember correctly - about 4 times the size of mine, because his is an older allotment site that just happens to be massive allotments. Inconsistent! You can apply for half plots though, a few have done that.
Ooo good point...
Might finally have use for the chicken wire, but it's not in the best location! Oops. I'll see how it goes. Worst case scenario, I'll use the leaves instead of the fruit.
Noted.
I'll see if I can make a start later on getting some posts in the ground. I've got some old bits of wood (bed slats!) that will do the trick for now.
Organic gardening can be very effective at small scale. I had a terrible flea beetle problem on my brassicas... So I just cover with fleece this time of year, and mesh in summer. No more beetles!
The Cubans are very very good at it, using other plants as natural ''unwanted insects repellant'', and other as ''wanted insect attracters'', from memory it was something to do with the types of flowers they plant around the borders of their food crops.
Companion planting.
I do a bit of this - I can't say there is a lot of science in it to be honest, and some definitely sounds like old wives tales, but it looks nice and the bees are happy. Nasturtium make an excellent sacrificial crop to reduce blackfly on tomatoes, for example, and bees love it. If the black fly are not so interested, it's also a nice salad leaf.
Alliums are often thought to confuse miner beetles and carrot root fly, but not sure how much truth is in it. Perhaps plenty!
I saw this in a documentary years ago so I have no idea what it's called - either the documentary or what the process is called, and the documentary was about the sanctions Cuba has been under, the effects these sanctions are having, and how Cuba and Cubans where coping with them - they still make drum brakes out of asbestos by hand in Cuba. It looked bloody impressive, and quite scientific from what I remember seeing, they where even cultivaiting land we consider to be of no use for food very very successfully, like medians in between roads, and pavements. I remember they used a lot of sun flowers to attract certain insects, and they it repelled other unwanted insects. As I've said, I'm crap at growing food, great at killing food plants though, and I'm having bugger all success growing my frangipani tree.
No dig and organic gardening is great but the soil benefits from a couple of years maturity to build resistance to pests and infections. There is a method that’s been developed called Korean natural farming and further developed by the son of the inventor into JADAM.
This enables you to cheaply invigorate soil with the microbes that the local environment can sustain and that will greatly benefit the growth and health of your vegetables or fruit. Lots of info on yootoob on making IMO at home and how to use it.
Mostly to blackbirds who exhibited the most tenacious, creative violence in tearing holes in the narrow nylon mesh that I 'protected' the fruit with. I saw one mother teaching her offspring how to 'bounce' off the mesh to dislodge berries.
Bastards... although as I regularly feed them, I shouldn't be surprised.
Sparrows have eaten all the flowers on my winter flowering jasmine this year too.
Ad lib seed in the feeders, but no, natural choices are what they prefer
Never try to match wits with a wild animal, however small, you'll lose
Hate to say it, but I'm grinning like an idiot reading this.
Sometimes, I think they've earned their win!
Today, I got some second early spuds in a trench. Soil is very... Cloddy. Incorporated some home made compost (some isn't fully composted... But nearly there, most is 1.5 years old!). Hopefully they'll do alright and give us some tasty spuds. A second trench will be behind for main crop - I'll drop some compost on this area tomorrow, and fork in in a couple of weeks, hopefully having weakened the grasses (it's a very hard area there!).
Running out of bagged manure compost now, and out of home made. Will need a shopping trip but Toyota aygo can only hold like... 4-5 bags... Without bottoming out!