A year in the new allotment

Mid-October marked an important anniversary: a year ago I chose my new allotment. So how has my first year been? Of course, there have been ups and downs. I last wrote about the pleasures of my first harvests of broad beans, my disappointment with early potatoes and my hopes for my cabbages, broccoli and kale. The success with beans has continued with dwarf French beans and – even better – climbing French beans. They are ones saved by a friend so I don’t know the cultivar, but they have a ‘ying yang’ patterned bean and flattish pods. I’m currently saving some of my own seeds.

The later potatoes have done much better than the earlies, having got much more rain. Still not massive crops, but they were planted into rather compacted soil which hadn’t been cultivated for years. ‘Robinta’ red main-crop were particularly good, I’ll definitely plant those again, and ‘Nicola’ too. We’ve still got lots in the pantry to eat, and I’ve still to lift the last ‘Pink Fir Apple’.

‘Highland Burgundy Red’ were a surprise – I’d picked up a bag of these without knowing anything about them – they are red right through! So it’s been pink mash…

The onions looked as if they were going to bolt in April, but this stopped once the rain came, and I’ve had a nice crop of varying sizes. This is useful in the kitchen, I wouldn’t want all the same size. I was still pleased that plenty were of a good size though!

I was also pleased that I got a small crop of carrots, unexpected in somewhat clayey soil. Beetroot and chard also did well.

The brassicas are a different story – what is it about the cabbage family that everything wants to eat them? Even though I’d netted the cabbages, the blasted pigeons teamed up and sat on the netting so that they could peck the leaves. Completely ate four nice fat cabbages.

I can see why fruit cages over brassicas are the thing round here. The kale was doing better but I’d not got round to getting some small-sized netting… so cabbage moth caterpillars have done their best to make the leaves all lacy. I do like wildlife but I must say I’ve got into squashing caterpillars. Feeding the robin, right? Talking of feeding, it was with the brassica plot that the need for fertility was most obvious. They’ve had various things this year – blood fish and bone, seaweed feed, chicken manure pellets – but I’ll be happier once I’ve really got going with compost.

I’ve also learnt a lot about the allotment layout and planning. My plots, at 130cm by 360cm, are just a bit too wide, I’m a bit titchy so it’s hard to reach into the middle. Over the next year I’m aiming to narrow them to about 110cm. This will be complicated as I’ll also be rotating crops, and extending the beds too! It’ll be worth it as it’ll give me space for more compost and leaf mould bins. I didn’t really have any major gluts, but next year I’ll sow more beetroot and leeks and less chard – I do like it but it goes a long way. I’ll plant a few coloured ones in the garden at home. I’m going to grow fewer kales and cabbages but look after them better, and try some oriental salads crops.

October is also the turn of the seasons – no denying, it really is autumn now. No looking at seed packets and thinking ‘it’s not that long past September, surely it’ll be OK…’ However there’s still a lot to be planted and sown. I’m looking forward to nurturing overwintered onions – ‘Snowball’ and ‘Sen Shu Yellow’ – and broad beans (‘Aquadulce’ and ‘Stereo’), sown right at the end of September, with some white radishes. Both have emerged enthusiastically and are now fleeced or under a cloche.

However winter lettuces ‘All the Year Round’ and ‘Lobjoits Green Cos’ sown in mid-September failed completely to appear. I’ve tried again with salad mustards ‘Green in Snow’ and ‘Red Giant’, and lettuce ‘Winter Density’. Sown in mid-October, these have yet to appear. If they still don’t appear I’ll sow more in modules to plant out under cover. Late in October I sowed ‘Feltham First’ peas, encouraged by the Chase Organic catalogue. I’m also trying garlic (shop-bought, so not guaranteed to thrive) in a ridge of soil nourished with bonfire ash, tips from Joy Larkcom’s book ‘Vegetables for Small Gardens’.

Autumn has coincided with some spare time and I’ve been able to catch up with a few things. Exciting jobs like digging up a 2m by 2m tarpaulin which had been buried under 20cm of soil then a fire lit on it. The lumps of partly-fired clay are now covered with a heap of hedge-cuttings, and the tarpaulin will still be useable to smother weeds. The extra potato bed has been dug over (revealing another couple of pounds of potatoes!) and will make part of a soft fruit area. The sycamore saplings cut down last winter will make posts for a cage over the bushes. I’ve a winter of cutting the second half of the hedge, and of digging over new ground, and of digging out bramble roots.

It’s been a good year. I’ve not always been able to get to the allotment as much as I wanted, but I’m pleased with what we’ve achieved together. The top third does look like – and is - a productive vegetable garden, and I’m not particularly worried that it’s a slightly weedy one.

I’ve started to sort out the bottom two thirds, which I didn’t think I’d manage this year. Soon I am to pick up an apple tree from the St Ann’s Allotments Fruit Tree project, so I need to work out where it is going to live in what I hope will become a small ‘forest garden’-ish area.

Many thanks to everybody who has given me equipment, bought me tools, and helped out. I’ll report back on progress over the next year, as I work out how to factor in the allotment with a full-time job.

First published in Nottingham Organic Gardeners' Newsletter

The New Allotment

The story so far… in June 2009 I went on the waiting list at St. Ann’s Allotments. I chose this site as it’s central, it’s big (huge in fact) and it’s got a lot happening there, including long-abandoned plots being renovated, so I hoped I’d get a plot sooner than some other places closer to home.
October 2010.
I wasn’t far wrong; a year and four months later I was excited to open a letter inviting me to view several allotments with a group of prospective tenants. Eight of us spent two hours looking at a very varied selection of plots. I made notes and took photos, looking for a plot or two which fitted my criteria: a smallish, facing south(ish) with a view, not too overgrown and not too shaded. We all went back to the STAA offices and were asked to make our choices in the order on the waiting list – I was third down and after a slightly nervous couple of minutes got my first choice. I was so excited to at last have my own allotment that my hand shook a bit as I signed the forms!

I was now the tenant of a 264 square yard plot: sloping more east than south, shaded by a tall but skinny hedge and with a couple of patches of Japanese knotweed, but with most of the ground already cleared and with its own SHED!
So, to work. First measure your plot to get a base plan. Preferably take a friend and get them to clamber into the difficult corners. Draw out the plan and start planning where the beds are to go, the compost heap, the water-butt, the picnic bench and the fruit trees… then go back and have another look at the waste land that is the bottom half of the plot and realize that it’s not time for garden design just yet. Help was at hand in the form of the left-over black plastic from the NOGs allotment. I could now forget about the bottom third for a few months, and Rob, the STAA Partnership Worker, arranged for the Japanese knotweed to be tackled.
November
My first day’s work. I did some digging and found lots of couch grass roots. Rather demoralizing, as it took me over an hour to dig over less than 2 square yards – how long is it going to take me to dig 264? On the other hand I met my neighbours, who all seem very nice, and one has attacked part of the hedge, revealing a view across Sneinton, Clifton and beyond.

As the month wore on I got into the swing of couch-grass removal, and the time-scale I need to be thinking about. The soil seems quite good – it’s basically on clay but the plot seems to have been gardened well until recently so it’s actually not bad. I started to move things into the shed – a rake, an old fork, my favourite ancient red goretex and some elderly walking boots. Now I can come here and garden at any time.

I started pulling ivy out of the hedge: pull, cut, chuck behind. Repeat ad infinitum... I realized that the avenue was a source of valuable leaves and chippings and finished each session with a stint of raking.

December
No chance of further couch-grass-digging, it was under several inches of snow. However I pulled huge amounts of ivy out of the hedge, and used it for Christmas wreath-making. Marc, the Garden Support Officer from STAA helped me to cut down several ash and sycamore trees from the hedge. I now covet a ‘Silky’ Japanese saw. I’ve also got some very useful big poles which could be used to create a shelter. I had fantasised about doing a lovely laid hedge but reality is that I’ve not got the time, and it’s 25 years since I did any hedge-laying.
January
Hadn’t seen the plot for about a month when I finally managed to get over for a couple of short sessions: raked the leaves over the soil to protect it, pulled more ivy out of the hedge, and started cutting up the wood from the tree-felling. I brought a picnic stool from home, so now I can sit and admire my terroir. It’s going to be a long job, I can tell, but I’ve fallen for the place already.
(This blog post first published in Nottingham organic Gardeners' Winter Newsletter 2011 and STAA website).