Making an allotment seed bed

So far we haven’t had one of these, because, as you may have realised by now, we are sort of ‘squatters’ helping out on various allotments as we wait and hope for one of our own … which could be a long wait indeed, given that there are twice as many people on the waiting list as there are actual allotment plots on our site. Still, we’re happy being allotment-jobbing-gardeners, and it does mean we learn a huge amount from other people and get to experience many different styles of allotment.

So as well as contributing to Maurice’s pond (only by providing plants, he has a co-worker already who did the heavy digging) and helping Sally with a bit of trellis building, this weekend has been devoted to helping build a seed bed.

Seed beds are small areas of an allotment or garden used to germinate seedlings that can be moved to permanent sites later – the soil has to be very thoroughly dug over, with stones and other debris removed and we’ve been doing that, standing on a nice wide plank so that we don’t compress the soil behind us as we work. Now, with a few days of glorious fine weather, we are going up to rake the top surface to form a fine tilth – a soil top which is fine and crumbly and will allow plants to take root easily.

Then we’ll use the same plank to make a v-shaped drill in which to plant the seeds: the plank means the line of seedlings will be nice and straight without having to fiddle with sticks and strings. And then we wait for them to come up …

Labels: allotment-seed-bed, allotment-seedlings, allotment-seeds

Allotment pests

I was reading The Cottage Smallholder yesterday and noted that Fiona has to net her fruit not just to keep the birds (and her dogs) from eating the ripe fruit, but because the birds (but not the dogs) eat the unripe fruit too!

We certainly have problems at our allotments, but this isn’t one of them and I’ve devoted most of today, while I’ve been pottering around, to working out why. And I think I’ve found the answer. It’s seagulls!

Yes, while they can be a real pest, I suspect that the seagull behaviour over our allotments keeps the fruit-hunting birds away; they certainly like to land in the mornings and poke around in turned soil, but if they see smaller birds congregating on the site they tend to fly down and scare them off so that they can try and grab whatever the little birds were finding. Of course they aren’t equipped to peck fruit from bushes though. Finally, a use for the pestilential things! One person on our allotments actually has a pet seagull that he feeds with cat food on a fork – rather him than me: they have vicious beaks and always look to me like homicidal maniacs who are trying to remember where they left their axes.

We also have a rat problem, and I’m not sure what to do about it. Rats will, I’m told, dig up my root crops and eat my peas and beans, but putting down poison is a no-brainer (a) because I know it builds resistance in the intended victims and (b) there are too many dogs, cats and children on the site for bait to be safe. So, short of taking the dog up with me whenever possible, I’m not sure what to do. So far the only thing the rat has done is tunnel under the compost bin and eat some of the scraps we put in there, but I wonder what it will do next …

Labels: allotment-birds, allotment-fruit, allotment-pests

What’s up Doc?

Well, May Day supper is going to be lamb pitas with … early lettuce and spring onions and some skinny and red hot radishes. As Don, one of our allotment chums, grew some potatoes under-cover in a combination old tyre and plastic cloche type arrangement, we also have the first salad spuds of the year, from him! It’s a real joy when you eat the first meal of the year where all the veg came from your plot (okay, and from the plots of your generous friends) and even the mint that’s going into the lamb dish was harvested today by my own hand. The radishes could have done with another week, maybe, but they are searingly hot and make your mouth know it’s alive, that’s for sure!

And of course the work is coming faster than the crops now. Today it’s been hoe hoe hoe. May is the month for hoeing. Getting the heads off weeds now when they are tiny, means they don’t get their roots down which can make them harder to get rid of. And of course that means sharpening the hoe every ten minutes – I don’t know how people work with blunt hoes, Sweeney Todd could use mine to shave customers, because it makes the work of weed decapitation about 80% easier. And the other thing I’ve been doing, because the other half won’t, is thinning out the first lettuce and carrots – he’s too soft hearted to do it and then we end up with weedy plants, I’m ruthless and give the survivors the space to flourish!

Labels: allotment-lettuce, allotment-potatoes, allotment-radishes, allotment-tasks-may

Allotment year one - pacing yourself

I'm reading a book called The Half Hour Allotment by Lia Leendertz, which is published by the RHS, and while it's full of good ideas, there's one that I feel faintly nervous about them promulgating so widely. It's the suggestion that in the first year, or first few years, you should leave 2/3rds of your new plot fallow while you get on with cultivating the final third.

Hmmm...

Nice idea but ... as Ms Leendertz goes on to point out, this can cause consternation in your neighbours who don't want weed seeds and creeping perennials spreading from your unworked section to their hard-cultivated plot, and can actually break the terms of your rent, because there are quite a few allotment sites that require you to keep more that 33% in cultivation at any one time!

Having said that, it is important with a new plot, whether allotment or vegetable patch in the garden, to pace yourself. You WILL get gluts, even if that seems unimaginable now, and you WON'T have allowed for how much time it takes to harvest, process and store glut vegetables. You WILL find some weed, pest or problem that takes up much more time than you planned - for us it's the perennial weeds, for a neighbour it's a constant battle with a fox that digs up her seedlings (on purpose, she says).

So fallow doesn't have to be fallow. Potatoes, for example, can be planted until June, they break up the soil (so you've got lovely soil to plant in next year) and keep weeds down (because their leaf cover and deep roots don't give perennials a chance to get a good grip), and even if you get only a small harvest from late plantings, it looks like you're keeping the plot in cultivation.

Labels: allotment-cultivation, fallow-allotment, new-allotment