What allotment holders do when it rains

And rains, and rains and rains …

Well, some of us are honing our crime-scene skills like Garden Punks Chris and Katie who’ve been on the trail of a seed thief. Others are counting their seed potatoes or weeding out the couch grass.

We are trying to re-roof 201’s shed. Compared to the tiny shed on Duncan’s plot, 201’s shed is palatial: we’re calling it ‘The Swiss Chalet’ – but it don’t half leak! There are three reasons for this:

1 – the holes rubbed in the roofing felt by the branches of the pear tree means that the rain comes straight through the roof and drips down the rafters

2 – the blocked guttering and stolen water butt that mean a trickle of rain runs down the side of the shed and seeps mordantly into a puddle that then travels up the side of the shed by capillary action

3 – the eejits who nailed a batten to the shed roof, with three nails, meaning there are three routes via which miniscule amounts of water can sink through the roof and drip to the shed floor.

And a wet shed is a miserable thing. So we’ve spent the weekend trying to lay roofing felt in the driving rain, while getting our eyes (and other bits of anatomy) poked by sharp bits of pear tree. Which makes it all the more galling when you see that one of your neighbours is so far ahead of the game that they’ve dug over all their summer beds already … honestly, some people are just too organised for their own good!

Labels: allotment-autumn, allotment-beds, allotment-rain, allotment-shed

Allotment psychology

What does your allotment say about you? I’m fascinated by other people’s plots and the way they reveal personalities.

On our site we have quite a few very orderly allotments, everything measured with a ruler (and sometimes, it looks like the plants have been subjected to a spirit level as well, they are so perfectly level), everything in its place, neat, tidy, productive and organized.

And we have many higgledy piggledy plots, with haphazard fences and twisty paths, odd-shaped beds and weird little bits and pieces of furniture, sculpture and other idiosyncrasies. Angela has a rustic swing on hers, our next door neighbour has a porch that sags in the middle so it looks like a boat hung up on the front of his shed, and there’s a wonderful allotment on one end of one of the rows that has a chessboard area planted with lettuces and herbs and two topiary ‘kings’. And there are lots like this one, with an exuberance of things that aren’t quite crops but probably couldn’t be called flowerbeds. A sort of compromise between utility and beauty.

Ours falls somewhere between the two extremes. Our beds are straight(ish) but our paths definitely meander. Our fence is level but probably won’t end up being straight because we’ve only put up half of it and already we can see that it would be a lot easier to go round a couple of old tree roots than dig them out. I suppose that anybody looking at our plot would say that we have good intentions but get derailed quite easily, and that’s probably true of our lifestyle in general! I wonder whether any researcher has ever investigated the way that our allotments match up to our personality types – it would be a fascinating project.

Labels: allotment-beds, allotment-planning, allotment-sheds