by Neil Wilkinson | Nov 16, 2008 | Allotment
This is getting a little worrying. We have all 11 full size beds in place, and 10 of them are ready to grow things (some of them already are… our first weeds). We started the day not in a good mood, i’m full of a cold and Pilla is still not really back to her normal self, so it took ages to get down to the plot even then it was only achieved by the copious use of Vicks products.
We perked up once we got down there. It was the first sunny Sunday for seemingly ages and the site was full of not only an autumn glow but of people working on their plots. This is the time of year when plots get relinquished if they aren’t being worked sufficiently and so there are lots of new people looking at overgrown plots and scratching their heads pondering where to start.
We had some help today, step forward Russ who owed us a favour and who met us down there. He merrily helped us dig, barrow, and pick axe for 3 hours. We also had some help from Berny and the babies.
Now that we have the soil we really should be growing something. We have our first things to plant courtesy of Bob, some strawberry shoots, which apparently grow virulently wherever you put them, so that should be pretty idiot proof for us beginners. We just need to work out how to put them in! Sheesh this is going to be a learning curve.
by Neil Wilkinson | Nov 12, 2008 | Allotment
We had some bad allotment news during the week. Nic’s dad had a problem with his site and all of a sudden our source of unlimited timber had been shut down. Luckily we had a backup plan in the form of TRiM, which is a timber recycling place that takes in unwanted timber, denails it, cuts it down and sells it on. A quick visit there and we’d secured enough old scaffolding boards and corner posts to make the remaining six full size beds.
After the boards got delivered (by a man with a plait in his beard) we spent Sunday dodging rain showers, cold, food poisoning – dodged by me, but not Pilla unfortunately, and allotment meetings (ok ok, we didn’t dodge it, it was the Christmas show meeting – we’re signed up to make mince pies, cards, buy a few toys for the raffle and man some stalls, which could be interesting as it’s the day after my work Christmas do, not normally a day I get anything useful done!). We made a total of 3 new beds – not a bad return for a cold an rainy November day. We have 3 more left to create, plus a few little ones dotted around the plot.
You might be able to see the massive pile of soil is slowly giving way to proper beds. We are a little bit concerned about how many worms we’re going to have, so have been playing ‘count the worm’ when we’re shifting the soil.
We also got our first plants. Out allotment legend, Bob, gave us two redcurrent bushes and said we could have some strawberry shoots.
We also got some good news about our shed. The allotment society is going to refund the cost, so one visit to Tesco Direct and a shiny new 6’2″ x 4’2″ metal shed is on it’s way to us. We’ve applied for planning permission from the council, so it could be weeks (months?) before we can actually put it up, but still, having a shed is a cornerstone of any allotment as a place to stay dry and make tea, so once we get one our little car park should start looking a lot more allotment-like.
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