Autumn clear up

Autumn is well and truly here with misty mornings, falling leaves and lots of dead looking plants.  Clearing up in the garden is a constant job as more and more plants turn into a soggy mess of dead leaves or dried up sticks. There's something about Autumn which always makes me want to have a good tidy up and it's not just the beds and  borders, but the sheds too. So the garden and allotment sheds have both been emptied, swept, cleaned and reorganised.  They now smell of Jeyes Fluid and woe betide anyone who messes them up.

At the allotment there is lots to be done.  We are gradually clearing the beds as produce comes to an end.  The broad beans and runner beans have now been cleared away, leaving the roots there as they will set nitrogen into the soil for next year's brassica crop.

In the brassica beds the cabbages have all been harvested weeks ago and I wasn't forward thinking enough to sow seeds for winter cabbage, but there are brussels sprouts, kale and purple sprouting broccoli which will keep going over the winter. There are also some swede in another bed which have done well.  This is the first time we have grown swede and I am quite pleased with them.

We had some massive bags of leaves left outside our plot for us to help ourselves to and so Richard set to work barrowing them to the new leaf bin on plot 8. There were also plenty of leaves to sweep up from the tree which overhangs plot 10b.  The leaf bin is now full to the top but will soon drop down and we will be able to keep topping it up as the leaves continue to fall. This should provide us with plenty of leaf mould next year.

This week I have harvested leeks, fennel, chard, swede, beetroot, peppers and purple sprouting broccoli. The leeks are super and there are also others which were planted later which should be ready for digging up in the new year.

Richard has top dressed the old pea and bean beds with a good layer of manure. Our next jobs are to clear other beds over on plot 8 and to manure those. Lots to keep us busy over the winter.

A clean and tidy shed

Progress on Plot 8

Our days down at the allotment  at the moment are divided between digging and clearing up plot8 and doing ‘proper’ allotment gardening on plot 10b.  I love working on our new plot 8 and am longing to get it reasonably straight and looking good, but there is still lots of sowing and planting and weeding to be done on plot 10b.

On plot8 we have recently cleared out the ramshackle sheds and pulled one of them down, what a mess of stuff there was in those sheds. Bags of glass, plastic, metal and general rubbish  were taken to the local recycling centre. We found quite a collection of metal tubing and connectors to make up mini greenhouses.  We have kept all these as they might be useful but they could be quite a puzzle to assemble.
We had a bonfire to burn all the rotten wood

One shed demolished and a bed dug over

Helen dug over one of the areas of ground whilst I weeded the temporary raised beds. Then we put some soil improver on the beds.  We thought we might grow some carrots and salad crops in one and peas and beans in the others.

At the front of the plot next to the gate were two big heaps which were originally compost bins, but they have had all sorts of stuff dumped on them. Richard and Helen started clearing these bins out over the bank holiday weekend.  There was a large amount of rubbish to remove first which resulted in another pile of stuff to take to the recycling centre. There seems to be no end to the rubbish we keep finding on this plot. However once the top of the bins were cleared of the rubbish, there appeared to be lots of good compost underneath.  Very useful! That will go on the newly dug over areas. Richard will probably build new compost bins in the same place when we have weeded the area.

 

clearing out the old compost bins

Although the plot is still very untidy, as areas are cleared of rubbish, we can see the paths which show the original layout of the plot. Helen and I are planning how we want our allotment to look and we now feel we are getting somewhere.

Next jobs are more rubbish clearing, more tidying and more digging.

Taking down the shed

For the last 10 weeks since we took on our new allotment this massive metal clad shed has dominated the site.  Our plans were to demolish it and put raised beds in its place.The demolition started last week.

We had to empty it first of the stuff which the previous tenant had left in. And there was quite an assortment of stuff, some of it was useful, like rolls of polythene sheeting (I'm thinking of how many cloches we can make), bags of nails, plant pots, tools, buckets (always useful around an allotment).  Of the less useful stuff there was an old aquarium, a hamster cage, a pair of stirrups and a bridle and  lots more.  A few trips to the local recycling centre were needed.

So for the last two weeks bit by bit, section by section my husband has been taking the shed down. As he worked at this he was able to see how much of the shed he would be able to recycle around the plot. The metal panels can be used to clad the fences to keep out weeds from neighbouring plots.What we have left, well there is a waiting list of neighbouring allotmenteers who want to take it off our hands.  The wood from the floor will be used to make raised beds. Some of the wooden framework is going to be made into a polytunnel/greenhouse. The many bricks underneath the floor supporting the shed will be used around the plot.

Finally the shed was no more.  We are now left with the plot looking like a scrapyard/building site and an amazing amount of work still to do. But we are encouraged by our allotment neighbours who keep telling us how well we are doing, it helps to keep us going.

New allotment week 7

It's our seventh week of working on our new allotment and I am now beginning to feel we're getting somewhere, even though it still looks like a building site or scrapyard (I'm not sure which).

The plot came with four sheds which is a bit too much for anybody. We've decided to keep two of them, one will be for general storage, the other more of a potting shed.  Richard has built staging and shelves in the potting shed and it's looking good now.

One of the sheds was taken down this week leaving a lot of rubble, but also lots of space.

There was a lot of interest from grandchildren, who wanted to see what grandad was doing.

Richard has also made some more raised beds and  my daughter Helen and I have dug the ground over and put the beds in place.

We have found that the soil is mainly clay, but there are some areas of good soil.  This better soil  we have dug out and put into the raised beds along with our own compost and anything else we can get our hands on to improve the soil structure. We have started to empty the compost and manure bins at our old plot and bring the stuff over to use on our new growing areas.

We are also finding loads of stones and boulders as we dig over the soil.  These are being used to make drains, or as hardcore for paths.  Nothing goes to waste here! The wood for the raised beds has all been found on the site.

We now have vegetables growing too, in the first lot of raised beds at the front of the plot. We've planted red cabbage, purple sprouting broccoli, brussels sprouts and cauliflower.

 As we progress we are building a sort of plan in our minds as to how we want the plot to develop.  We are pleased that we have spent very little money on the plot so far.  All the materials for building raised beds, making the compost bins, and shed staging have been found on the plot. The next stage in the plan is to take down the fourth shed--the big metal cabin.  This will not only create more space but  will also provide materials for building more raised beds.


Thanks for reading my blog, feel free to comment.

New allotment--getting started

If you've been following my allotment progress you will know that my daughter and I have had a mini allotment in the form of  a council run scheme of raised beds. The good news is that we now have our own 'proper' allotment. We, along with some other people who were near the top of the allotment waiting list were invited to an evening viewing of the vacant allotments. I have to say that none of them were very inspiring, but the one we finally decided on was plot 10b.

The previous tenant had been keeping chickens on the site. Unfortunately all his chickens had been got at by the fox so he decided to give up. The new plot is L shaped  and has one large stretch of weed filled area. The other bit has chicken sheds on it. There are 3 rather ramshackle looking sheds and one huge metal cabin.

We are still keeping our raised bed plots on until the end of the year because we have planted them up with summer veg. This will give us time to get some growing areas dug over in the new allotment to plant up with winter veg.

Last weekend we started work. We cleared out the rubbish from the best of the sheds, swept, cleaned and disinfected it. Then we started clearing some of the areas in which  we want to grow things.  There are a lot of stones as well as huge weeds.

We worked really hard, even the grandchildren, who seemed to enjoy themselves. Our grandson likes to help grandad so he (assisted?) him as he attempted to build a compost bin area using wood which had been kindly dumped nearby for any of the allotment people to use.  

The new plot has come complete with a cat.  The previous owners were unable to catch it to take it with them, so we agreed to look after it. It's very elusive, sometimes we see it watching us, then it disappears.  We leave food for it, which gets eaten and there is access into the shed for it to sleep. We hope she will eventually accept us as new owners.

There's a lot of work ahead of us, but we were really pleased with the progress we have made so far.