A new cold frame out of old materials

Our collection of wood and other materials continues to be recycled to make things for our allotment and my husband is enjoying the challenge of building things  for as little cost as possible. After all, allotments are about not spending much money.

Last year he built a temporary cold frame out of  bricks and an old shower screen. It was lovely, but sadly had to be dismantled, we needed the bricks for other projects. We have a cheap plastic Aldi cold frame on plot 10b but it will not be big enough for hardening off all our seedlings. So my latest request has been to build a cold frame for plot 8.

Faced with a pile of wood and the instruction to spend as little as possible, this is what he came up with. It's made using wood from the sheds he demolished when we took the plots on.  The frames on the top opening doors are made from pallet wood.  The hinges came from the doors which he made the shed out of.  The polycarbonate was left over when he built the polytunnel.

That's a cheap cold frame.

January progress

January is not a good month for getting work done on the allotment. Snow and ice is often the problem, this month is has been rain and wind.  But there have been bright spells.  We've watched the weather forecasts to decide if it's been safe to go to the allotment for an hour or two.  We've managed that a few times this month and every little helps.

At the start of the month the job was to tidy up some of the rubbish still lying around on plot 8. This was mainly stuff cleared out of the old shed and wood from the demolishing of the shed. We spent a few fine days sorting through the rubbish, deciding what we wanted to keep (it might come in useful one day). We ended up with several bags of glass, plastic, metal and general rubbish which went to the local recycling centre. There is now a pile of wood waiting for the right day to have a bonfire and stacked up at the back of the shed out of the way is all the wood which we want to keep. There's always something to be made or repaired on an allotment so it's useful to have some decent pieces of wood.

We gained a few useful items as well as wood--lots of plant pots, a folding wooden garden chair, several sheets of membrane fabric, loads and loads of tubular poles and connectors which were probably once assembled as grow houses and staging. One day we will sort through them and see if we can make anything with them. It will be quite a puzzle I'm sure.

I started to clear the weeds from the new beds which had been dug over at the end of the summer. There's still lots of  weeding to be done but it's a start.

The next job was to top the raised beds on plot 10b with composted manure. This was a job we started in the autumn but stopped as Christmas took over. First job was the rhubarb bed then the blackcurrant and gooseberry bed. Finally the old roots bed which will have peas and beans in later this year. The raised beds on plot 10b now look very tidy.

The polytunnel was in need of some attention and I made a start on cleaning the inside with Algon.  I then  tackled the borders which are heavy clay soil.  I topped the beds with some manure and compost.

In the meantime Richard has made a start on building the path up to the polytunnel. This area has been causing some problems in wet weather because the soil is clay and becomes very wet and slippery. He's making some long steps up the slight slope. So far he has made a wooden frame (using our supply of spare wood of course) and is now filling in with hardcore before the final gravel topping.

 

As we come to the end of the month, the weather is not just rainy but extremely cold too. I'm glad we made the most of the fine days to get those jobs done.

Cheap shed, chic shed

For the past few weeks Richard has been building a shed on plot 8.  There were two sheds when we took the plot on. Both were very ramshackle and the first thing we did was pull them down.  At first we thought we wouldn't need a shed on the plot as we already had two on plot 10b which is only two plots away.  But as time went on we changed our minds. It became a bit tiresome to keep going backwards and forwards to our other plot to get tools or bring brew making stuff over.  I thought we could look out for a cheap secondhand shed, but my husband had other ideas. He said he could build one with some of the good wood remaining from our old shed and other wood we had around on plot 10b. He thought it would be much more substantial than a cheap bought shed.

The challenge was to spend as little money as possible on materials. It was amazing really how once he started working on the new shed we seemed to acquire things to help build it. Like the wood and exterior door from a local building company's skip--who gave him permission to take anything he wanted. Then there was the double glazed window which was just the right size, it's quite big so gives us plenty of light and a lovely view of the plot.  The interior doors which one of our allotment neighbours gave him became the sides of the shed  The front  is covered in cladding to hide these doors using wood from the old shed.

Some money still had to be spent on a small amount of wood and nails--about £50.  Other expenses were guttering for the water butts and paint for the exterior cladding, but these would have been extras if we had bought a shed.  So we consider our shed to have cost in the region of £50 and is probably a lot sturdier than any other cheap shed. How many other sheds have a double glazed window and a fire door?

The inside of the shed is a dream.  Richard built a bench along one side, again using free wood. Our hairdresser gave us an old desk which Richard adapted and made into another bench. It looks a bit strange inside with the walls made from those interior doors--doors which lead to nowhere.  But when I walk inside I am in shed heaven. It is so lovely and I have already started to arrange tools, seed trays and of course somewhere to make a brew.