Annual report

I have been so busy over the last year that I haven't had time to even think about this blog. But I took a look at it today and realised my last post was exactly one year ago today - so here we go with an annual report!

2016 was not a great year on the plot. Two of the beds which I had used for planting out perennials for my cutting garden just weren't good enough. They still had too much clay in them (I had not added enough organic matter in other words) and were too wet for the perennials. None of the plants were doing well and some of them - like Scabious - died. I should have not been in such a hurry to plant them out on this plot. My plan is to dig what perennials are left out of these two beds and transfer them to my other (dryer) plot. I'll then grow potatoes on these beds.

Two beds which had a lot of manure and other organic matter added over the winter have definitely improved. They still need more but it is good to see them improving.

Another disappointment was the polytunnel that we had put up in October 2015. It was great to use it in the spring to bring plants on early, but by the end of the summer it was falling apart. It was just melting away in the sun. To my surprise it has survived the winter and is still standing, albeit full of holes. I will be able to use it to bring on some hardy seeds early - I plan to start off some sweet peas next week - but it won't be much use for anything else. Won't make the mistake of buying another one, I have to save up for a greenhouse instead.

Turning to 2017, the good weather in January has meant I have been able to get lots done.

Firstly, I created a new bed which I am going to use for Comfrey. Comfrey has many uses on an allotment. Firstly, it can be made into a comfrey tea - a liquid feed that is high in potassium, so good for flowers and fruit. The leaves can be put into the bottom of a potato trench where they help against potato eelworm. The leaves are quick to wilt so you can also just cut some down and use them as a mulch around plants. Sometimes I cut leaves off add just add them to the compost heap.

I am using Bocking 14 comfrey which does not spread by seed. The deep taproots make the plant difficult to remove once you have it, so you don't want it growing in the wrong place.

The site I chose for the comfrey bed is near a big clump of nettles (good to make a high nitrogen liquid feed) so that I have all my 'feeding' plants in the same area.

So far the bed is small, but I aim to expand it as the comfrey gets established.

The new comfrey bed

There was a good bit of couch grass and a lot of bind weed root in this bed when I dug it over so I am tempted to delay planting the comfrey for a while so that I have more time to clear the bed. Maybe I will grow an early crop of spinach here....

The second thing I have done a lot of work on is clearing a lot of the brambles and ivy out of the hedges. It was taken a long time but I think it will be worth it. The brambles have all been cut down to the ground and my plan is to poison it once it starts into growth again.

The hedge between me and my neighbour is mainly Hazel. Due to the amount of bramble, ivy and bindweed growing in the hedge, the Hazel is unable to grow upwards. Instead it grows outwards and gets in the way on the plot. So, we took the drastic action of cutting the Hazel down to the ground. It is a shame that, for the moment at least, I have lost my privacy on the plot, but if it means less ivy and bramble, it will be worth it.

Hazel cut down but stumps full of ivy

Ivy cleared away from tree stumps

The clearout is by no means complete and we need to keep working on it, but we have made a very good start. In addition, I have got a few good bean poles, lots of pea sticks and even some wood for our wood burner at home. Now all we have to do is deal with this:

We need to have a bonfire

The weekend just gone I was also able to complete the installation of our pond (a large shower tray).

The pond waiting to be cleaned out

I have planted some water lovers in the pond area (it is towards the bottom of a slope so should stay fairly damp) which I will use for cut flowers. I have planted mint, hostas, Lyrthum, arum lilies and  persicaria. I have a feeling they will all get swamped with couch grass and will need to be dug out again next year, but I have so many plants in pots, I just felt I had to get rid of a few.

So, lots of great work done already this year... but I haven't even touched the beds yet. I feel so far behind already!

Finally, dry enough to dig

It is wonderful to see some sunshine at last. I couldn't miss the opportunity to get up to the plot and get some digging done, even if there was a biting wind. What a transformation from the end of January - the soil is drying out fast.

I am creating a new hedge on the corner of my plot to shield it from view. This is not because I don't want anyone to see what I'm doing on the plot, but rather to entice people in. In my minds eye, given another couple of years, the plot will be well-established and growing some wonderful plants for flowering arranging, have a pear and cherry "orchard" in the centre, a wild-life pond, a bit of topiary and a soil that can grow some great veg too. As I say, the idea of the screen is to entice people to venture in and hopefully give them a pleasant surprise. Time will tell if that works or not.

The plot is surrounded by a tall hedge on three sides (the fourth side is metal railings and then woodland) so it is already private. So it would be more accurate to say that I am creating a screen across one of the two entrances. I'm using a green dogwood which has variegated leaves. I'm not a huge dogwood fan but the foliage is great in flower arranging.

Three variegated dogwoods to create a screen

I have also planted some Cornus alba Kesselringii (black-stemmed dogwood) to start a hedge round by Compost Corner. I may have planted them too far apart, but as it is a very easy plant to propagate, I'll just add more if need be.

Three black-stemmed dogwood to screen 'Compost Corner'

No work on the allotment until this has disappeared.....

Too wet to dig

I have taken to digging a small ditch along the edges of the beds as a means to stop the couch grass growing back into the beds (not 100% successful but it helps). But as the plot is on a slope, the ditches are now just holding water.

The ditch in the photo is running left to right along the slope, rather than down it. But it has given me the idea that I should create ditches from the top of the plot to the bottom so that water runs off more easily. It would run off into some trees so it won't bother any other plot holders and the trees would hopefully soak up the water. Hmmm.... something to think about?

Too wet to work... I went up to the allotment on Sunday but really, everything was too wet to get anything done. I spent a couple of hours putting up some more shelving in the polytunnel but eventually got too cold and came home. Very frustrating as there is so much to do!

One of the things I have managed to get done this winter is sort out the area that I call 'compost corner' (an homage to TISWAS). The area in question is a corner of the plot which was full of rubbish and overgrown with brambles.

An overgrown 'compsost corner'

It's not particularly clear in the photo but to the right is a compost bin I inherited with the plot. It is a great bin and very well-made but, as it is up against the fence, it has brambles growing in over the top of it which I find difficult to reach, and so difficult to cut back.

The council came and cut back the hedge (to the left of the photo) just enough for me to be able to get in and start tackling that rubbish.

Half the rubbish and half of the bin gone

It was a bit wet and slippy working down in this corner but as I don't intend to grow anything here, I wasn't bothered about doing damage to the ground.

That's better!

There were about 5 tree stumps down in the corner that I took down to nearer ground level. Now, as I empty the compost bins I have, I'll put them in this area. Nearby there is a nice big patch of nettles so at some point I will also add a patch of comfrey. 

Although it has been wet (too wet to dig the beds) since the end of October, there have been other things I've been able to get on with.

One of the things I have done is plant out my "orchard". There is a big area in the middle of the plot which is just "grass" - couch grass and other weeds in reality. This is going to be what I rather grandly call my orchard. In reality it is four fruit trees.

I have a plum and greengage on my other plot and lots of people are now growing apples on their plots so I have opted for two pear trees and two cherry trees. I've lost the receipt with the names of the trees already but hopefully the labels are still readable! Anyway, the plan is to festoon the trees. Festooning is a method where by you bend the branches over so that they grow towards the ground. That way, the sap rises more slowly and (not sure why) but this causes the trees to set more fruit. It was quite common in France at one point, so I am told. It also means that I can keep the trees to a manageable height and will be able to net them and harvest the fruit more easily.

The Orchard

There are a couple of artichokes in the orchard at the moment but they will go in the spring.

Although progress on the allotment has been slow - ridding the beds of plastic matting, couch grass, bindweed and getting organic matter into the soil is never going to be an overnight job - there are other areas where I have made progress.

In September we installed a polytunnel, which is something I have wanted for a long time. Although the site is surrounded by a big hedge, it can still be quite windy so the polytunnel is buried quite deep. It won't be blowing away over winter.

Buried deep and not going anywhere

Priorities... first thing in the tunnel was some seating

I have already learnt that having a polytunnel isn't all that it is cracked up to be. I sowed a lot of hardy annuals in September and thought they would cruise through the winter. But there are more slugs in the tunnel than I had expected so some of my seedlings were eaten. 

I wanted a polytunnel in part so that I could store all my tender perennials (pelargoniums etc) over winter. Despite the fact that we have had a very mild winter, we had one very cold night in November which froze everything in the polytunnel. I think the pelargoniums are done for.

The plot is very sunny so I won't be using the polytunnel much in the summer I don't think. It will get too hot in there and I don't want to leave the doors open - the badgers will get in and wreck everything. It will be more for spring/autumn sowing and over-wintering stuff.

My autumn-sown sweet peas are doing well so far. I'm looking forward to sowing more in the spring so that I can have an extended season this year.

It's January and the ground is far too wet for me to be able to do anything at the allotment so now is a good time to reflect on the last year, and contemplate the year to come.

In some ways, 2015 was a repeat of 2014. I planted the potatoes in a bed which I had dug over for the first time and the ground was far to poor for them to grow. The first earlies I planted did ok but by the time I got the maincrop planted out, the ground was rock hard. I couldn't plant them as deep as I would have liked. And when it came to harvesting, I had to wait until it rained before I could get a fork into the ground.

But the upside is that this was the first year I had been able to use that bed. I'm confident most of the couch grass has gone (it will always come back round the edges but I can cope with that). The bind weed and dandelions will need a lot more work yet. After the first earlies came out I sowed mustard as a green manure. Once that was cut down I applied a layer of newspaper followed by a thin layer of leaf mould then cardboard and finally a nice think layer of manure. The side where the main crop potatoes were still has the mustard growing, and I shall add the same organic matter here once I chop the mustard down.

Bed half-manured and half with mustard growing

I know already that my potato crop for 2016 won't be great as I will be planting them in a bed that is full of couch grass. But the bed has had some organic matter added to it so hopefully it will be easier to dig over. I also intend to plant less potatoes and space the rows out enough to be able to earth them up this time round!

And 2015 was a repeat performance of 2014 for my onions too - the badgers dug them all up. Badgers don't usually go for onions and many of the plot holders here have wonderful crops but the badgers wanted to use that particular bed as a latrine. In all honesty, the soil there wasn't good enough to grow onions anyway and I should never have planted them. I have decided for 2016 there will be no onions, I have to wait until I have better soil. 

Once the onions had been dispersed far and wide, I covered the bed over in a bid to keep the badgers off. But of course that only meant they moved on to the next bed. The bed in question is planted up with some shrubs and perennial flowers that I use for cut flowers. It was only planted up in 2014 so is still establishing. I kept on top of the weeding (lots of bind weed and dandelions) for a while but in the end I was put off by the pooh. I need to pluck up the courage to tackle it somehow. All the digging the badgers did has meant my lovely clean edges have disappeared and the couch grass is coming back in.

Here is the bed in May with nice clean edges and no weeds

The same bed today - what a mess

I didn't grow many annuals in 2015 as the soil is still too lumpy to try and direct sow. But between this plot and my other plot, I am beginning to establish a good quantity of perennials and shrubs to use for cutting. I am very poor at taking photos of my cut flowers so I aim to improve in 2016 (also aim to improve my flowering-arranging skills). I had a good amount of flowers for most of the year - in June the house was over-run with them but in the first two weeks of July there was a real dearth. Hopefully this year I will have annuals to fill that gap.

A harvest of cut flowers in June

Now I think about it, I should do a post just about my cut flowers. I am tending towards them more than veg at the moment.

I also need to report on my new polytunnel and 'orchard'! More soon!

Still struggling on

Well, I haven't posted anything for over a year (increased hours at work and things like that) but it doesn't mean I haven't been struggling on with the allotment. I have been continuing to work hard, and to struggle.

The highlights of last summer? My sweetpeas and dahlias did well on this plot - no photos though I'm afraid. The dahlias in particular seemed happy. I put them in a spot that gets sun for maybe half the day which stopped the flowers getting a bit bleached which I find they can do if in full sun all day. My Charlotte potatoes did well (in a bed which I had manured).

But the low points? My maincrop potatoes were a disaster (as I suspected they would be). The ground I planted them in was rock hard and a lack of rain all summer meant it was impossible either for the potatoes themselves to spread underground, or for me to earth them up. I've decided not to grow anything else on this bed until I can add copious amounts of organic matter to it.... but more on that later.

The only other real low point was the badgers deciding to use my onion bed as a latrine. All 90 sets (that's onion sets, not badger setts :)) were dug up, thrown in the air and replaced with.... well, you don't really want to know.

The bare patch of earth in the foreground was the onion bed

Over the last winter I made slow but steady progress redesigning the plot and adding muck. I added around 50 sacks of manure to the plot, but that was over less than half the beds. I think I'd need five hundred sacks to start to make an impact.

One of the things I am most pleased with is the new wider path I have down the side of the plot. Previously, the path was only about 18 inches wide and once the hedge was growing at full-speed, left no room for walking along, and certainly no room for a wheel barrow.

Room for a wheel barrow!

In the photo, above, you can see I have doubled the width of the path. The good thing is that this is the shadiest part of the plot so I haven't lost any prime growing space. I dare say by high summer the hedge will be making a good job of pushing me into the beds again, but for now it is a great improvement.

In case you were wondering, the soil I used to widen the path came from digging out straight edges around some of the other beds. There was a lot of heavy barrowing going on over the winter.

I now have three beds planted up with shrubs and perennials that I will use for my cutting garden.All three beds had lots of manure, compost and leaf mound added to them prior to planting out. They all look good on the surface but underneath there is still a lot of heavy clay, so still a way to go before I can say I'm happy with the soil. They also all had a lot of couch grass and bind weed in them which I have had a good go at tackling. Of course I haven't got it all out and I accept that in the next year or so I'll have to lift everything from these beds and give them another good dig. It will give me the opportunity though to bring some sort of order to the planting which at the moment is all a bit random - shade lovers and sun worshipers all mixed up together.

Originally two beds divided by a couch grass path

Among the shrubs I have for the cutting garden are Skimmias, Hydrangeas, Hypericum and Rosemary. Among the perennials there are lots of Phlox, Astilbes, Astrantia, Bistort, Scabious of various kinds, Campion and so on. I'm going to be ruthless with the cutting garden, anything that isn't earning its keep will be out.

One of the good things about this blog is that it does make me realise I have made progress (although with a long way to go). I have finally dug over and planted out potatoes on one of the beds that I started working on during the winter of 2013-2014. During that winter I didn't have time to do anything more than dig out the matting that was around and through the bed (and full of couch grass). The ground became too hard over the summer to do anything with it and so nothing was done until autumn 2014 when I covered it with a layer of cardboard and horse manure. My mistake was to not then cover this as it meant the weeds grew straight through it.

The big bed with inadequate cover, letting the weeds come through

But no matter, about 25 bags of horse manure went on in the autumn and in the spring of this year I began the long, arduous task of digging the bed over. It took a month of Sundays, and Fridays but eventually it was done, and 60 seed potatoes were planted out - 40 first earlies and 20 early maincrop. I can see already that I will have more success with the potatoes this year than I did last.

Four rows of first earlies

Again, I can already see lots of bind weed coming up so this bed is a long way from how I want it to be, but slowly slowly things are improving.

One of the reasons why I'm able to write this blog now is that it is pouring with rain outside - the first really proper rain we have had for months. Just when I thought the ground was going to be too hard to do any more digging.... no excuses for not getting back up there tomorrow...

SLOW PROGRESS

In my last post I said that I would have to be up at the allotments all day every day to get the digging done in time to plant out everything I have planned for this year. Well, no surprise, I haven't been up there everyday and so I feel like I am way way behind with everything. I have Dahlias in pots all over the place desperate to go out, gladioli corms and anemone bulbs which will shrivel and die if I don't do something with them soon, tomato plants that are getting too big for their pots...

The Charlotte potatoes I planted at the end of March are coming through fine but last week I planted out some maincrop potatoes. I had to take a pick axe to the ground to break it up so I'm not convinced these potatoes will do anything. The photo below shows a row of potatoes. I think it is going to be impossible to earth them up once they poke their heads through. And they will only be able to grow out and down if they are as tough as rocks.

Rock gardening on the allotment.... aka a row of potatoes

But the mild weather has meant my over-wintered sweet peas are doing very well and so I planted them out a week or so ago. I have put them where I grew potatoes last year so there is a bit of room to move in the soil. I am not sure if they will get enough sun where they are, but I reasoned there is only one way to find out.

Sweet peas doing well in April

We have had a few good finds whilst digging recently. Two toads, a newt and a slow worm all in one day. As we continue to knock the allotment into shape, we will need to be mindful to leave places for them to live.

A welcome visitor to the plot

Race against time

This being the first full spring when I have had two allotment plots (I took on Plot 21 at the end of March last year but was marathon training and so did nothing until the end of April) I can see better now the differences between the two plots. The first plot which gets sun and wind all day already has warm soil that can be worked. Plot 21 is still cold and wet. No matter, it means I can have a good 3 - 4 weeks at the beginning of spring to get the first plot knocked into shape before starting on Plot 21.

I have been growing loads of stuff at home in seed trays to plant out in the next month or so (mainly tomatoes and half hardy flowers but I also have some of my dahlias starting in pots and there are lots of glads and ranunculus to go out). So now I am in a bit of a panic. I spent a good bit of Sunday and a couple of hours yesterday digging over one bed which is probably about 9ft x 4ft, so not huge. Not only did it take hours but it was tough on my back. The couch grass was never-ending.

One day this will all be compost

The wheelbarrow full of couch pictured here was from an area about 3ft x 4ft and which took about 3 hours to dig over. I have planted out second early potatoes - Charlotte - in this bed so at last I have something in the ground. But digging at this speed means I'm going to have to be at the allotments all day everyday to make room for everything I want to grow. It serves to reiterate the problem I thought I would have in the beginning - the beds are in such a state that I need to be doing more digging than actually growing. Without about 100 sacks of manure I don't see a way round this at the moment. All very frustrating! How I long for the day when I have a beautiful, productive plot!

The lack of organic matter in the soil means that nothing can go to waste on this plot. The couch grass is all going into an old metal water tank, being covered with plastic and an old shed door (to make sure no light gets to it) and then left to die off and compost. It won't be quick but it makes me happy to know that the couch grass will eventually serve some purpose.

It's the compost, stupid!

If you read any book on gardening or veg growing, one of the things that the authors bang on about relentlessly is to add compost. Cover the bed with compost, fill the hole with compost, use compost as a mulch and so on. This advice is almost always accompanied by a photo of someone barrowing a huge pile of compost across their (perfect) plot, with a huge smile on their face. What they never tell you is how to create the same copious amounts of compost that they appear to be able to.

The thing about growing veg is that you eat the vast majority of what you grow. If you grow spinach you are left with nothing more than the roots and a few outer leaves, if you grow sprouts you are left with nothing more than a woody stem. Of course, you can rely on the weeds for a bit of green matter, but vast in number though they may be, even they are not enough.

Plot 21 does not have a fine tilth (yet). I am pleased with golf-ball sizes of soil but orange size is more usual here.

No sign of a tilth here

I have in the past paid to have manure delivered to the allotment, but now that I have two plots, I can't afford this (at least, I can afford to have the same amount delivered as before, but the quantity won't make much of an impact on all the space we have). We also sometimes go and bag up manure ourselves but still we can never get enough. At the moment I am reluctant to get any at all as it will all be so full of water.

So starting last year I have been trying out green manures. I grew Phacelia, Buckwheat and mustard quite successfully. I had mixed results with Crimson Clover and the Rye and Tares failed completely. 

Buckwheat was the first to go in, once the soil had warmed up. It germinated well but didn't get very tall before it started flowering, the result I think of having a clay soil that dried out very quickly after a few warm days. The Phacelia also germinated well and gave a good covering. I had read that you should not leave green manures to flower as if you do, the stems go woody. And it is true. You lose much of the lush green growth you have created. I struggled the most with this problem with the Phacelia which was alive with bees when it was in flower. Every time I went up to the allotment to cut it down, I would end up just sitting and watching the bees! Not so this year, I'm going to toughen up and cut it all down at the first sign of a flower... but maybe leave a bit around the edges of the beds for the insects.

Both Buckwheat and Phacelia are easy to grow and easy to pull out by hand if they start self-seeding everywhere. They add organic matter to the soil but I don't think they offer huge benefits. Crimson Clover meanwhile adds nitrogen to the soil. I have over-wintered CC on two beds this year and it has been great for stopping a pan forming on the soil surface, so I will grow it again next year. Rye and Tares should have the same effect but mine didn't take off at all. I'm not sure if it didn't germinate or if it did and the pigeons ate the seedlings. I shall have to try again later this year and see what happens.

I have bought a packet of Lupin seeds as they make good green manure. The tap roots are good are breaking up the soil and they also fix nitrogen. But can i really be expected to cut down a bed of lupins before they flower......

Too good to be true?

At last a sunny day so I ventured up to the allotment for the first time in a week. I think here in Hastings the last seven days have been rainier than any other week this winter. In consequence, the path leading to Plot 21 was a quagmire.

Mud, mud, glorious mud

But there may be another reason for so much mud. A water tank and tap have appeared right on the corner of my plot. The mains water is turned off over the whole allotment site at the moment (in case of frozen pipes) so I can't be sure that the tap will work, but if it does, it will save me a lot of back-breaking work. I counted the steps between Plot 21 and the nearest tap last summer. There are 80 steps each way. I can't wait to see if the tap really does work, and nor can my poor, long-suffering back.

New tap & tank at the entrance to Plot 21

Beware the weed-supressing matting

When we took on Plot 21 in the spring of 2013, I was blinded by the size and potential of the plot, and failed to see many of the (literal) pit falls it has.

The former tenant had tried to go for a low maintenance option using weed-supressing matting, both on the paths and as edging round the beds. The problem was that the matting was not good enough to stop the couch grass roots getting through (and making holes wide enough for everything else to get through too). As a result, I have spent a good bit of this winter digging out this horrible matting. At least I can console myself that this is a job that only needs to be done once.

 Don't let weeds get through your weed suppressing matting!

One bed had matting all round the edge and a path across the middle. It has been so wet that huge clumps of clay clung to the roots as I pulled at the matting. Much more back-breaking than digging, and not what you expect to be doing when you take on an allotment.

A whole weed-infested path being removed

The former tenant also dug out holes, lined them with matting, filled them with compost and planted fruit trees and soft fruits in them. When he left, he took the plants with him, leaving us with big, plastic-lined holes. As my god-son put it - the allotment is full of booby traps.

Don't fall into the booby trap.

One of my tasks for the winter was to fill all these holes. I have got most of them done but the wet has finally forced me to give up for now. That, and a frog that I found hibernating in one of the holes.

Not giant mole hills but filled-in booby traps

It is going to be a novelty to be able to walk across the allotment and not fall into a hole, or get bits of matting caught up in the strimmer! Ahh, we have it all to look forward to!

Welcome to our allotment

My partner and I (well me really!) got our first allotment about six years ago. It is in Hastings, East Sussex. Having spent three or four years previous to getting the allotment renovating our newly-purchased derelict house and garden, the thought of taking on an allotment was daunting. The plot we took on was overgrown, full of bind weed, couch grass and brambles.

Plot 52b 2007

I went to take a look at the plot and had more or less decided we would turn it down. But the view over Hastings Old Town to The East Hill and the sea won me over. 

Sea views from Plot 52b

After a slow start we had finally knocked Plot 52b more or less in to shape by 2013. It could have been our chance to relax and actually take a bit of time out to look at the views. But not content with my six rods, I decided to take on a second plot. We were offered one of the of the plots I had always coveted, so how is a girl to say 'no'?

Plot 21 March 2013

Plot 21 is 8 rods tucked away behind a hedge. Alas there are no sea views but there is also a lot less wind and a bit of shade. So we are back to tackling bind weed, brambles and couch grass. Additionally, the soil on this plot has a lot more clay than Plot 52b, a mere two minutes walk away.

This blog is intended as much as a diary of Plot 21's progress as an opportunity to share all that we have learned so far. I hope that in reading this blog, anyone taking up allotmenteering for the first time will avoid some of the mistakes we have made (and indeed some of the mistakes previous tenants have left us with).

Join us on our journey....