Pack Rat

I seem to have become a total pack rat when it comes to anything that can be composted. I have been taking a bucket full of scraps each visit and our wheelie bin is showing this by being only a quarter full after a week!

I remember reading in an awful book called 'Urban Dreams Rural Realities', please don't go to the effort to track it down and read it, if you've ever been on holiday in the countryside you know more than they did and the woman was particularly annoying. Anyway, I remember reading in it that the man had a habit of checking out people's bins whenever they went round to see if they had anything he could add to his compost bin! I have to admit I have been wondering if I can bring home a bag of vegetable scraps from my parents house or if that's taking it too far!

Am feeling exhausted today, yesterday really took it out of me, hopefully my stamina will build up soon! I know this is some of the hardest work I'll ever do on the plot, if the enthusiasm lasts I'll be fine!

Well, I Tried...

We were at the allotment from just before 1pm until 4pm today, little boy slept for about an hour and a half of that and cried for about another half hour of it and the rest sat and watched. He's not to impressed with dirt and uneven ground yet, plus he fell down the same hole about five times...

So, out of what I'd planned to do what did I actually achieve?

1. Take excess peelings etc from wormery and put on compost heap. Check!

2. Buy padlock for gate and put on gate. Nope, forgot to buy one again...

3. Dig around rhubarb plants (4 of them) so I stop treading on them and don't accidentally weed kill them. Check! There are actually 6 rhubarb plants in the bed that I did today. It required a ton of digging around them to make a bed shape and then pulling the grass out from right amongst the plants. I did loose quite a few rhubarb leaves but I think that they will survive! I gave them a good water with 'worm juice' (what my Mum and I call the liquid fertiliser from a wormery) so hopefully that will help them recover from the ordeal!

4. Dig more of the back bed. Nope, none at all. I did put bricks across the front of the bed to form a border, but I don't have any more bricks so I may have to remove those and find something else for an edging.

5. Spray weed killer (bought for £3 from the site shop, bargain!). Check! This took about an hour to do, I wasn't sure whether I was going too fast or too slow or what. It was funny because I kept thinking how nice it smelt and then I remembered that Frank had put washing up liquid in the spray thing as he said it made it stick better! lol I decided that as we're away for a week I would spray even the back covered bits weeds and hope that they loosen a bit before I get back and start digging there again.

So, all was good, until halfway home, about 20 minutes tops after I finished spraying, when we had a huge downpour... It's stopped now, it was like a torrential summer shower, only lasted about 10 minutes but soaked everything (including the washing line full of almost dry cloth nappies, very annoying) so the weed killer might not work very well, we will have to wait and see...

Annie, thanks for your comment, could you leave another one with your email address in it please as Blogger doesn't give me the addresses so I can't send you a reply! Your allotment looks grand, well done!

Today's words of wisdom from other allotment diggers on my site (this time my neighbour) 'it's not a job it's a hobby, so take your time and enjoy it'. My favourite comment so far was when I was asked if I had a fork, because I'd need one! I felt like acting dumb and saying I had actually intended to dig with my bare hands! Mind you, the same man admired my new spade the next day (stainless steel with a very nice wooden handle), it's still not been used though, carry it in each time I go and carry it out again as clean as it arrived! :o)

I'm shattered, but still enjoying it, as long as I can see a new patch that doesn't have weeds on it each time I leave I'll be fine!

We Have Soil

I actually managed to do some digging today. Got off to a later start as I was waiting for my Mother In Law to make her weekly visit and look after my son so I could sneak off down the allotment! I got there at about 11.15 and my car was the 6th in the car park, when I left just before 1 there were 8 cars in the car park which I think is pretty good, lots of people about and lots of work being done all over the place!

I was right in thinking that the back of the plot had been covered at some point in the past. Lord knows how long ago this was as the weeks and grass had grown through the covering in a lot of places but I began to pull it up and see what I had underneath. It would pull easily for about a foot and then I would have to dig up something to be able to pull a bit more. When it got really hard going pulling it up I decided to dig what I'd uncovered and then when that was dug I would pull up a bit more (next visit!).

I now have 1.5 bin bags full of couch grass and roots, 1 bag full of old falling apart plastic and some other type of covering and a 6x4 foot patch of lovely dug soil! In each fork full there was at least 1, in most cases 2, large worms which was nice to see. The soil seems really good (to my inexperienced eyes anyway!), not sandy and not clay, and it's quite easy to work with as well. Some fork fulls would have a ton of couch grass roots in them that I had to stop and pull out and others had none, but it was pretty slow going, or at least it felt that way. I was really aware that I needed to be back in time for lunch so kept checking my watch at what I thought was about half hour intervals and several times it was only 10 minutes later which was lovely as I wanted to finish off that patch so I felt I was getting somewhere.

I won't be doing down there tomorrow, I think my legs and back need a day off and I have other jobs that need to be done before we go away (tidying, packing, chitting potatoes etc).

So, jobs for Thursday are:

1. Take excess peelings etc from wormery and put on compost heap.

2. Buy padlock for gate and put on gate.

3. Dig around rhubarb plants (4 of them) so I stop treading on them and don't accidentally weed kill them.

4. Dig more of the back bed.

5. Spray weed killer (bought for £3 from the site shop, bargain!).

I will have to put my son in his pushchair in the shed thingy while I spray but I'm hoping that if we go up after lunch which is when he normally has his nap that he will fall asleep and I can work for a few hours rather than under 2 hours like I have the past 2 days.

So, I'm sore and shattered but also very excited and pleased with my progress. I'm sure it looks like very little to the other plot holders but the fact that in 2 days I already have a bed that I would consider planting into (ok, a tiny bed, but still a bed!) is great. Add to that a working compost heap, lots less brambles and a clean and tidy shed and I think I've made some good progress, hopefully I can keep up the pace!

Day 1 - Where to start?

For introductions sake my name is Anna, I'm 32, married with 1 young son and live in Liverpool with 2 cats and a mad collie cross RSPCA rescued mongrel. I decided to take an allotment as I want to grow our own veg and we only have a small concrete back yard. I also want my little boy to have somewhere to play and experience the outdoors so an allotment seemed like the ideal project for our vegan/vegetarian household. Prior to taking on this allotment my gardening experience is limited to houseplants and growing courgettes, tomatoes and a few other bits and bobs in pots in the aforementioned back yard plus reading some John Seymour and a container gardening book or two.

I went and handed over the money this morning, for £41 for the year (£30 rent, rest for water etc) plus a £20 key deposit this is what I got




note: I took the small child with me, he didn't come with the plot!

The area to the left hand side of the shed/structure has a lot of rubbish in it and I decided today that I'm not intending at any point in the near future to tidy that up so as I cut back the brambles and found bits of rubbish that couldn't be burnt or easily taken off site I threw them in there. Who knows if I will ever get around to clearing it out but for now it's a handy area to stow stuff.

I cut back an awful lot of brambles today but unfortunately it looks like there are tons and tons of the things growing up all over the plot so I think I will be taking some sort of chemical to them at some point. I am still wavering as to whether to use weedkiller on the whole site or not. I would like to be as organic as I can but I know that this first year I won't be, and maybe I will never ever be as the compost I will be using will have things in it that weren't grown organically and I might not be able to get/afford organic seed etc. However, I will have a vegan site and will not be using manure, blood, fish, bone etc on my plot.

Other jobs accomplished today in the hour and forty five minutes I was there were tidying out and sweeping out the shed so it's all neat and tidy and ready for action. It's pretty dry in there which I take as a good sign. However, the site Secretary told me that there are a lot of mice so I will be chitting my potatoes at home and planting seeds at home and just ferrying them over to the site when they're ready for planting (it's a 10 minute drive), this will also mean that I can get jobs accomplished at home with my son plays rather than having to spend every waking moment down the allotment during busy periods.

I also dug out all the rubbish from the compost bins at the back of the allotment (the photo I tool in that direction didn't come out). I will be taking over my household bits and bobs for composting and whatever my wormery can't handle so it's nice to have a bin ready to put them all into.

So, brambles, shed and compost bin aside I didn't really do much else! I will be back down there tomorrow morning and I am hoping to pull aside the covering at the back (after picking up what is left of the fence off the ground :o)) to see what it's like. If that soil is workable I think I will weed kill the rest of the site and work on that and clearing more rubbish etc for the few weeks until the weed killer has done it's work and I will still have time to get in plenty of other veg. I am aiming for 3-4 beds over the summer and to see the layout of the plot developed (laying out paths etc). Once I know where my paths will be and beds will be I can cover the beds that I'm not ready to clear and leave them until later, but I'd like to at least have an idea where they are going.

So, today I'm a little poorer, a lot more tired even after that short time on the plot, but very excited to get back there and get going and see what I can do. I need to put my potatoes and onion sets out today as well, that should give me more incentive to get the plot going!