I have decided after much deliberation, and careful observation of the plot, not to keep the new allotment, and just to help my friend with his. We had a bonfire/fireworks night last Saturday at his allotment, and wandered down to check the state of mine.
It was boggy to say the least, and we had hardly has any rain! Myself and The Mrs. have decided that we should concentrate our efforts in the back garden on a few vegetables and do them well. I think the issue last year was that we tried to grow too many different things and didn’t really give anything a proper go.
So the plan for next year is:
Bed 1: Onions - just loads of lovely heat treated sets to go with the Japanese ones we’ve got in at the moment.
Bed 2: Carrots (2/3) and Parsnips (1/3) - we eat these the most of anything i think so it makes sense to grow more of them than anything else. They will be staggered over time to enable a continuous crop.
Bed 3: Courgette (at one end), Squash (at the bottom) and Sweetcorn (up high) - a good use of space i think…need to get over not being able to grow many sweetcorn plants due to slug attack!
Bed 4: Peas, Cauliflowers and Swedes - A bit of a mixed bed throughout the year but i think we’ve had enough of caterpillar infested broccoli plants. With such a small amount of space, it makes sense to grow stuff we know will survive.
Buckets - Potatoes - loads of em!
Down the allotment there will be a lot more sweetcorn, loads of onions and some beetroot among other things which i keep being told i should try!
November 8th, 2008 at 7:51 pm
I think waterlogged ground would be very difficult to deal with. Given the wet summers we are having you may have saved yourself a lot of disappointment in the future.
November 9th, 2008 at 1:54 am
Congratulations on your decision. Having dealt with a lot of land like that in the past, it is sometimes just best to leave it to what it is and walk away. We even found a local group that was trying to “reclaim a soggy piece of land” that turned out to be a vital bog feeding into a local creek. What a disaster that would have been!
Yup… you’ll be better off in the long run… good decision! Looking forward to updates on your new plan for next year.
November 10th, 2008 at 3:53 pm
At least you have the other allotment as well as your garden. The planting plan sounds good, now we just need the weather!
November 15th, 2008 at 5:38 pm
[...] The saga continues! Anyone out there following the blog may have read recently about our struggles to find an allotment. First we started helping out a friend, then took on a very, very boggy plot…more of a swimming pool actually! That lasted a day. I posted about not having the allotment and the reasons for turning it down here. [...]