Our patch of earth: Rainy Saturday - but bargains galore!

How it began...

So, we’d spent time walking past our local allotments, getting more and more interested in the mysterious things that other people were growing and the ingenious uses that people had found for stuff that non-allotmenteers would probably term ‘junk’.

In March 2007, we spoke to our council, and discovered that our local allotments aren’t council owned - it turns out they’re held in trust. So, we decided to find the secretary. We spoke to Mike and Louise who were really welcoming and enthusiastic, then eventually tracked down Alan the secretary and, a few weeks later, we chose a plot with a little blue shed, a water butt, a small bench, and a patch of oregano.

We dug. It was April, and for those of you who remember April 07, it was hot, hot, hot. The ground was like rock. Adam was having to jump onto the fork to get it into the soil. But we persevered – this was our new veggie patch! We had plans for a herb garden over there, and some rows of beans over here, a compost heap at the back and flowers planted down the edges… until, one week in, a little old Italian lady turned up and claimed the plot was hers. Wah! Much confusion ensued, until we decided we’d rather not have the hassle and uncertainty, and much less be known as the new guys who kicked a little old lady off her plot. Gracious, no.

So we found a new spot. South facing, with rhubarb, gooseberry bushes (I didn’t know they were spiky!), a damson tree (which we thought were plums to start with – till mum made Damson gin and we recognised the fruit) and the Biggest Strawberry Patch In The World.

Twas overgrown, tis true, but much better than plot number 1. Hurrah for little old Italian ladies!

And two sheds! His and Hers, obviously, mainly because mine isn’t quite tall enough for Adam to stand upright in. So, mine has the tea and coffee making facilities, small gas stove, radio, seed packets on nails and an assortment of gardening gloves, while Adam’s has all the manly things – tools, wooden crates, useful bits of wood, tangled netting and carefully wound up bits of wire.

So the digging had to begin, again. After assessing the plot, with some useful hints and random-plant-identifying by Mike, we headed home to get forks and other digging equipment. Ten minutes later we returned to our overgrown plot to hear a strange buzzing noise, and find Mike strimming all the thigh-high weeds with his petrol strimmer! Thanks Mike! A good start to our compost heap… (Add 'build compost heap' to the To Do list.)

And then, half an hour later, as we’re just beginning to curse the sun for being too hot and the earth for being too hard, around the corner of our sheds comes our saviours Mike, Louise and their mate Ali, on white stallions, (no, not really) all brandishing forks and ready to help us dig, till we’d dug the same amount we’d done on plot no.1. Bless ‘em.

And then it was all go! Nine months later, 2008 seems promising. We've read many, many more books, got more ideas and got much more ambitious. And we've actually grown stuff which tasted gooooood. It could still all go horribly wrong, but even if it does I can guarantee we'll still get some tasty fruit and veg from between the weeds, all for a few pence, and a bit of blood, sweat and tears... (well, hopefully not the blood or the tears... just good ol' elbow grease.)

And a bit of help from our friends and family. Any time, chaps - you're very welcome! We'll get the kettle on...

Sounds fun, eh?

Sunday, 20 January 2008

Rainy Saturday - but bargains galore!

It rained a lot on Saturday, so we decided to go to the Allotment Society shop which is based at some allotments to the other side of Bedford. We ended up with seed potatoes - Home Guard which is an early cropper, and Picasso, which is a main crop and should get nice and big, big enough to use as baking potatoes, anyway. I'm looking forward to our first home-grown jacket potatoes, crispy skins with lots of butter.

We also got Centurion onions, which are the little yellowish ones on the right - each little bulb should just get bigger and bigger - and also shallots. Can't remember the name exactly, it's Red something... The shallots'll create clumps of up to 10 or 12 bulbs, which got me thinking - why do shallots do that when onions don't? How do they know? It's like garlic bulbs which also create a whole bulb from a single clove. Ain't nature clever!

Oh, and we also got some sugar snap peas, in the bag on top there, which we're going to try this year as well as mange tout, which were really tasty last summer. That whole bag was 50p! In fact, everything in the picture came to a grand total of £7.50! Bargain! Just think how many packs of mange tout you could buy from any well-known supermarket for that amount... about 4, if you're lucky.

We also wandered down to the plot to have a quick check up on stuff. Waaaay too wet to do anything really, but I got to wear my wellies and splash in some puddles (big kid). These bricks in the pic are just outside my shed - we uncovered them when we were tidying up last spring... need a bit of weeding now, but nice eh?

Adam also fixed a bit of fence next to the compost heap that had come loose in the wind, using his double-edged billhook. Here he is, whittling away and looking very pleased with himself. A very handy item, that billhook, especially if you're wanting to make things pointy and stick 'em in the ground, or hack at brambles which are trying to take over the world. (Grrr. It's lucky that blackberries are so tasty, 'cos the goddamn plants haven't got anything else going for them.)

Using the billhook is good fun, too - makes you feel like Ray Mears. I think Adam was Mearing very well in this instance.

After a bit of pottering, I mainly sat in the door of my shed, out of the wind and rain, hoping for a rain-free Sunday.

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Sunday, 20 January 2008

Rainy Saturday - but bargains galore!

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