October 17

These are the wildflower seed mixes sown on each half of the additional piece of land I've been granted. The extra land was just a mass of weeds between the hedges and our plots, so the committee have divided it up for us to cultivate

Will post a comparison picture next summer....!

Bed 4 Garlic and onions

Bed 5 still covered

 

Wildflower seed area.

September 17- Conversion to No-Dig

Bed 1 after spud harvest- sown with green manure, leftover old legume seeds and dressed with manure and homemade garden compost.

Bed 3 Dug and weeded.

 

Having now discovered the Charles Dowding method of 'No-Dig' I have not dug out another weed anywhere!

I may have to change my name!

Beds 3 (dug) ,4 & 5 (covered)

 

 

I shovelled 22 (liftable) bags of this lovely well rotted horse manure from a local stable. It's a shame we don't have a trailer and a 4x4!

Soil conditioner from our local recycling centre- 2 uk pound a bag- I treated myself! Its made from all the 'green' waste recycling collected at the tip.

Bed 3 dressed with soil conditioner and horse manure. (I should have done it the other way around!)

July- August 2017

Bed 2: Brussel sprouts

Had to raise the netting as they're getting tall.

Bed 3 has been covered with membrane and I started to dig and remove the perennial weeds: mainly nettles and thistles.

The water butt is now connected to the guttering and an additional 2 black dustbins have been rigged up to catch the overflow & dunk watering cans into.

 

I'm trying to keep the rest of the plot covered.

 

8th August- three months in and the spuds are showing the first signs on blight.  Others plot holders were more badly affected as they've been in the ground for longer, so I decided to dug them all up.

I planted 2kg of Desiree (red) and King Edward (white) seeds from Wilko's for 50p bag.

The King Edward have yielded approximately double the Desiree, so will be planting them again!

Pretty please for a first crop, but will get them in earlier next year, as there are none that are big enough for a decent Jacket spud!

 

 

June 2017

 

 The new allotment shed all ordered and tidy :-)

 The shed at home- unordered and untidy! (It's too small really)

 Sprout seedlings growing at home

 

Sprouts transplanted.

Progress

It feels like I've done quite a bit in setting up my plot, so I'll let the pictures speak for themselves:

 

 

Two 50p bags of spuds from Wilko are in the first bed to be cleared of weeds.

 

 

 

 On another visit I collected pallets and made a double composter,

 

 

covered my pathways with double thickness weed membrane (50cm wide) and the other 1.5m x 5m wide beds with single sheets from Aldi.

 

 

The shed has finally arrived, but I had to fix the doors on myself and the guttering is still to do. I'm very fortunate that it seems to be the deluxe model, with double doors AND a window, which none of the other sheds have, so I suspect  there is a little "shed-envy" among fellow diggers, as they've told me they've nick-named me "Sarah-Posh-Shed"!

 

 

Digger has made a start on his pallet chair.  Aged 9, he doesn't want much input or advice from me, so I left him to it saying "measure twice- cut once" which unfortunately wasn't heeded. Luckily I have a plentiful supply of free pallet wood!



 

 

Day 1

Digger was very disappointed that the shed hadn't arrived but I was just glad it didn't rain. I dug out the biggest of the thistles and started clearing the weeds.
It's going to be a long job......