Well I'm Alex and I took on an allotment about 6 months ago now. The plot I got given was originally the dumping area for everyone else's weeds and general rubbish, so there was a lot of clearing to be done, I thought I had got ontop of it ok, and was doing well... I'd dug it all over,
pulling out the weeds I could get hold of.
Then I went on holiday for a week, and when I came back, lets just say all the soil you can see above was as green as the grass patch is. In the end mum and I agreed we needed to have it rotavated to do it properly, however we did dig over the top right part ourselves so that we could get planting before it was too late. So it started off looking like:
The two mounded piles on the left being potatoes. However sadly the weeds grew up again around the other rows and I had to abandon them. However the potatoes started to grow really well, which wasn't quite as depressing as it could have been.
Then I planted up onions to the right of the potato mounds, and to the left is spring onions, courgettes, cucumbers, and parsnips. With another row of potatoes in between to allow for a scattered harvest. The thing with courgettes and cucumbers is that when they first germinate you can't easily tell them apart from weeds, so those rows are very weedy, and I'm just waiting for them to grow a bit larger to tell them apart.
Then I started to clear the bit of land below this, I needed to plant the squash and the beetroot which I did, as well as planting some carrots to germinate in the pots at the top.
Time was ticking on, so a friend of mine kindly gave me some bamboo canes, and I set about putting up the bamboo teepees for the runner beans and sweet peas, I've got 5 canes of each. Below this I made a mini tent shape out of sticks I found and these will be for the peas. The weather on the day I did this was unbearable sun and humidity and I now have lovely lines on my arms where my top stopped, although they're just starting to fade at last!!
The onions are now growing incredibly well as are the potatoes, it's really nice to get up there and see these rows of bushy potatoes and the onions in their neat little lines, really gives you a feeling of self achievement, having seen what it looked like initially.
People at the allotment are great, and so keen to give you tips and just generally talk about life, it's nice to go up there and get away from everything. Then there is the occasional chat with people to give your back a break from trying to pull up all the blasted weeds. The guy opposite me has said I can borrow his hose whenever I need to, which saves about 45 minutes in watering. And the guy next to him with two plots gave me 10 brussel sprouts and cabbage to plant, and a tray of leeks to grow up, which was great, as otherwise it would have been far too late to plant them. Things are really taking shape and it's brilliant!!
