Our New Allotment

Two months ago we received a plot on the local allotment. Our plot was rather overgrown, but we had one bed ready to use and another hidden under a mountain of plastic, rocks and broken glass! Here’s our new allotment journey!

I decided to start with the existing bed, and go from there, so I planted what I had a little (retrospectively) too haphazardly, but never mind – it’s year one, and a huge learning curve. 

In this bed we planted salad greens, chives, nasturtiums, marigolds (calendula), radish, carrots and beetroot. A few weeks later I added rows of more beetroot, radish and khol rabi in between. Then I realised I had a quarter bed left empty, so I popped squash, courgette and gherkins in too as well as raspberry canes along one edge.  A neighbouring plot holder turned up with two sun flowers for the children, so we popped those in too, to hide the compost bin.

Obviously that’s a lot for one bed, but with limited space we had to do what we could, really.

After I managed to uncover the second bed, I popped the strawberries in, leaving way too much space between them, and made a herb circle. At the end of that bed I added a Logan berry, four tomatoes and two peas. 

We’ve had a few strawberries, but not many – I’ve actually just put some cloches on to try to protect it from the birds, but I suspect that’s affected the sun the strawberries are getting as we’ve not had any since. But it is their first year and they’ve only been in the ground for 2 months, so that might be it too.

In the middle of the herbs I’ve put some Kale, and so far they’ve avoided white fly, and have been producing beautifully, so that’s great news!

The plot came with a fully grown and flowering apple tree (complete with a gazillion caterpillars, but fortunately they were the nesting type, so I just moved their whole nest and that seems to have gotten rid of them all) and  an abundance of mint and spearmint. It’s surrounded by brambles too, so that should mean plenty of blackberries and there’s a huge Comfrey plant, so fertiliser should be easy to arrange too.  Oh, and I almost forgot the huge rosemary bush too! I’m excited about that!

It’s been a massive amount of work, and I honestly didn’t think I was going to be able to do everything I have, so I’m feeling rather pleased with myself – even with the new wildlife discoveries we’ve been making!

We’ve been at it for two months, and we’re now at the harvesting stage for lots of the things we’ve planted, which is terribly exciting! Watch this space for lots of fresh and healthy recipes as well as growing tips as we learn them!