From Storm Arwen to the end of the year 2021

 Our first full year came to a close with the possibility of everything being blown away, a category red storm was heading our way and although we were on the edge of the red zone it still didn't fill us with much confidence. Expectation was for devastation and heart break, as it wouldn't have been just the issue of replacing what we had as all things can be replaced. But! it would have been seeing the memories being scattered around the allotment. Our lass is much more sensible and pragmatic in her approach, we would have just re built, at least it would have been nature and not vandals our lass said. Fortunately our green man which is hung over the shed doorway protected us, unlike a lot of our neighbours who had seen fences down, broken glass in green houses and whole polytunnels skip down an allotment or five from its original position. We were very lucky to escape unscathed.

Here is a pictorial catch up of things we have been doing till the end of 2021

We made use of the gates our lass found and planters in position

Our lass put down a little path

Fence on one side getting sorted, new posts in and the free edging our lass sourced making a really good divide.

Our lass wanted a bird table which the robin could get to, this is my interpretation of one using off cuts.

Our Guardian of the allotment

It hasn't been very wintry, a rare bit of snow up at the allotment

Our Christmas display, don't know why I didn't take a photo, but we did add baubles to the tree.

Christmas day down the allotment, our lass would like to note that we did have food as well.

Our present from Father Christmas, well technically it was down by the exchange point in the allotment where people put things they don't want. But It was Christmas day and a good find, so lets not spoil things with reality, Thank you Father Christmas we will continue to be good in 2022.

As we prepare for the coming seasons.

 Life all around us seems to be forever in the pursuit of looking backwards, dissecting what has happened but alternatively an allotment does help you look forward to the future. You may well look back upon successes and failures but when you are down the allotment you seem to be in a constant state of what does the future hold? 

Our future down the allotment is of hopes and ideas, the learning of what you have enjoyed growing, and growing more of this produce in the coming year and the willingness to accept that the likes of carrots are far cheaper to buy by the bag at Asda than try to spend months growing them to then be devoured by carrot fly. With encouragement from our lass I have grown within myself in regards my abilities to build what is around us at the allotment and our lass too has had the enjoyment of success. We have both enjoyed the ability of just simply being, to lose hours but gain fulfilment. 

We have done plenty, but I have lost the initial condition a lot of new allotment holders suffer which is called the Mimi syndrome. best described as look at me, yes me, look what I have done, as though no others had done the same before.

Lots of pallets and like the jobs we have in mind for when we come to the allotment it normally turns into something else getting done, then these pallets have the same fate, they were to be fencing but if you scroll down you will see some of things they have become.

First time try at growing onions from seeds.

This was taken towards the end of September and it was great to have a display of colour down the allotment.

Our lass was rightly proud of her cauliflower a very pleasant surprise as the ones which were nurtured seemed the least likely to produce but let them do their own thing and they gave you results like this.

Hopefully keep our stuff safe from the grass cutter. our lass is full of cunning plans.

Nature can be so beautiful 

Onions in their own bed and manure on , well on just about everywhere as you can see.

Our lasses idea, pallet planters

Prepared today for the raspberries to be moved. Hopefully it will help to stop them wildly spreading also help keep the neighbours fence upright.

Two pallets and a bit of loose planks of wood, we now have a potting bench with shelving... it actually is stable, maybe down to the sheer weight of it.

One year on down Our Allotment

We have been on our full sized allotment for just over a year now and our time upon it has been an interesting growing year. We grew lots of onions where we envisaged growing none, two beds of sweetcorn, one as the back up as well as the first planted but both grew. An absolute bumper crop of strawberries, a daily supply of raspberries, potatoes, potatoes, potatoes although wire worm and a pest was a slight issue. Our lasses flowers grew well, with an initial would we grow any to having various displays which have done very well and brought the colour to the allotment our lass wanted. If the rhubarb is anything like it's growth in the first year we should have a bumper harvest when we can finally pick some next year, we also have to tame the octopus of a blackberry bush and reposition the raspberries.

All in all it is as always an adventure, you travel along not knowing exactly where you will end up. Vegetables we thought we would want to grow have dropped out of favour such as carrots, we will be doing a multitude of peas and beans next year and I, with the knowledge of growing tomatoes this year will be more selective and use a slightly differing technique for growing, so as to not have such a glut but a high quality tomato for our lass.

It has taken a year but I have also got out of my system the need for telling the world "Look at what we have produced" I am sure it is some sort of allotment owners ailment. Feeling as though you were one of the first to grow or do something and get the urge to tell the world. It is why there has been such a big gap between the last posts. I have still been taking photographs so you can see the before, the during and the after, but in the future it will be a bi weekly or monthly activity on here. This is our diary to look back at what we have done.

So with that, here are some of our latest photographs

The sweetpeas as you can tell have done very well and the scent could be quite powerful en masse as they were.

Not everything has been perfect, the day our stuff got moved, but lets move along ourselves, next photograph please.

Potatoes, potatoes, potatoes.

It is not a party trick, but every time I use a fork I manage to bend one of the tines on it....

July 26th, just taking in the view down the allotment.

Isn't nature great. Must admit in this instance the bee was quite drunk on the pollen gathering so made it easier to take the photo and for once my camera took a good shot.

End of July looking back at the allotment as we are about to go home.

A tidy shed, finally made use of the work bench, so at the same time had a tidy up.

Potatoes coming out muck going in

August 11th winter spuds sown

Grape vine put into place in the green house, as you can see the end of the tomatoes for this year, such a bumper year we had to give buckets full away on freecycle.

Our first pumpkin a little early but does need at least 2 weeks to mature. Will report back to how well it stores.

Club root, not good for the cauliflower, no more of them for a while it seems.

Our lass had been looking for a deck chair for quite a while, finally got one at a great price.

The Best Exotic Marigold Greenhouse. This was our best marigold bloom at the time and it got snapped, so seemed a fitting addition to the greenhouse

Our new bug house to be completed

I think with the amount of photographs I have just put up, I really need to keep on top of this blog as we do the allotment itself.

You are dealing a lot with time travel when you have an allotment.

 Who is to say there is a month between posts or that I had written this a month ago and this has appeared now? Well this sort of reasoning is similar to when I say to our lass that I didn't hear her when there are two sounds at the same time as they cancel each other out.

I am sure I have written about this before, but you are forever time travelling when you have an allotment. You are either looking back and comparing with how something used to be or just how much something has grown or like now, even though we are only midway through July, we are looking forward and making plans for next year and the consideration of crop rotation, what worked or didn't and simply at its highest priority grow more of what we liked this year or was missing from this year.

Here is a quick review of the last month.

The Strawberries as you can see were plentiful, at least ten punnets or more this size, quite a few shared out and just as many enjoyed, our first year strawberries did fantastic.

Our lass found another bargain "Tenner lady" not for any other reason than she cost a tenner.

We have had some great days weather wise and the view is very muchly enjoyed considering the world we find ourselves in at the moment.

flowers

Flowers

and more flowers. Our lasses initial troubles with getting the darn things to grow have now come to fruition or should that be flowertion. Our lass will be doing things differently next year but it has all helped to learn what does or does not work or what you want to do or not do.

Just some of our onions drying, and it should not be long before the tomatoes ripen.

A woodpecker caught on the wildlife camera, wish I could just get the perfectly clear shot. Just a little too close.

and finally....

Every shed needs a little bit of lace curtain don't you think?

You know it is going to be a good day down the allotment when......

 When we first venture onto our plot for the day ahead, we find ourselves surveying for changes. Those alterations can be negative, such as a new crop of weeds, the demise of a plant or the left over seedling massacred by a slug or alternatively as we did yesterday you can be greeted with a more positive view where our plants first flowers were on display. Our lass was the first to notice the clematis having its first flower, as we walked through the gate our sweetpeas were unfurling their flags of summer by displaying flowers for the first time this season. Last but not least the yellow petals of the virgin courgette could be seen heralding the arrival of its fruits to be born.

Whilst the day may start with a positive we are forever vigilant against the negative, namely, slugs! We have beer traps a plenty, but at times that seems nothing more than an empty house going viral on social media. You feel the slugs are sending out invites "Free Beer and all the juicy leaves you can eat" We did find some slugs last year on taking over the allotment which had been that well fed that they would have struggled to fit into a half pint glass. We now take our war to the next level, and have gone for biological / chemical weapons, the natural sort of course, using Epsom salts. With us expecting heavy rains in the next few days our lass thinks a few of the beds may resemble bubble baths. If it gets rid of the slugs I am quite prepared to turn the allotment into a foam party for the purposes of eradicating the slugs.

Having the allotment has one glorifying pinnacle though "The Bounty" and our bounty yesterday was overflowing with a record setting strawberry harvest. This had already been broken on the first pick with one punnet full, something which we hadn't achieved last season barely getting one or two strawberries where the slugs and birds had beaten us to them. This season we are already onto three punnets full. Quite a large one as well as you will see from the photograph. We had our first ever crop of peas and a second crop of new potatoes. The new potatoes on the second crop had been found by the slugs as nearly half had tiny holes in them, but fortunately we were left with quite a few for us.

One thing we hadn't planned for is, what to grow after you dig up the potatoes? To be honest it was a case of would anything grow? Now it has we have to think of what is next? Our lass has some emergency sweetcorn which is too close together so we are going to move that in to the old potato bed. There is not a lot to lose, they are too close together where they are so would fail because of that it was just better than doing nothing with them. Now they will have chance to be free in open ground, will they take the chance or wilt? We will see.