So, where do we begin.
Well, I’m writing this post because I’m enjoying those rare moments whereby all the beds have been weeded (as best as they could be), the grass is cut, the edges have been strimmed and everything is looking in order, which is significant as a year ago, it was a very different story.
For one reason or another, allotment activity last year was at a bare minimum, and so I couldn’t grow and do much as a result. On the whole I managed to keep the grass in check, but that’s pretty much it. This means that the weeds were kept in very neat rectangular squares on the plot, for the beds that weren’t covered.
I justified this in my head by saying I’m doing a bit of wilding, and even took on a No Mow May – which I didn’t enjoy looking back. I’m sure if you’re a perfectionist like me, you can relate.
Fast forward to the new year of this year – and I decided to get my allotment mojo thawed out, and braved the elements to start clearing the rubbish, and between then and now, I’ve been able to slowly chip away at things.
January 2023
Optimistically, at the end of that video I said, “Let’s see what I get up to on the next visit.” How foolish of me – what followed was a months long end deluge, whereby I couldn’t really do anything of any real significance.
February 2023
After that video, the next visit was in February where I was able to give the wildlife garden som TLC, and to put things into perspective about the weather these two Instagram posts were taken about a month apart, so said TLC came in two parts.
Then I had a compost bin/old hugelkultur bed to take apart, and I thought I’d lay a top dressing of soil onto the the beds of the wildlife garden. At the same time, making use of the logs to create a raised border. It worked out ok!
I first wanted to clear the spent wildflowers and the dead foliage….
March 2023
Then, what came next – more rain, and less allotment activity – but I did make a herb garden using coir compost and this was a great little fix. Nurture Compost is a great little product by the way, for me, because of the quantities you can buy it in, and because it has a feed built in.
The herb garden is still going and I use it on the regular, especially the mint. (Great in a gin and tonic!)
April 2023
Between downpours, I decided to get out there and try and clear one bed at a time and the April Bank Holiday was quite a productive one as I managed to clear, not only one, but two beds, and cut the grass – wohey!
Then, more rain.. and not much action after that. In the midst of all of that, I hadn’t sown a dot – no potatoes, no onions, no seeds, absolutely nothing, and I blamed the weather.
Whilst it was raining, I was saying to myself, “I can’t sow anything, it’s too cold, wet and windy.” And then all of a sudden, bang! We’re in the summer and I’d missed the boat for sure.
So, I made the conscious decision to let things go fallow, and let the beds recoup – at least that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.
At this point, my goal was to clear the beds of weeds, keep the grass cut and keep the beds covered. In the midst of that, I did also make the decision to venture into the world of no dig and made a no dig bed, complete with a cardboard base.
I’ve been experimenting with no dig over the last few years but not consistently, and so something I want to think about doing in the future is to be more consistent with practicing no dig gardening.
How that looks in the future, I’m not 100% sure, but I’ll do my best.
Here are some of my explorations with no dig gardening.
July 2023
Over the course of May and June, not much happened. I cut the grass, strimmed the edges and kept things organised and where I was able.
July, thankfully is where things really started to get moving when it came to clearing the beds, and oh boy were they overdue! I used a mattock (one of my most useful tools) to chomp away at a mixture of bindweed, couch grass and hippuris (mares tail).
The raspberry beds took a while to clear and needed to be cleared during a visit on their own. The beds had a combination of couch grass, dead wood and mare’s tail.
Clearing the edges were pretty straight forward, but inside of the crowns required some meticulous work. Something I’m going to have to keep an eye on, and be quite focussed on with these beds is the grass growing inbetween plants, and pulling it out when I see it, and keeping things habitual.
Now, the second of the raspberry beds, was a completely different story because since planting the raspberries, they’ve slowly died off, so there was actually nothing there, and this was just a straight up clearance session.
The question that is begging to be answered is, what should I plant there? There’s only one rule, it needs to be a fruit. Strawberries, blueberries or perhaps a grape vine?
What would you plant there? What is easy to maintain and provides a good yield? Leave your suggestions in the comments below, I’d be fascinated to read them and get some ideas flowing.
Something you may have noticed, is that the wood edging I built over the course of 2018-2019 has slowly gone back to earth, as is the case with most pallet wood exposed to the elements.
It left me with a pile of wood, some good, some bad and so I laid this on the ground to mark out the sizes of the beds, the rest I’ve slowly piled up with some old stumps and some old logs and decided to make another bug hotel, which I’m really proud of as I’m making use of the the space and it means I’ve got a bug hotel at each end of the plot.
By the time I was finished, just a few days ago, every single bed was weeded and for the first time in a while I felt up straight with everything, which is a nice feeling.
Rome wasn’t built in a day, as the old saying goes!
What’s left for the year
Patio + general weeding
I mean – look at the state of this – to think at the beginning of the year, this was absolutely clear…
To the untrained eye, this looks like a pile of junk, and some of it is a pile of junk, but some of it isn’t and can be repurposed.
I plan to sort through this and get rid of the junk, and use what can be used again. I also want to plant some shrubs that do well in shady areas. Something to perhaps compliment the wildlife garden.
Compost bins
These bins have served me well, but alas, they’re slowly falling apart and will need replacing. If you have a compost bin made of pallets, this is expected.
The compost in the first two bins, that are covered in logs are good to go, and could be dug out.
Once emptied, The stuff at the top needs to be moved to the far left, and at the same time the bin needs to be built, so this will require some thought and some shunting around.
I’ll also need to source about 13 pallets that are the same… I’ll let you know how I get on with that.
There we have it! You’re all up to date – and (finally) so am I. Hello again to current readers, and welcome to new ones! Leave a comment below and let’s wax lyrical about gardening and allotments.
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