The Allotment Diaries - Day 3

Admittedly there isn't much to update you on with regards to allotment progress. The colder months have made it difficult to dig up the ground and every time we all get a free day together it seemed to be icy, but that's life I suppose! I have noticed a lot of the other plots remain dormant at this time of year and as we are new to all of this I think it is understandable.

We have managed to clear most of the ground now with regards to waste and half dead plants. I was given some feedback on my last post about learning to compost instead of taking the waste to the dump - so I took this comment on board and re-used a lot of the old soil/foliage that I was digging up to pack into a hole made for a fence. We used the other leftover plant material for composting at home as there's no space on the plot as yet for this.

We have sort of made a palette fence and there is also a piece of wood to make a small gate just to round off the edges of the allotment. As I said, I re-used some of the soil we dug up to fill this in. 

We have decided to leave the ground dividers in and use this as a guide to when we start planting our own crops.

I always think it doesn't seem like we've got anywhere but when you look back to Day 1, there is vast improvements! We have given ourselves the task of getting at least half of the plot sorted for the summer and I can't wait to start growing on my little designated patch. 

You may also want to check out day 1 and day 2 of The Allotment Diaries.

The Allotment Diaries - Day 2

If you saw my previous allotment post then you'll know there was a lot of work to do, so today we decided to start tackling it. Now that all of the rubbish was cleared, it was just a case of clearing the garden waste. Easier said than done!

  

The wildlife still remained, and when trying to dig up all of the leftover plants I kept coming across frogs and toads, so I had to pop them in the pond before I could continue.

I decided to tackle this corner. I hacked away at all the foliage including a bramble bush - ouch! I then pulled out the random things that were growing and my mum piled it into bags to take to the dump.

There's still so much to clear.

 

I even roped my boyfriend in to help dig some of the plants out. I'm just not strong enough you see!

I think the corner I was working on looks a lot better! I lost count of how many times I raked the soil to get rid of every little bit of plant foliage!

Definite improvements! There's still a lot to do.

I can't wait until we can start growing on the plot!

The Allotment Diaries - Day 1

My mum has recently got herself a little allotment which I have been roped into helping out with and I thought it would be interesting to do some posts documenting the progression of how it’s coming along. The plot that we got is currently in a complete mess. It contains a shed which was full of rubbish, and randomly a cooker?! The amount of litter on the plot was insane, so the other day me and my mum went to have a bit of a clear up armed with a roll of bin bags.

In total we cleared around 14 bin bags and that was purely litter and didn't contain any of the garden/allotment waste still to clear. It already looks a lot better and the shed is clear of rubbish now. Out of those bin-bags, 7 of them I filled with empty beer cans! I have no idea if these have come from the previous plot owner, but either way it was so good to get them cleared from the plot. There was also a lot of broken glass, empty food packages, plastic, seed packets and all matter of other rubbish.

The aim is to get all the foliage and vegetation cleared so we can start from scratch. We plan to grow vegetables, fruit and even some sunflowers! My boyfriend has made a really nice planter out of an old pallet which we are going to put on the plot and grow sunflowers in.

The plot definitely has potential and I did manage to take a few nice photos of some of the plants that have somehow managed to survive on the plot. There’s even a small pond and I saw a toad and a frog, so it will be nice to keep this! I can’t wait until it starts taking shape but there’s still a lot of work that needs to be done.

I’ll keep you updated with all of the progress!