All Over

Well, we have given up the allotment, finally.

We had done almost nothing on it last year, and humphing a baby over there with all the associated accoutrements was meaning I ended up never going. A 10 minute job of watering things became too big a task, even though it is only a 15min walk away.

So we decided that if we weren't making good use of it, then someone else should have it and get enjoyment out of it.

We took out a few prized tools and locked up for the last time a fortnight ago.

We hope to find somewhere with a garden at some point, having all your plants growing outside your own door seems like a much easier option! Or maybe we will get an allotment again when the baby is a bit bigger.

plans for the future

I've been on the allotment committee for a few months now and I'm getting involved in some plans for improvements around the site. We want to get more people involved in our site, and improve the visitor experience, the place is a bit of an eyesore at the moment, which I'm sure doesn't endear us to the neighbours!

We have already given 4 plots to make up 2 large community allotment plots with various groups using them, they have had the land for a while and the lead group have just raised money for landscaping and a cabin with a toilet, so should be able to start planting it out soon. Various other community groups, some local residents, and some local schools would also like to get involved more so hopefully we can get ourselves in a position to do that.

I'm on the funding team for our committee, and we have identified the things we want to fund, and some of the places we are going to apply to. Hopefully we can put together a good explanation of what we want to do and then get it funded.

One of the first things will be a healthy eating project with the community groups: the new beds that are going into one of the community plots will hopefully be meal themed, one for pizza, one for a kind of soup, one for a salad, so the people using it can really see a link between what they are growing and what they end up eating.

Along side that we want to do demonstrations of cooking in the plots, and also collect up recipes from all the different plot holders and make a collection out of it that we will aim to get printed. I'd love for us to be able to do that one, it will give a real good sense of community inside the allotment, and also give us something we can share with our neighbours so they can see what we are all about.

Here's hoping.

It is also a time for change and plans in allotments in general in Glasgow. There is a consultation going on about allotments: their use, provision, upkeep, funding, thier benefits, security, etc If you are in Glasgow then you can make a comment, the strategy documents are available as a pdf, and it can be responded to online. Links here: Allotment Strategy. Closing date 20th June for responses.

ship shape in the evenings

The light evenings since the clocks changed have made a big difference to our workrate.

The first job came from a windfall. The community group that has a plot on our site is doing a load of work at the moment, they have had some luck with funding and resource allocation, so will be making a big push to sort out the space we have given them, with our help. This means a certain amount of clearing of their plot, one of which has a lot of gravel in it. Our Secretary made sure that they weren't considering just throwing it away and we are now working at moving it around to where it is needed.

First lot he moved to a big boggy area on the main path, and then a second batch we wheeelbarrowed away to our Leanhouse™ to make a floor for it. It is particularly boggy there (one of the reasons for siting it there - the soil was too damp to use as a bed) but now it has a ground sheet down and gravel on top, to keep the weeds at bay, make it look a little neater, and improve drainage. There is still plenty of gravel though, so we will have to get some other uses for it going. Probably communal paths.


This also coincided nicely with us retiring some metal shelves from use at home, so we reconfigured those as Leanhouse™ staging, putting the shelves on the wrong way up to form shallow trays. They are the perfect size for grow bags and seed trays. They cost us a few pounds about 10 years ago, so we are definitely getting our money's worth!


They are almost full now a couple of days later, we have mixed salad, peas, beans, broccoli, kale, chard, lettuce, all sorts of stuff just sowed or as young seedlings, in there.

Also in are the potatoes, we have gone for Arran Pilots and Desiree this year. We used compost from our functional bath, the Bath o' Salad, to go in the trenches, and then refilled the bath with new stuff ready for lettuce seedlings, which are now in.

And then last night we did a bit of spring cleaning rather than planting. We had put the last of our home produced compost in an old broken bath which was sitting there and looking unattractive and taking up room, so I dragged out a black compost bin and transferred it all to that. The cracked bath is now in the skip. Once that was gone we rediscovered a metal arch underneath it, so that has now been installed in the middle of the 'flower' bed ready for sweet peas to climb up.

And the old strawberry plants have been transplanted from their overgrown bed to a nicely cleared new one. That leaves up clear to do some serious grass removal in that bed in preparation for the squash going in.

All in all it is coming together, I reckon a couple more evenings and we may have it in a fairly neutral state, with all the beds ready to go.

no-meeting meeting

We had our allotment AGM the other day, but unfortunately there weren't enough people there to hold it formally (we needed over half of all the plots represented). However whilst quite a few of us were there we decided to have an informal chat about various things: the workdays we had last year, the bank balance, security (as always), plans for attracting some cash, help and materials, and the progress with the community garden which is in the process of being created on the eastern edge of our site.

So, it turned out to be a pretty good and informative meeting in the end. Especially good for us, as we hadn't been to one before as we got our plot in Feb last year.

I have volunteered to be on the committee too as they were looking for some new faces, and someone else has done too, so hopefully a bit of new blood will keep the energy levels up. I'm looking forward to helping out - the work days were good fun last year, and I'm sure we can build on them this year.

smoothie charity

I guess if you have an allotment or garden you will normally make your own smoothies (we have this year with our raspberries, strawberries and the rhubarb made good ones too). However innocent smoothies are tasty too (when the fruit runs out) and now they have just got cute and charitable as well.

To raise money for age concern they are asking for people to knit little hats for their smoothie bottles, these will then be sold in Sainsbury's during November and 50p from each bottle will go to age concern. They got 230,000 hats last year (so £115,000) and this year are aiming to raise £200,000 by getting 400,000 hats on bottles. My mum gave me a leaflet on it and I have knitted my first one this afternoon:


modelled here by a Thirsty Planet water bottle (you don't have to buy any innocent products to join in).

If you want to join in they you can find the patterns and details here. Any little knitted hat of a similar size is acceptable, so if you have rather more advanced knitting skills you can go to town rather than following their 3 patterns. Check out their blog section for photos of some amazing ones in shapes of animals etc.

Happy knitting!

Back after another break

I know, it is all holidays with us.

This time our friend L came into water and harvest for us, she more usually resides in London and has her name down on a very long list there, so this was an opportunity to pretend she had an allotment of her own.

Most stuff seemed good when we got back, apart from the courgette and the beans. All the courgette's leaves had gone brown and flopped over (the squash was similar) and the leaves of the bean plants (way over the other side of the allotment) were floppy and brown too. I've taken all the leaves off the courgette as the rest of the plant still seems healthy, but I'm not sure what to do about the beans, they are only small plants and if I remove the brown leaves there won't be much left.

It has been wet so I don't know if it is some kind of rot. Any ideas as to what is going on, and how to deal with it, welcomed.

Back after the break

After a lovely holiday in the Netherlands we came back to find our plot in good health. A kindly neighbouring plot holder had been roped in to water (and eat) the tomatoes and they were all doing very well.


Many things have sprung into life or attained monster proportions. Peas and bean plants are getting to a good size, one of the courgettes is well on the way to becoming a marrow, several of the lean-house™ tomatoes are a good size, and the cucumber had run away with itself and has become enough for a whole meal rather than an addition to salad.

Some huckleberries have also ripened and flowers are starting to appear on the squash.

And . . . we have some leaves appearing on the 'christmas' potatoes.


The seeds I put in for turnips, radish, spring onions, and beetroot have come through as well, I just hope the weather will be good enough for them to grow to a decent enough size. The radishes should be quick enough.


The seeds in the greenhouse are doing well too, the rainbow chard is looking pretty already.

Wash Out

Well it was throwing it down today so the work day and BBQ didn't happen. So we now have a freezer full of burgers ready to go for a couple of weeks time when we will try again.

However, even with the rain, we managed to get something useful done today. Our seed potatoes arrived for our mimi 'christmas' potato crop, so we got them in rubble sacks and an old compost bag.


These are sat in the lean-house for now, I didn't want them to get completely drowned before they had even started going in the bags (although the bags do have drainage holes pierced in them it really is far too wet today).

We also took out the remaining broad bean plants, as they were covered in 'rust'. This is fine in itself at this stage in their lives, but we have just put some dwarf bean plants in nearby and didn't want it to transfer to them too, as they are only small. Some of the beans were quite young so I've left them in their pods and will just slice them up and throw them in a stew, rather than opening them up and being rewarded only with a couple of beans the size of dried lentils.


And today I also brought home a courgette and courgette flower. I keep reading about deep fried courgette flowers, so that is what I'm going to do with this one, I'm looking forward to trying it out.

Living off (someone else's) Land

I collected some apples from a neighbouring plot the other day, after OKing it with the secretary. The plot isn't being used at the moment and the apples were starting to fall off the tree. I can't cope with needless waste like that so went and rescued some of them.I had about 5 pounds in the end. I divided that up, the ones in the silver bowl are for tart tatin, the ones in the clear tub for apple sauce, and the ones laying down on the board for apple jelly. So far I've only made the apple jelly , I cooked up the apples with water and a star anise, then let the liquid drip through muslin to strain it. Then added sugar to the liquid (1 pound of sugar per pint of liquid) , stir as the sugar melts and it comes to the boil, and then you boil rapidly for 10mins . I allowed it to cool a little and then added a bit of whisky ( I used Talisker). Tastes quite good so far, but the recipe advised waiting 3 months before use.



The tart tatin is under construction as I write, I will post pictures once it is done.

I'm going to try and harvest the rest of the apples on the community work day this saturday and then anyone who wants any can take them. I'm also going to do the sauce by then so we can eat it with our sausages.

Work Day

On 13th May we had a communal Work Day at the allotment to get some work done on paths and hedges. We also had a BBQ, which we volunteered to get going and man.

The main job was cutting down the large hedge on the outside edge of the site, it was filling the whole pavement and there had been complaints from people who lived nearby, so that was the aim. We gathered at 1pm and got going with one person on a Lidl scaffold platform with a petrol powered hedge trimmer and the rest of us with brushes and wheelbarrows ferrying the, considerable amount of, waste to the compost heap. Others got on with strimming grass on the paths and painting fences. With about 20 of us it all got done quite quickly, we stopped at 3pm for the BBQ. I had made mushroom, mustard beef, and spicy beef kebabs - peppers, red onion, small mushrooms on all of them and then one lot with beef marinaded in oil, lemon juice, mustard, chili flakes and honey, one lot with large flat mushrooms marinaded in the same kind of mixture, and beef ones marinaded in yoghurt and curry paste. Mmmmmmm. Plus pitta bread and salad out of the Bath o' Salad™ .

Other people brought loads of stuff too, so it was a marvelous social feast - we even had a little generator so we could run some powered speakers and our iPod. Apparently they tried a day like this last year and hardly anyone turned up, so the allotment committee were thrilled with how it went. It was good to meet people and we now know a few more faces.

And the neighbours can walk down the pavement now too.

Rainy Days and Bank Holidays

Generally the same thing it seems. We hopefully took the tools along and started on the cold frame today but the rain soon got the better of us. So we retreated into the greenhouse. Consequently the aquilegia got potted on into bigger pots; my Mum has warned me about aquilegia, she says hers self seed everywhere, so I'll have to keep an eye on them when they get planted out and maybe try and pick them as cut flowers before they seed. I don't want to annoy our neighbours.

Next week we should meet a few more plot holders, we are having a work day to cut the hedge that overhangs the public footpath and to tidy some of the main paths in the allotment site itself. And then a BBQ - we have volunteered/been asked to do the BBQ, must look out some kebab recipes to supplement the burgers and sausages.

I wonder if you can BBQ rhubarb?