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.

Signed up for another year!

Well I went and signed my missives and handed over my association fees this Saturday just gone, so we are signed up for another year.

I didn't really do anything at the plot, apart from empty the green house of some mouldy dead plants, re-attach a downpipe on the shed guttering, and tie our shade fabric canopy back up.

Oh and brought home mouldy leather gloves to wash. It has been very cold in that shed, it is all going to need a really good clean now that it is warming back up again.

But the plot didn't look as disheartening as I expected. It is a big mess, but all that work in previous years to put some structure into it means I can still see hope under all the weeds!

It is do-able - one bed at a time.

2010

I see I only managed 1 blog post last year! Not very good.

I promise we did go to the allotment more then that, although not as much as we should have done in the second half of the year. However we did get lots and lots of soft fruit, some potatoes, various beans and peas and some salad from the plot, so it wasn't too bad. We also got lots of weeds!

This year we hope to do better. However we are also growing something else, a baby due in May, so best laid allotmenting plans may not come to fruition! And I'm going to try and photo and blog too.

I haven't been to the plot yet this year, it has only just emerged from the snow and ice really, but I am going to try and have a walk over there soon.

Happy New Year!

Back to the plot!

We have been very lax so far this year, having hardly been to the plot at all, but we both went down today.

While I went off to the committee meeting, MrUrban dug up our Jerusalem Artichokes, sorted out the bed they were in and then put some back for this year. So we have quite a big bucket of JAs to eat our way through.

After the meeting finished I got to work on some weeding and tidying and MrUrban sowed some pea and bean seeds in biodegradable pots. That worked quite well last year, so we decided to do it again. I think they are Borlotta, Pink Lady, Runner, Purple Dwarf, and Broad on the bean front and Starlight, Ambassador and Kelvedon Wonder for the peas, like last year.

I had a good wander round the plot too, to see how it was all doing. The strawberries look happy enough, and the runners we took off and potted up in the Leanhouse are doing well too - even a flower on one of them. The soft fruit bushes have lots of healthy looking leaves and shoots too.

The fig trees in the Leanhouse have tiny little fruits starting off which is cheering, I hope we will be able to look after them and get them to ripen. I'm not going to bring them out of the Leanhouse yet as I think there could still be frosts which would do for those fruit.

The only other thing growing is purple sprouting broccoli, but it is a bit small and sad looking. But between the 3 tiny plants we may manage one batch of Stilton and Broccoli soup eventually.

Shed Refurb

Our shed floor has been falling in since we got the allotment 17months ago. It seemed to be dipping alarmingly in the back right corner. We dealt with this by ignoring it and piling lots of crap into that corner; we just didn't use it.

We knew it was a job for good weather (as we had to empty everything out), but last summer we were just too busy to get round to it. So this summer was the earliest possibility.

The other evening at about 6pm, after a full sunny day on the plot, we thought we would 'have a little look' to try and suss out what the actual problem was. The next two days were forecast to be rain free and we were available, so it seemed to make sense to suss out what problems we would be tackling.

It turns out that, as we see when we pull up the ply and broken floorboards, the people who built the shed decided that a single nail would be fine to hold each joist, and these joists are about 7 or 8 inches off the ground at the rear of the shed. Obviously without any support the joists have just sagged, the nails have just bent, the wood has twisted and broken, and the floor caved in.

So . . . we figured we needed to support the areas where the joists meet the wall, and at various points along their length. We decide breeze blocks are the answer, especially as the nearby B&Q has them at 91p each.

After a little work with a mallet and a cold chisel we have suitably sized lumps to fit underneath. While we have the floor up I throw some damp proof plastic sheet under there to try and keep the evaporation up into the shed to the minimum, and we get it re-boarded with some tongue and groove we salvaged from a local theatre company's store, when they were emptying it.

This gave us a good sound surface, but there was still a bit of movement. Without taking up all the floor we couldn't secure it all on blocks, but we decided that if we could board over the whole floor with sheet material it would secure it enough.

We have a storage unit with lots of bits and pieces we have collected over the years, so we went there to see what we had. We found some 'paintings' we had done for an exhibition in 2006. We will never use them again as they were site specific, so although they are technically exhibited pieces of artwork (created for an International Festival no less!) they are also bits of MDF with paint on one side!

We sawed them up at the storage unit into pieces 400mm wide (so we could fir them in our car) and 1700mm long, which is the front to back measurement for the shed.

And: Voila! A shed floor, complete with exciting decoration! It must be the most stylish floor on the site. And much more stable than it was. We then started putting furniture in. We had a drawer/cupboard thing already, which went in the formerly wonky corner. It already had a batten on the side of it, so we used some offcuts to fill in the space next to it as a desk.This would then become the 'kitchen', with our little camping stove, and storage space for the plates etc. We had also found a lovely gate leg table in the street in June, with the intention of it going in the shed, so that got added too. Along with some metal shelves, new hooks for all our tools, and a few rails and shelves for our bits and bobs, the new style shed was complete.

We have spent so much time in it since then! It has been quite humid here for the past few days, so it has been a case of do a bit outside, and then pop into the shed to have a sit at the table and read. Then back out again.

It will really be the biggest benefit in winter though, when it will make the prospect of going to the allotment much more desirable.