A mixed bank holiday weekend ...

This was going to be a post full of joy as yesterday my parents and my brother came over to help us with the allotment and we got masses of brambles and other weeds cleared away. It would have taken us a hell of a lot more time to do it with just the two of us and we've also found two beds that are almost usable.

However, we went down to load the tools into the car this morning and some bastard had nicked the rear wheel. Bad enough, but this follows on from Saturday night when somebody, probably a drunk parking up to use the nearby cash machine, has bashed in our rear passenger side door. May they rot in whichever personal hell would make the dishonest gitbags suffer the most!

Anyway, rant over. Lets get back to the plot.

We got a huge amount done yesterday, met a few of our allotment neighbours and made some very nice discoveries too. The main task of the day involved cleaning weeds and rubbish. Underneath the weeds we discovered two beds which had clearly been in use 'recently'. In one bed, we found a number of spuds and also a number of nasty little cutworms, so we'll not be putting spuds in there again this year. That said, the beds, which are now nestling cosily under some nice weed supressing fabric, should be ready to use very soon, probably towards the end of April. Today, we were going to dig another bed to go with them so that we could start to plan our rotational crops, stick in some left over onion sets that my dad's donated and plant a Champagne rhubarb crown which D's mum bought us, but that'll have to wait a few days now.



Above: Our two lovely beds, snuggled beneath their sheets. In the background is the vast pile of waste we generated yesterday. Ulp!

One of our aims in taking on this plot is to encourage wildlife as much as possible and to use said fauna to help us control any pests we may encounter. We want the plot to be organic, peat-free, wildlife-friendly, water efficient, carbon neutral - any good practice you'd care to name, we want to do it. That was why it was lovely to see the little fella below hopping around when we'd cleared a few areas.



Above: A little frog. Aaaah.

We also had several visits from a nice little Robin, but I didn't get any clear pictures of it. Never mind.

Our clearing also uncovered the fact that our allotment is, as an estate agent might put it, "Sited in a pleasant spot in the south of the city with good views and a rustic outhouse with inbuilt toilet. Carpeted throughout." Yes, inside the Shed of Doom there is a loo and there was quite possibly more carpet hiding beneath the growth we cleared than there is in our home. This does leave us with the worry of what to do with a thousand square metres of soggy Axminster, but it will have kept some weeds at bay anyway. Below are a few clearer views of the Shed of Doom (I've spared you a look at the loo).


Above: The exterior - charmingly ramshackle and lethal as hell!


Above: The interior - a well-organised working space ... erm!

Though the interior shot was taken with my arm outstretched, I did later take my life in my hands and venture in to find a new (old) shovel and rake, both in good working order. Throughout the day, we'd also uncovered a pair of loppers, several soil sieves, a propogator and assorted pots and trays which can all be cleaned and should all be OK.

We met a few neighbours for the first time too. One bloke wandered past a couple of times and gave much-welcomed, good-natured encouragement as he did so. A few plots down there was a very pleasant gentleman who spent a good quarter of an hour giving us a potted history of the site and helping us to find the nearest water tap. He modestly said we shouldn't take his allotment as an example of what can be achieved, but it was actually great! A smart, well-organised layout with a pond, canes ready to accept beanstalks, composters slowly ... erm ... composting. He took his plot over three years ago and admits to having a shed that was probably even worse than our wreck.

There's hope for us yet!

More mystery growth ...

Some more mystery growth which I hope people can help us identify. I suspect that both of these may be crops which have just overgrown and gone to seed since the last allotment tenant gave up and scarpered. I feel like I should find out, because if they are some kind of pesky weed and there are problems like deep taproots that I should be aware of, I can do something sensible about it rather than just hacking and slashing indiscriminately and exacerbating the problem.


Sorry for the blurriness of this picture, but it was on the end of a tall thin stalk and I wasn't tall enough to get any closer. The blurriness is caused by a tight zoom and hand shake. I have a feeling this might be a carrot plant that's gone to seed. Am I right?


Another crop gone to seed? If so, what?

Be cheeky!

Just some thoughts on cheekiness. Now normally I'm an anti-social bugger who likes to shun the company of humanity, but I've begun to realise that some contact with other sentient bipeds can be of use.

Yesterday, while wandering back from the pet shop with a heavy bag of dried cat food under one arm and an even heavier bag of litter under the other, I noticed a couple of hefty exterior doors leaning against a house. Our plot is in need of a door to make it secure so I asked the feller if we could take one and he seemed only too happy to agree. Cheeky, I know, but we've got to take advantage of these opportunities now. It's also good for the old carbon footprint to reduce, reuse and recycle as much as you can manage, so salvaging in this way is ethical too.

Of course, finding something else even heavier to carry was perhaps not the best thing for our arms, but, as the cliched mixed metaphor says, never let a gift horse pass you by.

Book reviews

Here's a few books that we've been reading in preparation for getting our plot. Believe me you need to do some research before taking this on. It's been a revelation to see just how little we knew about what we've decided to get ourselves into.


The Allotment Keeper's Handbook: A Down-to-Earth Guide to Growing Your Own Food by Jane Perrone (RRP £14.99):

This one's a corker. Wonderfully reassuring and full of great advice, this is a must for anybody wanting to get into organic gardening. Perrone, who writes for The Guardian and whose blog (see links) is also a great source of advice, has a friendly style which is a pleasure to read, but she really packs the book with great information. One particular plus is that she acknowledges the huge number of mistakes that she made early on (mistakes that ... ahem ... rather echo our own) and her later successes offer great encouragement to carry on. It's a little short on illustrations, but is written in a clear manner, which fully explains any of the bewildering new jargon which you'll have just been exposed to. Highly recommended!


The Allotment Specialist edited by Alan and Gill Bridgewater (RRP £4.99):

This is one of those wonderful books that takes you through everything step-by-step, with lots of painted illustrations so that even fools like me can understand. It's much less-detailed than Perrone's book, but complements her work wonderfully by concentrating just on the basics. I've often sat there with these two books and the HDRA Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening (see below) open side-by-side, flicking between the three of them to expand my knowledge on a given subject. It's also very cheap. D's ma picked up a copy of this and another in the Specialist series for just a couple of quid. A real bargain.


Allotted Time: Twelve Months, Two Blokes, One Shed, No Idea by Robin Shelton (RRP £12.99):

Unlike the other books, this isn't a reference work. It's an account of the first twelve months of the allotment that Shelton and his best mate Steve took over after Shelton left his teaching job with stress and as such it's a very effective example of the nourishment that allotmenteering can give to the soul as well as the body. We follow the two pals through some tricky times, but it's clear just how valuable Shelton finds his allotment in terms of his recovery. He also makes the food sound great. Shelton comes across as a nice bloke and creates an appealing impression of what allotment life and people are like. While there is little in the way of direct advice, that's not really what the book's about anyway. Just read it, enjoy it, and look forward to your first shed and your first crop. The copy we read was the hardback which we borrowed from a mate (we've still got to return it - sorry Phill!), but the book has since been released in paperback at £7.99.


HDRA Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening edited by Pauline Pears (£18.99):

The HDRA (Henry Doubleday Research Association) has since become Garden Organic, the UK's leading organic gardening charity (see links), and as you'd expect this huge book is a key text for any organic gardener. Aimed not just at the allotmenteer, this takes in all aspects of green-fingeriness, giving advice on lawns and decorative gardens too. It's thorough, authoritative and illustrated with some stunning photographs, although the double-page spreads on beneficial insects and pests and diseases are stomach churning (I know that they're good for the garden but ladybird larvae are the hideous stuff of nightmares!). It's got great advice on composting, water conservation, green manures, natural pest control and anything else you'd ever need. I know you can buy a lot for £18.99, but believe me, this book will pay for itself many times over.


The Vegetable and Herb Expert: by D.G. Hessayon (£7.99)

I remember Dr D.G. Hessayon's Expert series from being a child. My grandfather was a keen and skillful gardener and always had this book to hand, so it reminds me of the sweet, soothing smell of beautiful, plump tomatoes ripening on the lip of the sash windows, their colours running the full spectrum from deep green, fresh from the vine, through yellows and oranges to the most vivid blood reds. Mmmm. Anyway, there is much to commend this book. It's a detailed reference work to every aspect of growing hundreds of crops, from soil types, diseases and pests, sowing and harvesting times and anything else you'd care to know really. On the negative side, it is a little out of date. The vast number of chemicals that Dr Hessayon suggests using to kill off all manner of nasties is actually rather shocking. It is, however, an interesting insight into what's changed in veg growing over the last few decades and like any advice, you can of course pick and choose which bits you want to take. Whether the cover's claim that it is "The World's Best-Selling Book on Vegetables and Herbs" is true or not, it is a very useful book. It just seems extreme to napalm your cabbages just to rid them of a few blackfly!

What is this?

Above: Mystery green thing.

Help! We don't know what this is. Can anybody indentify it? I've not found it in any of the books yet. I'll be honest, we're probably going to dig it up anyway, but it would be nice to know.

What the hell were we thinking?

Above: The plot from hell, overlooked by the shed of doom!

Oh dear! Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear! Oooooh d... well, you get the picture.

We - that's my partner, D, and me, M - like food. We watch programmes about it on the telly. Not that wretched Gordon $%&£*! Ramsey - we hate him. And we don't like Jamie Oliver either - there's something schizophrenic about the manner in which he'll be all ethical one minute, like a zoo keeper telling off Rotherham mothers for feeding their caged children chips through a fence, but the next he'll be trying to get you to fork out your cash for whatever high fat, high sugar rubbish that his supermarket paymasters want to push that week. We kind of like Rick Stein, although he can seem a little insincere, but our favourite is Hugh Whiffle-Sturnwhirler ... just kidding (sorry about the cheap gag!) ... Fearnley-Whittingstall. Not only has Hugh helped me to shrug off years of prejudice and the belief that everybody with a double-barrelled name is an inbred fool and a waste of oxygen, his charming, enthusiastic, ethical and logical approach to food - whether it has roots, feet, fins or hooves - is inspiring.

However, what has inspired us most is that D is actually a fantastic chef (I call her that advisedly, as she makes the very good point that all too often men are called chefs while women make do with the title of cook) who makes lovely food of whatever kind she turns her hand to. I like cooking, make decent chilli, curries and stir fries, but I am not in her league and feel thankful every day that I'm with someone who cares enough about us to make such great grub.

We've been getting organic deliveries from a local, Sheffield wholefoods store for a couple of years, and the next logical step was to start growing our own. We've got herbs in the yard of our redbrick end terrace. The yard's a nice size. If you're careful you can almost cover the floor with one opened out page of broadsheet newspaper. We tried growing onions from sets last year. They went in tiny and after months of care and nurture came out ... tiny, but still fresh. You needed about six of them for any job, but never mind.

Anyway, because of our space issues we put our name down on the waiting list for an allotment. At the beginning of the year, I bought D Jane Perrone's excellent 'The Allotment Keeper's Handbook' joking that "this will be the year we get our own plot", but believing that it would be years down the line. Sure enough, within the very week we get a letter from Sheffield City Council offering us a plot at a secluded site in the south of the city (good alliteration, eh?). After just over a month of sending back and forth paperwork and cheques and what have you, we've finally got the keys. We've had a look. Oh dear! Ooooh dear!

The thing with D and I is that we tend to solve problems by arguing. We get grouchy and shout and swear and when the cussing and hollering's done, usually we'll have got through whatever job we needed to do and we can get back to being friends.

We're going to be arguing a lot over the next few months.

The plot is rather overrun, particularly with bramble. There's a patch of some weird leafy green thing that we can't identify and a deathtrap of a shed (seriously, it's amazing that the damned thing is still up after the earthquake the other week). On the plus side, there are two water butts, a couple of rusty wheelbarrows, at least one of which still works, and various other discarded equipment that might be put to good use.

This brings me to the point of this blog. Inspired by the idea of fresh, homegrown veggies on the table, spurred on by experimenting with new culinary delights, we will do this. We will turn this wasteland into a fertile, productive plot which will provide most of our vegetable food. If we can do it, and we don't know our brassicas from our elbow, others like us could do it too. If we record our successes and perhaps more importantly our balls-ups, others may be able to learn from our experiences. And if nobody does, well at least we'll be able to read back over these pages when we're feeling down and see how far we've come.

We've got our flask, some thorn-proof gloves and a selection of salvaged tools very kindly bought for us us by D's mum.

Time to get mucky.