Improving the infrastructure - Sheds and nets

The old shed has to go

When we took this plot on, it had a ramshackle shed, built from whatever was to hand, and a greenhouse. The 'shed' had glass all round and, originally, a clear corrugated plastic roof that has been subsequently covered with a metal corrugated roof. I assume it was built as a greenhouse originally as the floor only has slabs in the central area with 'beds' all round. My assumption is that when the greenhouse was added, it was converted into a shed.

 

The existing Greenhouse is staying

Over the years we have been custodians of said structure, it has slowly been sinking into the ground. I have removed a couple of inches from the bottom of the door and it still binds on the ground! Time for a new shed... or two. The rules on our site dictate the overall dimensions of buildings but not the number of buildings per plot, only that the structures must justifiable, have a legitimate use on the plot, not just as a cheap place to store junk! With this in mind we have plans to build new structures and replace the old sheds.

The clear up continues. New timber on site to start building The Galley 

We now have thee half-plots and plan to have the following buildings, replacing what is there at the moment. One shed has been demolished as it was too far gone to be refurbished, although the good parts will be used to repair another old shed on my neighbour's plot. On the site of this shed we plan to build a shelter where we can keep our gardening clothes and prepare food. This has been named The Galley by our friend and helper, Roger. 

The aforementioned shed/ex greenhouse will be the next to go. This will be replaced by a tool shed with a hard standing in front of it. Behind this shed, stood an IBC tank that was used to capture rainwater from the shed. This has been removed and will part of the watering system that we are planning - More on this in a later post. In its place will be a small produce store, racked out with shelves and drying space. We will also store our bought-in compost in here. This shed has been erected and is being used as a temporary store for things like the lawn mower and supplies that will go into the tool shed when it is built.

We do not work with defined beds and paths on our plot. We operate an open-ground system much the same as we remember as children when Sue's father and my uncles, worked their own vegetable gardens, whether that be on their own land or on allotments. 

For the past few years we have struggled with netting brassicas. Medium density polyethylene (MDPE) blue water pipe and nets works better when the structure is fixed to the frame of a bed. It is a lot of aggravation in open ground and never looks neat, in my opinion. This year, I had one of those brain-waves you only get once in a blue moon.  

A few years ago we bought a fruit cage to put on a half plot we had at that time, away from the main growing area. Before we put it up we decided that having a remote section of ground was not going to work for us, so we gave it up. Fully built the cage was too big to be justifiable on the remaining plot. I thought about building it as a smaller cage, but that was not really the answer, so it sat there for a year or three. It dawned on me that if I cut the uprights in half, I would have a very practical height for a brassica cage, a shade over 3'6" high. I cut half a dozen poles in half and built two frames (each 6'3" x 12'6"). These were covered with black butterfly netting. The result has been a very practical setup that has resulted in some of the best brassicas we have ever grown.
 
Ralph

No-dig and raised beds?

The cucurbits grown in the clay soil with added compost
from our own bins. August 2024

If there is one word that seems to have been adopted universally in the past couple of decades, it is convenience. It seems to me that no one wants to make an effort any more. The pleasure in the getting there seems to have been lost. For me, I really enjoy the process, the planning, the doing, the learning and the sense of achievement when I have got there. It may not go to plan, it may go wrong and sometimes it just does not work out, but I have achieved something - experience.

When I first started growing plants, now over forty years ago, I used to look up to the those 'old-boys' that had been doing it for years. I would listen to what they had to say, evaluate and test the advice given. A lot of it was sound, based on many decades of growing experience. Most, if not all, of that advice is as good today as it was then. Just because someone with a camera and a YouTube account has thousands of followers, does not mean they are right in everything they say and do. It also does not mean they are wrong, but how is the viewer to know, without experience.

In February 2020, when we first got our plot, it had been over thirty years since we had last had a plot on an allotment site. That is not to say we had stopped growing, because we had not. We were still growing at home, in our garden and for some years in the back of the garden, next door. I was expecting to find a lot of 'old boys' with years of experience ready and willing to pass on years of accumulated knowledge. My folly was to forget that four decades had passed and the 'old boys' were long gone. It took me a while to realise that now, in my mid sixties, I was one of those 'old boys' and people started asking me. I found myself passing on some of that accumulated knowledge. However, as far as advice was concerned, I had a competitor in the form of 'vids'. 

I was amazed at how many people were 'educated' in all things gardening by sitting in front of a screen. Basic principles had to be swept aside and new ideas are king. No dig is here. Not only is it here, but it is thought to be the magic answer to easy growing, no effort required - and that word again: convenience. 

Before I say any more, don't take this the wrong way. I am not against new ideas. I am just not too sure about totalitarianism applied to the way a plot is cultivated. No dig and raised beds seem to go hand in hand, and they are two different things that can be used in unison, but are not inseparable. 

Raised beds can describe several things/techniques. forty years ago, I used to run my vegetable plot on a raised bed system. There were no boards or walls, just four-feet wide beds with grass paths either side and a deep cut edge to the bed that was 'raised in the middle giving a good depth of soil that could be cultivated from the paths and dug easily when required. Today a raised bed seems to be bordered with wood and filled with on-site-made or brought-in from outside compost/manure (or even bought-in compost!). More often than not, raised beds are cultivated in the no-dig style with masses of material being added every year. This is piled on to the bed giving a new lot of 'growing medium' into which, the plants are grown. The amount of compost needed to do this, over even a small plot, must be far more than can be got by composting waste material produced, so it has to be supplemented, either in the form of commercial compost or some other supply. Surly the work involved in all this is far more than just digging the plot over once a year? 

With our hands on a plot we got stuck into clearing and planning our first growing year. A walk around the site revealed a landscape we were not at all familiar with. Lots of plots had been divided up into small beds surrounded by paths of wood-chip. Copious amounts of weed suppressant membrane was employed in an attempt to control weeds. This alien landscape was a real shock. I wonder what the old boys would have thought of all this.

I offered to clear a few abandoned plots to make them easier to let, nothing too vigorous, just quick going over with the brush cutter. This will reduce an overgrown plot to a blank canvas in no time. It will not get rid of the weed growth, simply turn it to mush and allow the plot to be seen as a flat area. Two of the plots I had cleaned up were taken by people who both said they "did not do weeds". Really? I thought to myself.

The next thing to happen was both plots were covered with weed suppressant membrane and raised beds were built/placed on top. Into these, commercial compost was used to fill, leaving the membrane underneath. Plants were purchased and planted in the compost along with a few seeds, onion sets etc.

This season, they don't have any weeds in their virgin compost (yet) and they have plants growing away that look good. But what happens next? Throw it all away and start again? I am sure I don't know. What on earth is the point of renting a plot, just to cover it up and grow everything in shop-bought 'multi-purpose compost? Next year they will have all the weeds that have seeded this year and by then, the perennial weeds will have made it through the membrane and started to 'colonise' the bought in compost as well. 

Personally, I think there is merit in some of the new ideas, and this coming season I intend to give some of them a go myself. I am sorry, but you will not convince me that no-dig and no rotation are a good idea when applied to a whole plot. However, some things we have seen, do seem to make sense if applied to a particular crop or location. 

Growing carrots, for example. This year, we decided to just grow what we could in open ground and see what grew and what needed protection. We have had a problem with birds in the past as we had three cats when growing in our London garden. The insects and molluscs seem much worse here. Carrot root fly devastated our crop of late season roots, so something needs to change. Years ago there were chemical controls available to the amateur gardener for lots of pests, now many of these substances have been withdrawn from sale to the public, and rightly so in a lot of cases. Nevertheless, it means that a lot of the pests have had pretty much a free table to feast on. 

Growing long, straight carrots is only possible with a lot of work and dedication to produce a handful of roots for the show bench. Although I have grown long carrots in the past just for the fun of it, I am more interested in growing an eating crop, these days, preferably without feeding the local carrot fly's offspring. 

Here is where I started looking into new fangled ideas for some inspiration, but first it is always my intention to get to know my enemy. So far I have discovered the female carrot fly is attracted to the crop by scent. It is the most active April to May and July to August. The fly is also most active during the day and will usually fly close to the ground. Armed with this information I have several options but my age-old method of sowing them in rows in open ground and then thinning them out is not the best one. Maybe it is time to look at some of the 'new' ideas and making a few changes. I have been thinking, for some time, that the best way forward for me is to work the plot with a combination of my traditional growing methods and to incorporate some of the newer methods I have resisted so far.  

It seems to me that providing a few 'standard' size beds means that I can build some frames covered  with various nets. These can be moved around from one bed to another as the need arises. For the past few years we have established six beds that measure 8ft x 4ft (2440mm x 1220mm). These have been laid out each year using string lines and the paths have been established by treading the soil between them. having no boards defining them means the whole plot can be worked with cultivators and tillers in the early spring and late autumn as required. This method works for us. Like everything I commit to this blog, it is only the way we do it. I will not tell anybody how they should do it, I leave it for people to make their own minds up. If you prefer to do it a different way, who am I to tell you that you are wrong? The last point is one of the things I hate about screen 'vids' so many of them are trying to tell you what you should be doing and why their method is the only correct way to achieve your goal.  

Another thing that has changed is the acceptance of rodents and other vermin on the site. Compost bins that are not turned frequently will invariably make good homes for rats. That is why the old school method of frequent turning is to be encouraged. Not allowing the rats to establish a home should soon deter them from burrowing into the heap or entering from underneath a compost bin that does not have a bottom, or is guarded by being placed on wire mesh.

A no dig raised bed is the perfect home for a colony of rats. No dig means the subsoil is never touched and once the bed is raised as well, there is plenty of room for the rats to move in. So many time over the past few year have I seen people reel back in surprise and horror to discover their easy-life methods have played right into the arms (legs?) of a rapidly expanding rat population with a food supply on the roof!

Our allotment site is made up of a great deal of clay. Clay soil is almost unanimously frowned upon, mainly due to its reputation of being hard to work. I am not denying this can be the case but it can be made easier to work by altering the soil structure. However, some plant thrive on clay soil because of its water retaining qualities and firm grip of the roots. On our plot, we modify the soil to suit the crop we are growing. 

It is all a mater of personal choice, what works for me, may not work for others but only by talking to others and researching other growing methods can we transform our own little slice of the site to provide us with the growing conditions suitable for the plants we raise.

Ralph

It has been a while...

When we first took on a plot, I had planned to document our progress visit by visit as I have done in the past, with my other blogs. As you have probably worked out by now, that didn't happen here!

Several things happened to put paid to that. Our home-life changed, Covid made supplies difficult, and after telling ourselves that we would not get too involved in the running of anything once we had moved out of London, we ended up as Site Managers, and generally helping out on the other sites in the association. After our home life started taking more of our time than we could spare, something had to give. At that point we had to take a step back. we resigned from the management of the site and decided to concentrate on our plot. Last year we just gave up on the plot. At that point we knew we could not carry on keeping all the balls in the air. This past year we have spent what time we had, getting the plot back to where we wanted it - producing vegetables for the table.  We are now there and I feel I can get back to writing this blog again.

Over the next few weeks I will be posting lots of pictures and talking about the way we do things. Some blog posts will be reports of what we are up to at the time, others will be talking about our take on allotmenting and growing in general, both as it is now and how it has changed over the decades that we have been involved.

Happiness is a nice healthy compost. 

Our plot has now been with us for a few years and this past year we feel that we have eventually got to grips with it. We also have some help. Our home life dictates that Sue and I cannot be away from home together for more than a few hours, usually in the afternoon. A friend of ours and an ex plot holder, Roger, is now helping out with the day to day stuff and making sure the shortbread biscuits do not get stale.

We have lots of plans and changes in the pipeline which we will be talking about as they happen, rather than listing all the 'dreams' here and then having to try and live up to them. Been there, done that. The infrastructure is being worked on at the moment, rubbish is being cleared and systems are being implemented to make the running of the plot easier. We will also talk about preserving and cooking the crop, maybe even on the plot.   

We are on a journey that has already started. Along the way I will record it here for our own reference, but if you are interested in what we are doing, feel free to follow along.  

Ralph

Lockdown II

It is the 19th of November today, and we are back in the middle of another lockdown due to our continued fight against the spread of Covid 19. I can honestly say that if it had not been for the allotment, I am not sure that Sue and I would have made it to this point with our sanity intact. Not only has it given us somewhere to go, it has kept us in touch with other people, albeit at distance. 

I have not posted here as much as I had intended to do at the outset, mainly because we have had our heads down sorting the allotment and our back garden at home. Now, with a whole season of growing under our belt, we are planning the 2021 season. This coming year will be a lot different. We have time to prepare, acquire seeds and get the plot ready. 

We also have more space, after agreeing to take on an abandoned plot that had fruit trees that have been left or years to grow wild. Another new addition to our armoury are the two greenhouses we have managed to rebuild at home. One will be a 'production house' enabling us to be able to grow most of our plants here and just take them to the plot ready to plant. The greenhouse at the plot will be used to grow chillies and the tomatoes, if all goes to plan, will be grown in a small poly-tunnel that was gifted to us by a neighbouring plot holder.      

 

We have crop

Here we are, halfway through August, still negotiating the social distancing rules and although the lock-down has been relaxed, it is still very much in force and slowly becoming what the politicians billed as "The new normal", whatever that is... 

When we started this journey, back in late February, I had no expectations of  actually getting a crop of any kind. We bought some seed potatoes and chitted them in the shed. These we planed in the first strip of land we cleared. After a while of constant inspection of our two small mounded rows, we were beginning to think that nothing was going to happen and got on with the clearing. Then all of a sudden, shoots started to appear and before long we had a good healthy looking patch of potato plants.

Too late we realised the rows were too close...

All of a sudden, it all seemed worthwhile. As the plants grew, we realised the first of our 'schoolboy' errors. We had not planted the rows far enough apart, or from the edge of the plot to be able to earth them up. We had to just leave them and wait and see what happened. We ended up with a really good crop of delicious extra early potatoes, a first for us as we have not grown any potatoes before, being rather restricted for space, when we lived in London. 

While that was going on, we continued to clear the plot and sow seeds, lots of seeds. Our second schoolboy error. How many tomato plants do you really need? we had hundreds of them from several different varieties. Not wishing to waist anything, we pricked out far too many and had tomato plants filling the great majority of our three-inch pots! As we own a good number of pots in this size, something was obviously not right here. After a bit of a reality check, we gave away as many as we could and just kept eight of each, still far too many, but it seemed a shame to just compost them. At that time of the year, you can't give the plants away. Seems like we were not alone in being a bit overenthusiastic.

We grew a few tomatoes!

I planted six each of four varieties on the plot, and potted on two of each as spares just in case I lost any. In the end, those eight were potted up into ten-inch pots and stood in front of the shed, where they are now producing even more tomatoes. Nine other plants have spent the summer keeping warm in the greenhouse. For those of you who can't be bothered to add that lot up, that is forty-one plants. On top of that we have another six plants in the garden at home!   

Ralph.

A new way of life...

We are now at the end of June, and the events of the past three months have turned the whole world upside-down. The coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic has change the way we all live and react to each other in ways we have never experienced before. As the situation evolved through March, it became clear that this was not just going to go away. When the Prime Minister addressed the nation on the evening of 23rd, I was wondering if that meant the lock-down he announced would put paid to going down to the allotment, effectively throwing away several weeks of hard work and lots of  juvenile plants that we had sown. Luckily, the situation was resolved the following morning when it was announced that going to the allotment would be acceptable as long as social-distancing could be maintained.

A lot has changed on our plot since my last post. It is now under control, and we have crop in place. Lockdown has given us the time to get to grips with the weeds, dig the plot and eventually actually grow something. It must be well over thirty years since we grow any amount of plants from seed. Yes we have been growing plants for the garden, and Sue has always had a passion for sowing collected seeds. This is a whole now ball-game. We have had to collect our thoughts, dig out knowledge that has been tucked away in the mist of time, deep in the brain. Now, a good bit older than we were, these things can take a little longer than they once did. Recall is a bit (okay a lot!) slower than it once was and things have changed. Not the science, but the way things are done. So much more is available and the influence of the internet has completely changed the way a lot of things are done. The biggest change, from our perspective, is the almost total move away from open-plot growing to a system of raised beds and paths. The use of bought-in and ready-made this that and the other seems to be the norm now. Lots of stuff grown in containers and an emphasis on convenience over good old hard graft. I am not only referring to the physical stuff on the plot, but the effort required to acquire the fundamental knowledge. There are a lot of products out there claiming to be all things to all people. Multi-purpose compost and feeds seem to be popular, negating the 'need' to acquire any in depth understanding of soil or fertiliser.

We have bypassed most of the new, and are attempting to grow as we used to, at least for this season, until we are more up-to-date with the new methods and sundries. There are several things that have caught our eye and will need some further investigation already. Right now it is a case of getting stuff in the ground and seeing what happens. Whatever we get this year in the way of crop, will be a bonus as we found it hard to get supplies of seeds and compost in the early days of lock-down. We were also late getting the seeds we had planted, with so much emphasis being devoted to getting the plot cleared.

Ralph

Rediscovering a lost passion

The ram-shackle 'shed' will have to go at some point...

Although not completely new to this, it has been a while since we grew any amount fruit and vegetables. Thankfully YouTube is around now, and, although I am not a great fan of 'video-research' I must admit it can be useful at times. I must say that if I had been a complete novice, I think I would have been confused by the conflicting information out there. Luckily, I had plenty of experience with the trusty Felco's (look-alikes in my case and genuine No.8s of my father-in-law's), a few decades ago helping my late father-in-law prune  several acres of apple trees on the family farm. I was also living next door to a very special man in my life. His name was John Caskey and was a plants-man and gardener of the highest degree. He had trained at Kew Gardens and went on to be head gardener at the Chelsea Physic Gardens. When I first met him in 1979, he was running the greenhouses and looking after the grounds of Kings Collage Department of Plant Science, in South East London. At the time, I was in my early twenties and keen to learn. With a farther-in-law who was a agriculturist and with a next-door neighbour a botanist/horticulturist, I spent the next couple of decades discovering the wonderful world of propagation and growing. Sadly, by the time I was in my mid forties, my father-in-law had passed away and John had moved to a remote part of North West Scotland. Although we kept in touch with John and visited a couple of times before he too passed away, my apprenticeship was over.

For the following couple of decades, work. life and other things took over my life and those days of digging around in the earth and watering the greenhouse took a back seat. Now, in my mid sixties, I can return to doing the stuff I enjoyed for the early part of my adult and married life. I have now inherited those Felco No.8 secateurs, that belonged to my farther-in-law, and I still have a galvanised, long-reach Haws watering can, modified by and then passed on to me by John. Both items are in daily use.

As you can see, I am no stranger to the world of growing, just a bit rusty, as are some of my gardening tools. Like my gardening tools, it will not take me too long to wear through the rust and become bright and shiny once more. In the meantime, I will be spending a few hours shouting at the screen, protesting at the miss-information and ill-informed comments that seem to be prevalent in the world of armature growers, making videos of their exploits. I must get our library of books out of storage and have a sort out. All the classic gardening books we both love are stashed away in boxes awaiting the day when I can bring them down here to or new abode and nestle on the shelves of the new bookshelves, still an the 'design' stage. 

Off we go! 

A second visit to the shop for a bit of a stock up furnished us with, among other things, a bag of seed potatoes. These we could get in to the first strip of cleared ground in about a month or so when the weather warms up. Sue is chief-in-charge of chitting, making use of the existing facilities.

Sue making a start with the potatoes

The plot itself was fairy empty, apart from some rhubarb, a selection of rather neglected soft fruit, and a good sprinkling of weeds. There were also some of last year's neglected celery plants as well as a really good covering of chives,slowly taking over. I made my first job the pruning of the gooseberry bushes. these had not been touched for a while and required some serious reshaping. This will mean a much reduced crop this year, gooseberrys fruit on last-years wood. However it needs to be done as the tangled mess we have inherited will just look a mess and will probably only produce lots of small fruits. It may seem a bit drastic, but opening up the bush to a goblet shape, removing any dead wood and crossing branches will pay off in the long-run. 

Its not the warmest of weather, but one glove and a my sharp pair of classic Felco secateurs, soon sorted out the plants 

Ralph.