My Tiny Plot

The weather was gorgeous this weekend – perfect gardening weather you might say, if a bit misty in the mornings as you can see here. Ryan and I were up at my tiny plot by 10am on Saturday and hard at work digging over the last of the lower beds. Then we made a start on the manure pile (which is riddled with couch grass like everything else on mtp). With the help of David’s wheelbarrow we made a good start on it. I also dug over the seed bed where the cold frame will go. And later on put some manure around the fruit bushes to protect them from the weed killer we’re about to unleash on the grassy bits next week. But what about being organic I hear you say! Hmm… I’m all for organic growing but err.. maybe once we’ve exterminated all the weeds, yeah? Met some more of the neighbours this week. Clive – who prefers chicken manure to horse and hates anyone stamping on his clean paths and Claire who laughs a lot.

Seeds have arrived. Hooray! Planted some tomato, aubergine and cucumber seed and put them in the airing cupboard in a propagator. We’ll see if they germinate. Did lots of digging on the plot this week. Back-breaking work. Getting rid of the grass clumps is the hardest, Ryan did that bit. Meanwhile, I got on with some digging over and weeding at the top of the plot. We met one of the other plot holders, an older guy called David. He gave us lots of advice. He told us to burn our weeds and put the ash on the potato bed. He also told us that the fruit bushes are raspberries and gooseberries, which is great! AND he gave us six garlic plants. He was nice. He’s in the background of the shot here.

This week I discovered that my tiny plot is actually twice the size I thought it was. I thought our next door neighbour’s had a lot of fruit bushes that they weren’t looking after, but then I found that they are my fruit bushes! Ordered some seeds from www.alanromans.com – waiting for them to arrive. Laid out some early potatoes for chitting, and some red onions. Wasn’t sure what to do with the garlic so laid them out too. Cleared some more of the plot. I’ve been trying to find out what the weeds are on the plot. Searched online and found that they are couch – bad news – couch grass is EVIL. Every time you break up the roots it re-grows. We’ll have to pick it all out by hand – that may take some time.

Just got my plot this week. Bought a book called The Allotment Handbook by Caroline Foley. It’s a great book I’ve learnt lots already. Like don’t dig the soil when it’s frosty (which it has been all week).
The plot is in a pretty bad state. Half of it has a big pile of manure dumped on it and the other half has last year’s sweetcorn harvest rotting on it. Bought a simple soil test kit and found that he earth on the plot is neutral that’s good apparently. Also found out that the plot is north-facing – that’s bad apparently.
Spent a good few hours working over the plot, digging up old crops (corn) and clumps of grass. Made a diagram of how the plot will look – where the beds will be etc. There’s still a long way to go!