Kitchen Garden Forum

Some pictures and details of my own experience as someone who has relatively recently re-joined the band of UK plot holders.

Hope you find this of some interest,
Please do feel free to join in and recount your own experiences and perhaps even add pictures of your own situation.

Background
I first held a plot in another area in the 1970's, it was shared with a best friend of mine at the time, sadly the land was required for a motorway widening scheme and what the council had to offer as an alternative was not practical or acceptable to us. We kept looking for something suitable but sadly my friend passed away early in life and I lost the incentive to continue looking on my own.

Umpteen house moves later
My wife and I first acquired a plot on our existing site in the early to mid 1990's, it was stony and very much clay based, it took a lot of work for not much in the way of results and as our working lives were busy we gave it up as we decided we were fighting a losing battle after a couple of years.
That plot has now been divided into two half plots and neither half is much better than it was 20+ years ago despite the effort put into it since.

Move forward to 2005 and we approached the local council and asked to be put on the waiting list again for a full size plot on our previous site.
We were told waiting list was 5 to 7 years.
Sure enough 7 years later in 2012 we were offered a half plot.

Despite it being densely overgrown we decided that as I was now self employed I could make time to do battle.
We accepted on the proviso that if any immediately adjoining full or part plots became available we had first refusal on them.

So it was that on July 1st 2012 we officially became the plot holders of this half plot.......................








Is this of interest Should I continue

yes it is! please do continue, I am fascinated by other people plots. I have yet to find out how to upload pics from any apple device, as the photos they take are too big for the quick file attachment, and I can't get flickr to work with apple thingamybobs either, so I love to see other people pics!

Hello Pa Snip

To answer your questions, yes it is of interest and yes please continue. I have been a member of the Forum for several years now and have always enjoyed other peoples posts of their endeavours especially when photographs are available. It's always interesting to read about gardens big or small.

Best wishes

Barney

YES, YES ! Always interested to see what others do with growing spaces.
If I visit a new person's house I'm not interested in how many bedrooms they have or how fancy the kitchen is. The first thing I want to see is THE GARDEN ,

So keep posting please,

Keep Posting - as I've indicated I'd love a section for posting pictures - with a bit more pixels allowed like retropants has found it is rather limiting! (Can't even change my profile pic)!

Westi

Evening Pa Snip, it is topics just like this that inject some new life into the forum....so as the other have said, please post all you have.

Yes, please keep posting. Looks a bit like our plot when we started 25 years ago. I shall be very interested to see how you cope with it.

Beryl.

Well a great big thank you to those who have encouraged me to continue, I hope you continue to find it of interest.

Only thing I would ask is please continue to tell me from time to time if you want me to continue, and conversely tell me if you no longer think it is of interest.

I am open to questions about my experiences, albeit limited, with this plot as well

To Continue
As I have said, when we took this plot on I was fortunate to be self employed running my own business and was in a position to take time out and devote some serious time to attacking the task. I wasn't in a position to throw money at it so it had to done the hard way, manually. Anyway, past experience had taught me that there really is only one way in situations like this and that just getting machinery in and turning it over was not going to be a long term answer. Digging out roots and couch grass by hand was the answer

As the front half of the plot seemed less overgrown with deep rooted weeds like dock and dandelions I opted for starting at the front and working back to the rear section which would be harder work as it was overgrown with raspberries that had run wild for years along with numerous docks, dandelions and nettles.

One week later, by 8th July progress was very satisfying



A heap for burning was forming, although it turned out it had to be moved three times before it was finally set light to.

I was finding so many large stones that you can see a stone path forming on the front left corner

As we had no advance warning a plot might become available we had not sown any seeds in preparation so it was a case of buying plants as and when we saw something we fancied growing, providing it looked half decent and stood a chance of surviving.

By 15th July the plot was starting to look worked and as if there was a plan, in truth there was no plan that year other than to get it tidy and harvest whatever we could. So half way through July it looked like this



We had a block of sweetcorn, some spinach, couple of tomato plants. Leeks, celeriac (which came to nothing) and purple sprouting broccoli

By 22nd July, the plot looked like this



I dare say many of you can relate to the feeling I had when I got to the point where I could stand at the front of the plot and clearly see through to the back of my neighbours shed. oh joy.

Fantastic effort keep up the good work. Going back to the beginning, no wonder there is a long waiting list if the committee / manager (I'm a garden owner, no experience of allotments) let plots get into that state before they boot people off and give them to someone who cares.

Good point well picked up upon Geoff. It does seem odd doesn't it

The site is council owned and operated, managed through the town hall with a dedicated manager there. It isn't as if he is not aware since according to when you phone he is often out on site visits. Mind you I do have to be fair and say whenever I have contacted him on any site related issue he has always taken action. I also did get a rent free period by way of some recompense for the overgrown state.

However, the council policy ( which he may not agree with but has to work to ) seems to be that if someone is working a plot they are not kicked off, the part of that I find difficult to comprehend is that there is no written definition of what constitutes 'working the plot' effectively.

So if you dig a 6ft square and leave the rest to take root and you are 'working the plot' it seems.

Stronger enforcement might certainly reduce the waiting time I reckon. As it is sometimes people turn up and think 'bugger that for a game of soldiers' and reject a plot that is overgrown hoping a better option will turn up, leaving the weeds to grow even taller before someone takes it on.

I should say that, from what I have been told by other plot holders, up until about 2007/2008 the plot had been well looked after and had been one of the best on the site. Sadly the chap who worked it became too ill to do so on his own and subsequent holders of that plot just didn't keep it to a good, let alone effective, standard.

Having had an allotment years ago I think the issue of unworked plots is a major one, especially if there are long waiting lists. Obviously there's a difficult problem if somebody is temporarily ill and unable to do heavy work but to let a plot go to total rack and ruin before action is taken is unreasonable. Maybe there ought to be a compromise solution in that after x months the next person on the waiting list is allowed to take over half that plot. If the existing person recovers they can get back to their plot and perhaps take over the next plot which becomes available if they're still in a fit state to work a whole plot again. It would be interesting to know what happens on other allotments.

I'm very impressed with your efforts. It takes a lot of HARD WORK to get to the state you have, and as you say, there is really no easy way of doing it. But just think of how many calories you have burned off and how much more physically fit you have become in the process. Well done ! Look forward to more photos.

Thank you Primrose

I have indeed burnt off some calories since joining the ranks of allotmenteers (not sure that word is really recognised, spellcheck certainly doesn't like it, )
Lost a few stone, only really awkward time though was when I tried to continue working the plot whilst suffering a bout of sciatica. Mind over matter.

As you may gather I have made a point of trying to keep a photographic record. But this is meant to be a potted history.

August 19th 2012
Started making raised beds out of mini pallets, lined with membrane damp course material from local builders merchant





October 4th 2012

The long awaited shed arrived early and was assembled by 11.30am on the concrete base I had made , at last a tea room
Fruit trees also went in that day, pot grown 2 year old stock.

By now the back part of our half plot was starting to come together as well, much harder digging had been called for in this section.

The winter months saw some opportunities to continue with ground preparation, the shed was shelved and provided a shelter at times against the wind, it does tend to whistle across the site


One Year On
To recap, this is what the plot looked like on July 1st 2012 when we took it on



And 365 days later, June 30th 2013



Later that day we treated ourselves to a small celebration



As the song goes "We've only just begun"

Shortly after this day the plot thickened

As a site agent, council's appointed site gofer, I wrote up my interpretation of "cultivated" which brought time in to the equation.

From getting s plot to having it clean and productive in stages by weeks and months. So long as realistic progress is maintained, or I'm told about problems all is good.

The minimum requirement is to strim or weedkill weeds so they do not spread to other plots.

Of course you get "characters" like the couple who took a plot, cut 3x10 yards of grass and brambles down and failed to reappear. The third time the coumcil asked them why they weren't making visible progress after over a year the response was. "We took the plot on as a long term project." and they wanted to be "green" so weren't going to use any chemicals. That's a precis of a rant that included comments about being harrassed and to add insult to injury she was a fulltime mother and he was a teacher, so between them they should have been able to manage at least two or three hours in a week.