Allotment- inspire me, please?

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We've been given a big allotment (3mx14m). What I'd like to do is to grow things specifically to give to the food bank/soup kitchens over the seasons.

I've looked for information at work, and found a few soup kitchens. Would they accept vegetables/fruit, do you think?

And what to grow? Potatoes are a no-brainer. If I'm donating things to a food bank, though, I need stuff which can be eaten raw, don't I?

Inspire me, please! 12 months ago, I killed a cactus, and I'm still a baby-gardener. I'm learning, slowly.

Evidence of carrots being bastards.

Forgot to say that the main thing is to enjoy your allotments. Enjoy the growing process, the learning, laugh at the weather, laugh at the failures. £3 to buy a huge bag of onions or grow your own ? Home grown tomatoes and strawberries, cucumber are delicious ! Laugh at the wonky shaped vegetables... Enjoy the insects and animals even if they eat your crops

I totally agree carrots ARE bastards.
Onions are dead easy - I buy bags of sets (tiny onions) from Poundland , red and white, and grow enough to last nearly a year. Garlic also easy and you plant the garlic cloves in late Autumn.
Leeks and swede are great for over wintering - just harvest as you need.
Green beans aka French beans are easy but you need tall bamboo canes to grow them up.
Cauliflower bit hit and miss - wonderful last year, not so good this year as too hot for them I think.

Get yourself a compost bin or make one yourself on the cheap, ask you neighbours for their veg and fruit peelings (raw, NO SPUD) so you will have lovely compost in a year.

I don't grow carrots. Home grown ones are 100x tastier than shop ones but I usually get carrot fly or rats eat them.

Not even rats would eat mine

In news recently, some Lidl stores are selling 5kg boxes of wonky fruit and vegetables for £1.50 which is great. It's to help stop food wastage

The food banks near here will not take unsealed food, dh tried to take potatoes and courgettes from ours and they wouldn't touch them.

I am on my 2nd year allotmenting.

Successful with most stuff but the most prolific things where I get a glut are courgettes, tomatoes, french and runner beans. Potatoes are easy peasy too.

Soft fruit is no trouble, strawberries, rasperries, scrumped blackberries. Had an apple tree already on.

If it's for a food bank/charity and you are allowed them chickens are the best producers on ours. They don't cost a lot to keep, I get 5 or 6 eggs daily from 6 chickens and eggs are so versatile and good for you and probably morw expensive to buy than fruit and veg.

Your other option would be (if the food bank won't accept fresh stuff) to sell or swap your allotment produce. Having just read your other thread I wouldn't recommend making jams and pickles as it's either lots of peeling/cutting or handling very, very hot stuff.

And if you fuck up a process in the sterilizing you might just cause a mild listeriosis outbreak.

Try contacting your local salvation army. Our local one is brilliant for stuff like this. They have a massive catering kitchen in their building, loads of old dears who volunteer and make jams and pickles and chutneys to sell and at our baby group a few years ago there was a table with various bits and pieces like fruit, tomatoes, sometimes tinned stuff for people to take.

Ours was also in contact with a local womens refuge and when I had all ds baby kit to rehome they came around and collected it. They also knew which families attending both the baby and toddler group and the youth club were struggling and helped them too.

My DH was seriously ill in hospital one December. They somehow knew about it and when I went to collect dd from youth club pulled me to one side and asked if they could do anything whether it be arranging for dd to be collected/dropped off, any help with transport and whether we had enough food etc (dh self employed builder).

Thanks guys!

I think I'm going to take the (if we are lucky enough to get any) excess to work, DH's work, etc, do the 'swap' thing, and donate cans to the food bank.

The first year I grew spuds, we had just moved here, the garden was a nightmare having been left to do whatever it wanted for 5 or 6 years and it had gone mad! Our garden tools were still in a box somewhere and I was too weak to carry the spade I'd borrowed from next door. Also, the entire place had been covered in 6 inches of gravel. I managed to scrape a tiny bit of ground clear and weed it a little, but it was hard as a rock. I made what was little more than dents in the ground.

You know when you haven't had as many spuds as you thought you would, and some languish in the cupboard for a little and start growing eyes? And when you do want to cook them you cut the eyes out? Well, those eyes were what I planted in our little dents.

I expected nothing from them, and was not able to tend them though I sometimes watered them.

We got enough tiny spuds for dd (then 7) to have with her supper. It was BRILLIANT!

For the next few years, until the garden got too much for me and became as overgrown as it was when we moved in, I just kept a few spuds back from what I'd bought from the shop, waited for them to get a bit old and grow, and then planted those. LOADS of spuds, but I am too weak to dig them all up now. I expect there are still tons of them underground feeding the worms! Win/win eh?!

Also, I boil a couple of garlic bulbs in wayer until it goes to pulp, strain it and use that as a spray against black fly, works well on spuds. I've sprayed the pots i have out the front in place of garden, and so far haven't had any nasties.

There is a small ant farm on one branch of what may be a bay tree. It's fascinating.

There is a small ant farm on one branch of what may be a bay tree. It's fascinating.

If you have ants then you have aphids. They farm the aphids to suck the nectar from their anuses.,

Yep, I've been watching them for weeks. But those are the only aphids there are. I can't see any aphids anywhere else and there's no sign of honeydew deposits or mould.

From the point of view of donating produce to a food bank, most places will not accept fresh food.
Things we have found grow well on ours are onions, garlic, potatoes.
Fruit (unless there are already established trees or bushes) and cucumbers don't seem to do very well for us.
We also keep chickens, which if you have a large space is great. We rehomed ours from the local battery hen rescue charity.
Looking after chickens is also something that charities will get vulnerable adults and children to help with, so your allotment could be potentially used for that alongside a charity.

Most places don't take fresh food.

If your plot really is too big ask to halve it.
I've gone from a half plot to a quarter plot. It's much more manageable and weed-able. And plenty for me and 2 dc's to eat. If you don't count the bastard carrots.

If you really don't want it, op, offer it to a community garden project. I donated loads of spare seeds etc to mine.

I work in a food bank that takes fresh food but most don't. I agree with the pp suggestion about selling the produce and donating the money.

Veg that we've been able to produce quite quickly in our veg patch have been radishes, beetroot and courgettes.

Potatoes, earlier and second earliest are dead easy. Cut the tops off of they get blight, don’t spray!

Fruit is easy and you could make jam and chutneys to sell then donate the money.

Google half hour allotment. Don’t underestimate the time it takes!

@IkaBaar: I'm not trying to derail the thread - food for the homeless is too important a subject to treat flippantly, but I hope people don't mind me going off at a tangent as something completely unrelated just struck me.

However, I notice you live in Aberdeen.I am an extremely keen Stuart MacBride fan - I find Logan McRae to be an extremely appealing character - and I just wondered if he is popular in Aberdeen and how people feel about the books.

Apparently you are not meant to use fresh soil for growing carrots; need at least 1 year old manure, preferably 2 years else they split and rot. (Learnt from my FIL who grows lovely carrots!)