The 2015 Allotment / Veg Patch Thread - it's here!

[TheSpottedZebra]

Yes, it's the thread you've all been waiting for, a place to chit chat about your allotment or fruit and veg patch - however big it may be. Even if it currently only imaginary or no bigger than a pot of growing basil from the supermarket.

Come discuss your plans, your seeds, your learnings from previous years and your goals for this year. All levels of knowledge welcome, from absolute beginner, to enthusiastic 2nd year-er (me!), to anyone else.

Just seen that Lidl special offer on veg seeds - 5 for a £1 or 29p each starts tomorrow - nowhere near me though and I think I have all mine now (famous last words...)

This is the thread I need, please can I join? Looking forward to reading the whole thread once I get a chance, need start getting excited about planning the veg patch again.

I'm a keen beginner, been growing for 6+ years getting slightly more ambitious each year but still find the learning curve daunting. I always start off mega keen then lose heart once the weeds take over or the weather is bad. Finding time will be my problem this year with two dc under 3 so looking forward to the nights getting longer and getting out in the evenings, and of course doing as much as I can with them out in the garden with me. I'm also very high up so our growing season starts a bit later than most.

If it hasn't been covered already...I've got a load of expensive seeds that are now out date. Was going to just sow them anyway and hope for the best. Is there a reason why I shouldn't? Know I should've kept them in the fridge but didn't?? Thanks!

Ooh, I will be walking past Lidl tomorrow lunchtime. Always big queues at that time of day though. And the temptation of the new bakery aisle to contend with. Hmmm.

I'm off to Lidl tomorrow. Will probably treat myself to a cheese twist too, and make it a proper outing

So, my allotment contract starts on 1st Feb, but no one has contacted me yet about how /when to get the key. I've politely chased today but no reply. And I want them to reply so that I can get cracking!

Seed sowing will start in Feb too I think. As OYBBK says, chillis need yo be started early, don't they?

More newbies to thread - welcome, welcome! Batman someone much more experienced than me (which rules out no one!) said may as well try to sow the seeds In a spare bit of space and move them if anything takes. DeliciousMonster I think.

spotted - do you mean a key to the site, or a key to 'your' shed? :) if all the contracts start on Sunday, they may be there to hand them out .( - we have gates that are locked at night .)
Browsing seaweed fertiliser- has anyone any advice on that - will liquid or granules be best I wonder...

Oh, both I guess I meant the site, but the shed too! It's a gate that you open with a key but shuts locked, so i can't get in for a look around. It's just all gone quiet, after the contact, visit, contract happening super quickly, now... nothing.

And I want to go! I have bare rooted fruit bushes to get out. And I just want to get started. No snow here obvs.

I got the key to my site at the town hall when I took my first payment in. Maybe have a look at your town council website under parks, gardens, allotments etc, there might be a contact name you could ring.

ahhhh- our gates here are open during the day , and locked at night ( I have a key, but am petrified I will get locked in one day!) and there is a little site hut that is open at weekends 10-12 so you can buy stuff. Do you have an email address or phone number so you can pester?

The town hall? Cripes, there's posh! Ours is run by the parish council, which operates next to a giant supermarket. I spoke to Allotment Lady loads last week, but this week, nothing.

I WANT TO START PLAYING!! I will call her tomorrow and sound keen. I emailed Monday and again today. I hope nothing has gone wrong, or that they've found a better allotmenteerer!

Wow, agoodbook, a shop? How may plots on the site'? 'Mine' only has 40. Not even a loo I don't think.

I think about 100-110 original size plots, now they are halved , nearer 200 I guess, all down two access roads with gates. No loo though :( originally only men down there I guess as its an old established one.
The shop is great - discount bamboo canes. onion sets/ seed potatoes /compost/fertiliser etc, and they sell seeds at an allotment discount via the national allotment society. I got most of mine that way, apart from a few varieties that they didn't have.
Ours used to be run by the Town Council, but an allotment society took it over about 3 years ago.

Please may I join you too? I would love my own plot, I only have room for a few pots at home (I grow Sungold tomatoes every year and some climbing French beans) & I'm on the waiting list for an allotment but for now I help out in the garden at my DCs' school. They have 4 lovely big raised beds but these are a bit low on soil and haven't had any organic stuff added for a while. Also everything needs to be quite resilient as there are 200 kids booting footballs around, playing hide & seek around the beds etc. & gardening is not really a priority!

Plans for the raised beds this year are: potatoes (probably first earlies) in one, climbing French beans in another (with borage & pot marigold for companion planting & colour), dwarf broad beans in bed 3 and onions in bed 4. Trying to keep it simple but also to get some decent crops for the kids before the end of the school year.

They have 3 compost bins already and I built a leaf mould storage area out of random stakes and bits of chicken wire - hoping to enrich the soil a bit more during this year & next. Over winter I also did a bit of the lasagne gardening mentioned earlier (dug the old vegetation from last year straight back into the beds & covered with cardboard). I have a charity shop copy of the Andi Clevely allotment book which is excellent - am hoping the kids will also get interested & excited as the plants grow.

The town hall is an office above a shop, nothing grand!

Our site is locked 24/7, padlocks on all the gates. If you are in sight of a gate you could leave it unlocked but not otherwise. We are a small sleepy town but the allotment sites do get broken into sometimes.

No shop or toilet for us either. We have an allotment society, you can order stuff through them at a discount, but the town council are still in charge overall.

x-posted, Timtam - I ran a gardening club at my DCs for three years, sounds like a similar set up. It was hard work but rewarding. Try and avoid things that will either need a lot of watering or harvesting in August is my top tip! I miss it, but it was a big commitment.

I hope you do well timtam -I tried doing leaf mould in a black plastic bag, as Monty Don suggested, and stuck it behind the shed to 'mature" when I went to look for it, gone! DH had assumed it was rubbish and chucked it away- So no idea if it worked, darn it
I grew sungold last year, and they were just about the best cherry tomato I had tasted, so doing those again this year.
And yes - the Andi Clevely book is my bible :)

whoknows - the gates at ours were put in just after I started 5 years ago, after all the sheds on the site were broken into one weekend :( just about everybody lost something, including rotavator,and the like. It was a real shake up, as we live in a very low crime small Market Town. It seems a gang had arrived in the area and did over every allotment in a 25 mile radius , thieving **

Thank you WhoKnows and agoodbook - this will be my 3rd season of gardening club and so far the main hazards have been weeds (massive ones!), stray footballs hitting the plot during break times, and school holidays (especially hot dry ones)

2 years ago the French bean harvest was early & amazing but last year the plants failed until early summer and we then got a late but brilliant crop during the summer hols, which wasn't much use as they all frazzled in the August heatwave

I help one of the teachers to run it and we have both said it would be a lot easier without the children

I still really enjoy it though, the kids get ridiculously excited by the tiniest potato and the stringiest bean

Snowing here. Looks wonderful, and a good excuse not to be digging, so I bought 2 raspberries and a blackcurrant from Aldi.

I went to Lidl to buy All the Seeds. But they weren't there
So I got a cheese twist.

Jealous of your snow, Stainless !

timtam your gardening club sounds lovely! I wish I had had something like that when I were a lass! My DS is quite into 'gardening', and the delight that he has when he picks anything to eat is so lovely to see. It must be great to be bringing that delight to more people.

I would have liked to carry on with the school club, but there was no support from the teaching staff at all, one of the TAs helped when she could, but all the planning, organising and obtaining the necessary stuff was down to me and another mum. You never knew if two or twenty children would turn up on any given week, and it was a big chunk out of our day (ran it at lunchtime so had to be there from about 11.45 to 1.15). So reluctantly we gave up - in my case a lot of other aspects of my life started to take priority, such as getting my own allotment. The school have carried on to a small degree, but it's nothing like it was.

I was going to go to Lidl at lunchtime, not sure if I will now. How annoying Zebra. I can't have a cheese twist, I'm supposed to be low carbing.

WhoKnows that sounds tough re the club: it just wasn't sustainable, was it?

Gosh, I couldn't go to Lidl if I was l carbing. Walking past the bakery? The chap I asked about the seeds said that they were due in on Monday, that that was what the leaflet and website said. But he's lying, as it def said today (and still does. Yes, I checked). The mini bulbs in pots, and the primroses were in.

Yes, I checked the website and it said today. I might walk up there anyway, could do with the exercise.

Cutting flowers MurielWoods I am growing sweet peas this year which are very easy and have lovely colours and scent (if you get scented varieties that is). I am also toying with dahlias although haven't had much luck with these in the garden probably because of the large snail population!

Zebra it may be that your contact is on holiday this week which is why you're not getting a reply. I was sent the key to ours through the post so had to be patient.

spotted - thats just not fair - no seeds! They had fruit bushes in Aldi today. It was mayhem in there as Thursday is the day for the new offers. ( I went in to get calpol and nurofen for my DGS , and they didn't have the nurofen -hadn't arrived) Why do they do this grrr!
On the plus side, it didn't snow heavens high here last night, so I got another hours digging done this morning -Almost done , just strawberries to weed and sort out, and a quick weed in the fruit cage , and then I wont feel guilty when I go away on holiday :)