Allotment?Veg Patch Thread 13! Are we weathering the weather?

[bookbook]

well, we have got to August , had heatwaves and thunderstorms. Goodness knows what happens next!
All welcome to join in sharing the highs and lows , tips and experiences of growing your own :)
Previous thread HERE

We had a beautiful day here, so I went to the plot and put weed membrane down and some more bark chippings on the next path. That's three paths done, only two more to do. Cathpot the cuttings for the 'Japanese wineberry' are looking good so I will post them at half term.

What a lovely idea to plant a tree
Orangepippinttees have a lovely selection of trees with a really handy filtering tool to choose graft/season etc. Could you go for a tree local to where your aunt was from?

Hi everyone,

Thought I'd join in as I'm going to be needing a lot of advice over the next few months! I'm looking at a half plot just around the corner from me tomorrow. It's just been cleared and rotovated which is a bonus! So I've never had an allotment before. My parents had one when I was a child and I spent a lot of time there with them but since then the most I've done is grow courgettes and strawberries in my garden. DS and I love to cook and really enjoyed growing the courgettes but there wasn't really enough room for them in our flowerbeds so an allotment seemed the best option! I have no idea where to begin. I've got into gardening a bit in the last 4 years and am doing ok at that but will definitely need some advice with this :)

Una that's a good idea, thank you. That side of the family grew up in Shropshire which should give a good range to choose from.

Thanks elephant! Nothing much going on here , it’s been so unpleasant outside. I’m planting my chilli seeds with kids at school tomorrow as part of a project to try and produce a ‘floating gatden’ . We’ve got an old fish tank and I thought chillies might just work

Went to see the plots today. I've gone for a half plot which is right by a water source and next to the main path that you can drive down to drop stuff off. It also has a good sized Wendy house on it that I can use as a shed and a waterbutt. It pretty much been cleared and 2/3rds has been rotovated but there is a rotovator on site that we can borrow. There's a couple of stumps of some kind of bush that the bloke who showed me around thought might come back later in the year so might leave them be for now! Will go back soon to measure up and need to start prepping the soil asap. Any tips on how to do this? It's a clay soil which I'm used to as my garden is worse but I've kind of guessed what to do in my garden (I'm very much a novice!). Dig it all over and add compost?

For clay you basically want as much organic matter as you can get hold of. If it's really pure clay (you can test by rolling a piece into a sausage - google for pictures) you may want to go with raised beds to give you a head start.

Soil improvement is a long term project rather than a race. Is there anyone who brings horse manure to the site (eg from local stables)? We are able to get a trailer load (around a couple of tons) for £10. It doesn’t need to be rotted down. At this time of year we spread it on all our beds and then rotavate it in as we want to get a bed ready for planting.

We really only use compost for setting seeds.

Each year we nominate the beds which will be used for growing courgette and squash the next year and those beds get all of the compostable material piled up on them. At the end of the first year we take off anything which is too slow breaking down, put horse manure on top of the bed.

A month or so before the planting season starts in year 2 we cover the compost beds with heavy duty weed proof matting (it gets re-used from year to year and already has holes in it). We then plant a courgette or squash baby plant in each hole. The plants love the rich planting medium, the weed proof matting retains moisture and keeps the weeds down and also boosts the temperature around the plants.
At the end of the season we clear out the old plants and add them to the compost pile on the following year’s compost beds and the cycle continues. We have been doing this for a few years now and the soil on each bed which has been through this process is hugely improved.

Apologies for the epistle!

Thanks gnome and una. I'm not sure how heavy it is but will check the soil once the snow has gone! Yes they have a large spot where manure is delivered. So when the plot is fully cleared of weeds I'll chuck manure down and rotovate. I presume there's no point doing this on the whole plot if there will be paths?

Titsywoo covered in snow you say. Then now is the time for the all important planning activity (indoors with a warming beverage and a seed catalogue).

Also: I use www.growveg.com to help me with my thinking and crop rotation

10 years I added organic matter of all shapes and sizes to my clay plot.

I now have quality weed fabric over the whole site, a greenhouse and grow all in raised beds made of pallet collars and filled with local topsoil. I wish I'd done it 10 years ago.

What do you mean by over the whole site sackrifice? Sorry if you could treat me like a complete moron who has never seen a plant or soil it would be best!

I am planning on making raised beds (9 of them to be precise). Do other allotment owners get annoyed if you start using power tools on site? It'll be much easier to build the beds in situ!

Titsywoo what with rotavators, lawn mowers, hedge trimmers all going I dont think the odd power drill will raise an eyebrow!

DH tends to do his wood cutting at home, where the chop saw is, then assembles on the plot.

Like this...sort of thing...

Good point gnome! Thanks sacrifice. What would you say is the biggest a raised bed should be?

Welcome to the thread Titsywoo sounds like you've got the start of a good allotment if the site has been cleared and rotavated.

With a raised bed you need to be able to easily reach the middle of the bed so that you can plant/weed, etc. sackrifice's picture shows 'proper' raised beds - you couldn't walk on those without climbing up! Lots of the plots around mine have smaller raised beds where you could walk on them if you had to although you should avoid that which is why they need to be the size that you can reach across. These need less wood to build the beds and less manure to fill than in that picture.

Clay is a challenge - I garden on it myself - but it is not completely useless. It is very good at holding in the nutrients - something that sandy soils don't do as well.

Lots of compost and manure is the way to go - it depends on how much you're prepared to invest and whether you can get hold of it cheap. We get manure delivered to our site and pay a nominal fee and can take what we want. Only downside for us is that we are the other side of the site so it is hard work shifting the manure. Lots of stables practically give it away. It is worth finding out if there is a communal system at the site for things like that or not.

No-one will worry about using power tools at the site. Find out how secure the site is for keeping gardening tools there - we've had break ins at ours and I don't keep anything there. I just carry it over but I'm within easy walking distance of the plot. Depends how open the site is and where you are.

What would you say is the biggest a raised bed should be

Do you mean highest or widest?

I have weed fabric under all the beds so wanted deep beds to grow deep veg. Parsnips, carrots, potatoes etc.

Width wise you need to be able to reach the middle whether that means bending, using tools to get there or wood to stand on.

There are as many ways to make raised beds as there is to garden and what works for me won't work for everyone.

All I know is that I have rediscovered the joy of gardening rather than the constant stress of keeping the couch grass, bindweed and other nightmare weeds under control.

We have heavy soil rather than solid clay. When we first took on one of our plots we hired a digger for a day to break the ground. Now a couple of years on and much application of organic matter the soil is starting to turn around.

Our beds are as Cedar03 described. They are edged with gravel boards so only raised by a few centimetres but this is enough to keep the soil off the paths during normal usage (rather than rotavating). Each bed is about the same size at 5metres by 3.5metres. This makes crop rotation easier.

Can I join?

I moved house last year so I am having to start again on my heavy clay soil. Thank you for posting the photo of those marvellous raised beds - I think I might spend the money on getting raised beds rather than spending it on manure and compost ad Infinitum.

Costings.

I bought 27 pallet collars for a bargain at £2 each on eBay and went and collected them myself. Usually they are £5 each.

I spent £99 on the weed fabric. it was 4m wide by 50m and on my 30m plot it covered all the ground :half the full length was coveted and and the other half right up to the greenhouse. I used Google maps to measure the plot and it came in to the foot correct which pleased me greatly.

I bought 6 ton of topsoil which was delivered in two 3 ton trucks, at £45 ish per ton but when I calculated how many beds it filled it turns out they gave me 8 cubic tonnes. Total cost iirc about £230 ish because they gave me trade rates.

I then bought 5 more pallet collars at £5 each, and 4 small ones from b&q for £12 each, these were new not reclaimed and were to go in a tight space in the greenhouse.

I got 2 1000l water containers in metal cages (IBC tanks) to store water in.

So I now have 28 raised beds some two high some 1 high, 4 deep beds in the greenhouse and loads of water, no weeds and I have had loads of veg all winter long.

All that for less that some people spend on a handbag.

Can I join in? I don’t have an alotement but I have a large garden, I have grown veg before and I have a herb garden. Looking for ideas of what to grow this year, would love to live of the land even if it’s just for one month of the year, also considering getting a couple chickens in the garden. I have 3 vegetable patches which were not used last year, would love to get use out of them this year. I have rhubarb and strawberries which I have had for years. Looking at growing peas, runner beans, carrots and lettuce in my veg patches and maybe some tomatoes in pots. Has anyone successfully grown peppers outside? I have grown them indoors but not tried outdoors.

Getting excited about spring and planting things.

lovemusic - I've grown peppers a couple of times, they take a while to get going. Chilli peppers are a lot more productive - I have enough to freeze and take me through the winter. You can get ones specifically for outside.

why are you growing toms in pots? wont they need more watering?...sorry I am a bit of a lazy gardener

I grow chilli peppers every year in my south-facing garden. They're pretty easy to grow in pots / containers, and easy to store (dry, pickle or freeze).

dream probably right about the tomatoes, I am a bit lazy too when it comes to watering, I don’t have a water supply in my back garden but have 2 water buts but of course if this summer is anything like last summer my water butts will soon be empty.

Top tip with tomatoes in pots is to grow bush tomatoes. they don't need tying up and armpitting, you just leave them to do what tomatoes do and feed them once a week.