Allotment Day...

Another perfect allotment day weather, sunny, warm but over cast at times down on Plot 13.

Richard went up around 10:30 and cleared off about half of the Fruit plot, I rolled in around 13:30 family followed about an hour later, we dug out the fruit plot (12x2m), the soil is quite silty, its bone dry like talc powder at the moment, which is great for digging out the nettle roots and digging up the grass, but I am getting a bit worried about the drainage, but thats another day.

In addition to digging out the fruit plot we managed to clear out a big section of the bed upto the brambles, found four old beds laid out in roughly the same configuration we are going to use but I think they where 3m by 2m or maybe 4x2's. We'll either salavage the wood or burn it out.

Pictures below are from rachel's camera phone, I forgot mine today :(

This is a large section (About 10m) back cleared, right upto the dreade d brambles (Thats George inspecting the handy work). This is our work in progress this year, we'll clear this out lay in the beds and do the brambles after they have fruited. Should give us 7 beds in total if the maths is right.. Big if... :)
This is the fruit plot, richard did a great job here digging this out and edging it, 12m of space, tempting to plant it but the weeds will be back quickly, large amounts of grass and nettles came out of here so we'll probably sow green manure on it.

She's clear.... Actually we moved the post, it was in the middle of the fruit plot still, first bed down good feeling..

Dave

Plot 13 Plan

Here is an idea for Plot 13 layout, need to discuss with Richard and see if it is a goer, but this is 75% of the lottie, still a big bit to go at the back, just scribbled on some old paper in the house...
The beds are 4x1.5 m long with 50cm paths in between, at the bottom would be an 11x2m Fruit bed (Strawberries in front, blackberries/logan berries etc on cordons at the back). 6x8 green house and a herb garden..

All ambitious plans considering lay of land at the moment..

Day 1 on Plot 13

Today we started to clear Plot 13. We have decided to clear a 6m by 11m section a fair chunk of it. It was a warm summer day, fortunately the area of the plot is shaded (Might cause problems in the future with the growing we'll have to select plants carefully here).

Rachel and Amanda and George started to clear the front section back, and did great work, george getting bored decided to play with our plot neighbours girl Thea.

Myself and Richard attacked the bank at the back. This was created when the electricity board cleared their site for new sub-station and just bulldozed a load of top soil plus stones into the allotments.

We cleared the bank, 17ft by about 1 m, lots of stones, old carpets and tree roots, hard work but done, this is going to be the compost heap and shed space (6'x3' shed) and also space for water butts.

This is the entire site we cleared today we started to burn some of the vegetation off.


You can see here this is the compost heap/shed space, heap will go right, shed left, with waterbutt in the middle...

Due to the over grown nature of Plot 13 we cannot easily get into the far back corner to determine the length of the plot, the front is 14.5m but the back is unknown. So I decided to chop a way into it through the jungle so we could plan the layout..

The scale of the problem became apparent, the Nettles are over 5 and a half feet tall, plus broken closhes, damp holes, rubbish all inside here, but I got through it.. But at the end I found something unexpected, a problem for the future.
The culvert is blocked by old pots etc. They had flooding last year, but judging from the dampness around the edge of the culvert is quite common on plot 13.. So that is a job for the future, clearing the pots and taking out the backed up silt, but it will be good to go onto the plot at some point..

We'll post the plot dimensions later, save to say the bottom edge is 12.5m but the diagnal into the corner is 17m through the jungle...

Background

Myself and Richard have been talking about becoming more self sufficent for the last couple of years. Richard placed his name on an list for an allotment, 4 yrs..... I did some reasearch in the local area and after reading some advice on www.alloment.org.uk I approached one of our local allotments, some people did not reply, some where quite curt, I think everyone wants to get an allotment these days...

We went to a small one in the area and met the site supervisor, he said we had to wait until April, we spotted a bramble laden plot, plot 13 in the background, no one would take it on and it was a massive task.

We ummed and ahhed, then we discussed with the internal committe (aka the wives) and we decided to do it.. We managed to persuade the site supervisor we would take it (A very nice man) he thinks we are nuts, but hey two good guys, a spade and will power...

Today, June 27th we recieved the key to the allotment...

Left image is from back of the plot, right image from the front.

A train line runs down the back and a big electricity supply station to the rear..She is approximiatley 5m wide by about 22-30m long, a big plot.

She has been neglected since june last year, the brambles are approx 6ft high and the nettles as high, it shows the quality of the soil in place that they have grown this much in a year. Below is a remenant of a strawberry patch (Look at the size of the strawberry!)

Our first piece is to clear a section 5m deep by 11m wide. We plan to put a Shed at the end, with a water butt and a compost heap.. This is how it looks today, we'll update as we go..