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...