End of year one
I’ve been reading back over the first few posts on this blog from a year ago when we first took on the allotment. I’ve just paid for the second years rent on the plot and have been reflecting on how we’ve done, what we’ve learnt and what we want to do in our second year.
First of all I want to remember the reasons for getting the allotment in the first place:
- We wanted to be more self-sufficient. We’re having a really low key foray into self sufficiency really. Our chickens are bantams so are not great layers. We do now have 12 hens (although some are this years so haven’t started laying at all yet) which means we should be self sufficient in eggs for most of the summer next year. We are definitely self sufficient in not needing to buy any more fertlized eggs as we have two cockerels, the older one has sired several chicks including some of our newest batch. The allotment has done similar for us. We are self sufficient in garlic for the coming year thanks to a bumper crop and we didn’t buy potatoes for several weeks during the summer. None of our other crops were sufficient to not need topping up and I suspect a plot the size of ours will never yield enough vegetables to sustain a family of four (even if some of that family aren’t big on eating vegetables
) but I like the idea that I can nick Tesco’s tagline whilst needing to use their shop slightly less…. every little helps! - To get healthier. This was an exercise / outdoorsyness wish and I can hand on heart say this happened. I cycled to the allotment twice most weeks during the ‘watering every night’ summer months, I’ve done loads of digging and weeding and other such bending, stretching and lifting. I’ve been standing making rainbows with the hose in the evening sunshine, cleaning out mud from under my nails, cycled home bedecked with a string of garlic round my neck and known the satisfying ache of muscles weary from working on the land.
- Educating ourselves about where our food comes from. Raising and breeding chickens has given all our family a new respect for meat, concern for the conditions our animals are kept in. We understand the life cycle, how animals are killed and prepared for food, the biology and anatomy of a chicken and about breeding, hatching, birth deformities, cross-breeding and inbreeding, the mating process, growth and development and so on. The same has happened during this year at the allotment. We know about seeds and pips and bulbs, how plants grow, above ground and below ground, what time of year to sow and harvest, when crops are ready, storage, dealing with pests, failed crops, knowing what conditions different crops require. We’ve seen onions that bolted, leeks that didn’t grow, carrots that didn’t germinate, beans that got blackfly, beans that were eaten by rabbits, sweetcorn that suffered a lack of sunlight, spinach that just wouldn’t die even when I hacked it off at ground level, the tenacity of weeds, the delicacy of parsnips, plants that die back after one season, plants that will come back again next year. I realised earlier this year while walking round an open air musuem with the children that not only could I identify various crops just by their plants (broad beans, potatoes, carrots, leeks, onions, strawberries) even before there was fruit or veg on them, but the children could too. Gone are the days of thinking vegetables come cleaned, trimmed and in polystyrene trays from the supermarket.
- Eating more vegetables! This was for me as much as the children as I tend to be vegetable-phobic! We did grow mostly stuff I already liked so I didn’t necessarily try new things but did eat more freshly picked vegetables than I would have done previously. I would hope to increase this next year to trying more new things.
We have put several raised beds in on the plot and plan to put more in. Our neighbours who did have a compost heap taking up space at the end of our plot have now moved it. We have a big compost heap and a compost bin on the patch and save kitchen waste at home to add to them.
I’ve talked already about what has and hasn’t worked on the plot so there’s no real need for a round-up of that again. Aswell as clearing the weeds and debating the idea of green compost for the cleared areas over the winter we also need to plan what’s going where next year to maximise the space we have. I have a lot of reading to do and would really like to draw up a proper crop rotation plan and schedule of what needs to be done when.
It’s been a great first year!
This was where we started:

but during the summer we had it looking like this:



















One raised bed has lettuce and other salad leaves, one has carrots and today I put more carrots into another one. I think the remaining two will have parsnips in them or maybe some other root vegetables.



