And so to the allotment.........

There are three of us in this marriage....... Alison, myself and The Allotment and one of them is high maintenance and needs much attention, daily.

So having spent the last two and a half years knocking walls down , building new walls up, starting up a B&B business from scratch, decorating, serving guests, decorating, gardening, decorating, serving more guests, more decorating, starting up a Holiday cottage business from scratch, making jams, marketing and even more decorating. We decided that we needed something to do in our spare time.....   Ha!

And so to the allotment.........


Now you may recall that when I first obtained the allotment it looked more like a plot for the production of wild flower seeds.

There were all the usual offenders such as bindweed, stinging nettles and thistles then just to add a little glamour to the mix there was a splash of purple poppies, a sprinkle of mare's tail and a plethora of perennials.

I make no apology for my first action which was to weed kill everywhere unless there was existing fruit or veg worth saving.

Then many weeks later all the dead debris had to be cleared and the plot planned. I reckon that with something like this you only get one chance to start from scratch and so I took some time in measuring drawing and even painting a watercolour plan so I knew exactly how I wanted the plot to be like.

I thought Alan Titmarsh would have been proud of me. To the far left (West) are my 3 plots for vegetables thus allowing for a 3 year rotation. Then at the top centre I have current bushes with Gooseberries below and raspberries to the right. These I have set from North to South to ensure the sun swathes both sides of the canes throughout the day. At the base and centre there is an existing Asparagus bed and to the right a large bed of Rhubarb. I like rhubarb! To the right of this is my 'orchard' which swings behind the shed next to the pond. From left to right we have an Ellis Orange pippin, A Conference Pear, a Cox's pippin, a Greengage and a Damson. Above the orchard there is a bed for flowers and above that there are two Strawberry raised beds with the compost bins to their right. The boundary on the right has two thornless blackberry bushes and a Loganberry too.

The following photographs will show you a little of this journey and a lot of before and after shots as well........

At first glance it seems that there is one shed but that green mass in the centre of the picture is a shed under a camouflage of Honey suckle.

Then after I had cleared the weeds and rotavated 'hay presto' a shed............

And present day.................

No I'm not very tall, it was a late evening photograph. The Union Jacks and England Flags are not a statement of my loyalist tendencies but are simply there to scare the pigeons which they have done with great effect... Rule Britannia!

The above photos were taken from the top west corner of the plot. The next ones are taken from the bottom west corner.

My shadow makes me look a little like a cowboy, I guess it is because.... I have a hat. You are not an allotmenteer unless you have a HAT! This was after the rotavating and I had just used it to 'plough in' half a tonne of ripe cow manure. That evening I was not welcomed home by the loved one!

No hat!!  OK same position as above but I have now broken the soil down to a reasonably fine tilth and neatened the edges of the bed by creating a raised bed and a ditch. I stole the idea for netting support from an excellent National Trust property nearby called Felbrigg. It is simply some wooden 2"x2" banged into the ground with some cheap bamboo canes supporting the net. Sadly an unexpected frost killed off my first plantings here of dwarf Borlotti beans.

At the time it was one of those where do I start first. Some of the stinging nettles that I dug out were more like small shrubs. I was also plagued by a large colony of Jerusalem Artichokes which were worse weeds than many of the others.

Again here I have got to the stage of laying out my plan in a rough form. In the foreground you can see a raised bed with nothing in it, I may have leeks here. Then behind that is the Asparagus bed then the Rhubarb bed is taking shape and behind that you can see 3 of the trees making up part of the new orchard.

Same position again but I have leveled things off a little and done some tidying up. I had laid grass seed on all the paths and as a lawn under the trees in March just as the weather forecasters said it would rain. Well they were wrong! After the January snow we have hardly had any rain what so ever. Forget April showers.... In April we had just 6mm of rain!!

Here my mother looks at me with incredulity believing that I may have bitten off more than I could chew.

A few days later......  Ha,ha, more like several months. So to the right (North) you can just see the Strawberry raised beds and straight ahead the Raspberry canes. Some were given to me by a neighbouring allotmenteer but the remainder we salvaged from the old pre-existing ones. However I have no idea if they are Summer or Autumn Raspberries, or indeed if they are still alive... Exciting isn't it?

This is the second shed or more of a sort of corrugated greenhouse. There is a pond hidden in the weeds at the back of this photo.

And after.....

Weeds cleared, ground found I have placed two big water tanks to capture the water from the sheds roof and with my dad's help built 4 large compost bins.

Same place as before and just as over-run.

After a little work.

You will see that there is a pipe into the water butts and  a long piece takes the surplus water over to the pond now. That said, because of the 3 months drought here I have had to use most of one of these tanks (1,000 ltrs) on the plot already. I NEED RAIN!!!

The Raspberry canes.     Somewhere.

Same scene but a little more organised. I have chosen to use heavy duty weed suppressing material as I simply cannot afford to spend hours weeding areas that are not to bu grown in, nor do I want loads of mowing.

Just weeds.

The Currants, Redcurrants, Blackcurrants and White currants too. At the far end there are 5 Gooseberry bushes.

Asparagus plot to the left and Rhubarb to the right.

The Onion patch.

The Asparagus patch, MMMmmmmmmm.

The reason for it all!

I'd just like to say thank you to all those that have helped, you all know who you are, not least my parents. Here you can see my legless father helping to sort out the net. Just kiddin' he is actually kneeling down but it was an odd photo

So that is it then. I now have a greenhouse full of plants and a high possibility of frost tonight. I just want to plant some vegetables but the Weatherman,  well he still say NOooooo. We will have another look in 2 months time to see if any vegetables ever got to fruition!



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