What Happened on the Plot in 2003.

To be honest it was 2002 when I first laid eyes on my first Allotment and to be honest It wasn't my idea to get one it was my partner Janine who suggested it. 2003 for me was all going to be about learning to fish. In particular learning to Fly Fish.   As a lad I had fished for many years but gave up in my teens probably due to chasing girls. Now that I had reached thirty that fire for fishing had been rekindled by the fishing programs on Home and Lesuire channel on sky T.V.  It was one programme called Reel Wars that got me really going.n short it was a fishing and survival competition between two guys. The Beginning October 2002. Lots and lots of weeds to clear before the whole plot is dug over. The weeds are mainly Couch Grass, Horse Tail and Doc's    They were to spend fifteen days in the wilds of western Ireland fishing against each other and the only time they could eat is if the caught a fish to cook.   This kind of thing is right up my street and I wanted to do it. I had already completed a few walks over the Cumbrian fells passing many hill top tarns on my way that must be full of fish. So I made a decision to regain the skills I once had as a young angler and hopefully in 2004 I would be able to spend more than a couple of days in the wild feeding myself with wild trout I had caught. So late Autumn 2002 I booked a casting lesson on a local trout water and that was that I loved it within in five trips to the water I was catching trout and I got better and better through 2003 even managing to catch a few wild Brown Trout and amazingly in the heat of summer I couldn't stop catching some fair size Rudd that were feeding on emerging buzzer's   So why get an allotment? Well I'm not sure really. One thing I do know is that I have always been interested in knowing how things are made. And now I want to know how to grow your own food in a natural way. Yes this could be called the simple life but I disagree. The simple life is letting someone provide and have control over the very stuff that keeps you alive. After lots of strimming, raking up the weeds (top right of photo) and rotovating the whole plot a nice clear allotment.   There is nothing simple in putting a seed in the ground watching that seed grow and that seed mysterly turns into something that keeps you alive. Technology. yes great and positive on our lives but we have lost something while gaining this knowledge.   I find it very strange that as a society we place a greater importance on materialistic items than natural food. People will pay hundreds even thousands of pound for a T.V yet moan at the price of naturally produced food. Instead of opting for the organic food on offer they go down to the Iceland and buy a Christmas dinner for four, for less than a tenner. It stands to reason that for that amount of food for a tenner the quality is going to be questionable and the nutrition levels are going to be very low, not to mention all the chemicals used in the intensive production of the food.   And all because mums a hero, NOT! We need to put pressure on the providers of our food.   December 2002. A very frozen plot. Some of the beds have been covered in cardboard due to being manured. These beds will be left for a whole year ready for use in 2004. The cardboard will stop the weeds growing and the rain from washing away nutrients from the soil and manure. Not the farmers but the big all powerful Supermarkets, that don't ask the farmer what they are selling there produce for. Mr big Supermarket owner tells the farmer what price they will be paying for the goods. If he doesn't like it well he can go bust which would be good because they just want to see Super Farms (as in the US click here). The end to local produce.   So getting a plot and producing my own food is a statement to the Supermarkets. You can do one until you change your ways.

January 2004.   The plot is starting to take shape now. I have a central path running down the middle of the plot that is wide enough to get a barrow down. Making it very easy to get large items to any of the 16 beds. The digging over of the beds is nearly complete in readiness for planting.   The first section of fencing has been erected.And if I am to be honest the only section that is erected in 2003.

February 2003. Potting on my Strawberries that were sown in January. The plot is now mostly covered in fleece which will help to warm the soil.

Warming the soil will let you get some plants in earlier than usual.

March 2003. This is when the sowing season really gets going. Already at home I had a massive amount of seedlings on the go tomatoes, herbs, peas, Brussels sprouts, onion and leeks. At the plot spring was well and truly here and it was time to start sowing seed directly into some of the prepared beds. Carrots, parsnips, peas, leeks and radish. Also it was time to get some shallots and garlic planted. Shallots and garlic were very easy to grow. In no time at all they had taken and were of to a flying start. I also invested in my first quality gardening tool a brand new Spear and Jackson hoe. What allotmenter would be complete without a good quality hoe. Up until then I was using a very old hoe donated to me by my mother it had seen better days and that goes for the hoe to. I had been looking forward to getting my first spuds in the ground. I had ordered from the allotment shop three types of potatoes. Pentland Javalin, Kestral and Maris Piper.   I had been told that there is nothing like the taste of freshly dug up potatoes. And what I had heard was right. The pentland javalin were my favorite spud of 2003 they had a lovely waxy texture and when boiled they were bursting with flavor.   Peas, absolutely love peas and I was going to grow tonnes of them, most of which never made home I was to busy eating staight from the pod. They tasted so sweet. The picture shows the first of the peas to go in the plot Feltham First. I kept sowing more of these peas and other varieties every two weeks and had as what can only be described as one the best rows of peas out of all the allotments. The only trouble I had was that later sowings kept getting munched by mice. What was a big disappointment was the speciality pea seed I had bought petit pois and sugar snap peas all got eaten by the mice and was a complete disaster. So next year it is war. What I need is some protection for the seed while it is germinating. It is the pea seed the are after. Once germinated they are not interested. Well I hope not anyway!   April 2003, I thought Marhc was a busy month this was going to give me nervous breakdown. Well it would have done if I had not gone chasing trout around my local and very windy resivour. This is the month when I laid the foundations for the plot to go pear shape. Fishing!!.   The plot was looking good. Okay I didnt have a shed or greenhouse yet but what I did have was well prepared soil. And that is the only really important part to growing you own food. Good soil equals helathy crops.   I had already establsihed a good three rows of peas that you can just see in the picture. The strawberries I had sown from seed in January were no in the plot. A full bed of strawberries summer was going to good. This month I had recieved 25 one year old Asparagus crowns, F1 Dariana that I had ordered a few months ago. Once planted in the correct way these plants took off very quickly. I had spears coming up all over the place. But you can not cut a crop until the plants are at least 24 months old. Better still would be to wait until 36 months though I will be taking a small crop in 2004 around May. Cant wait!! Next to go in, onion set's red and white. Again these were quick to take and were of to a flying start. There were problems, and that was that on a number of visit's to the plot I could see some of the sets had been pulled out of the soil. After talking to a few fellow allmenter's I was informed that it was probably birds pulling them up. So I covered them in fleece to keep the birds out. A full bead of Strawberry Plants. This was fine except for the tops of the sets grwoing through the fleece, and the wind was blowing the fleece would ripple like waves in the sea and pull some of the sets out of the soil. In 2004 I will use netting held up with garden wire to keep the birds out and solve the fleece problem.