Wintertime. A nice break from the clearing, digging, foraging for feeebies: time to put my feet up in front of the fire, and daydream about harvesting abundant crops, preferably in bucolic sunshine, with the joy of organic goods in my heart and a smile on my face.
Or so I thought, until I realised that I’d need to put in some serious donkey work over the winter if I am to have any hope of growing in the Spring, and that there is quite likely to be no crop at all if I didn’t say forget the fireside hot chocolate and crack on.
November and December were taken up with making the raised beds, laying weed cover and taking delivery of the enormous water butt and a huge (paid for – in which more later) pile of manure. Although by taking delivery, I mean carting it barrowful by painful barrowful down to my plot from the very other end of the site, where it had been dumped. The first of many huge thanks go to the allotment association guy who helped with this; it would be there still, composting smugly away miles from my plot without his help.
I took the decision that a big dig, if I want to put anything in for March at all, is out of the question. A happy hour on google later, and I plumped for breaking up the soil in the raised beds, a liberal covering of organic matter ‘lasagna-ed’ with topsoil and cardboard. Whether this will be effective remains to be seen; what it has done is give me a sense of getting on with it, and progress that my impatient approach needs in order to stay interested.
Then came January and a busy-ness/general laziness induced hiatus, but the introduction to my plot of a new ‘deer fence’ by the association has got me back into it. Turns out my deer friends (there were four chilling there one day, one apparently asleep in my raised bed) are the auld enemy of the association – along with the rabbits and (worst of the worst) the Council – and a protective fence along the wooded end of the site has long been planned. Although I’m sad that my old buddies won’t be visiting anymore, I suppose they wouldn’t have been helpful in terms of abundant crops, and the plot does look much tidier with the work the fencer has done.
So I’ve been back down to it, tidying the mess left by the fencer, filling the raised beds, generally getting back into the swing again.
I’ve collected a number of free seed packs from various places (freecycle, local websites, family and friends spares) and am planning on sorting through them over the next month or so. I’m lucky enough to have a mini greenhouse at home, so I can start some things off fairly early there.
Other than that, and the arrival of the promised water butt, my only acquisition over the winter has been the enormous pile of dung I’m now spreading everywhere. Coming in at a whopping £40 it is by far my biggest expense to date, bigger even than the cost of the plot itself. However, after long deliberation, I felt that it was an investment worth making. The plot had been fallow for so long, I am using the raised beds which always need extra nutrition and – here is the crucial part – I am not patient enough to wait for a freebie pile of dung. Which is a lesson for me, because a new colleague at work told me today that he has about ten tons of well rotted manure he has no use for. Sigh. Still, I’ve said yes please, and it’ll keep til I get round to cultivating more space.
The only other event of note over the winter, is that I finally decided that I wasn’t quite satisfied with a half plot, and have committed to along on the whole thing. It’s possible I didn’t quite consider how big it all is: I blame that all too brief fireside daydream.
Spend so far:
Previous total: £21.98
Water butt, logs, pallets x 4 – free (allotment association)
Guttering – free (freecycle)
Manure – £40 (local farmer)
Pallets x 2 and large canvas bags for compost x 2 – free (freecycle)
Scaffold boards x 2, wooden stakes – free (freecycle)
Various seeds – free (freecycle, friends and family)
Grand total: £61.98
newsecretgardener 