Over the last few weeks we have been harvesting the crops on the allotment. Strawberries, blackberries and raspberries, potatoes, onions, broad beans, spinach and courgettes too. The rhubarb also continues to be pulled occasionally. With the minimum of effort we have achieved a bountiful harvest!

If the truth is told, for the most part, we have let the allotment look after itself this year. There have been occasional days weeding (too occasional if the number of weeds still present is anything to go by) but we have let the plants do or die. To our surprise the plants have coped pretty well without our loving care and attention. Sure, some did not make it – the mange tout failed this year and the gooseberries were smothered by the weeds and have all but died. But on the whole the lack of parental guidance did not see the plot go off the rails.

However, this can’t continue. Allotmenteering requires a certain commitment. The joy that comes from the harvest is a product of the preparation of the soil and the nurturing of the crop. The joy of this year’s harvest comes from the hard work put in over the last three years and we were only able to leave the plot as much as we did because of the hard work that I have written about in previous posts on this website.

Things here are changing. Miss M and Mr S are moving away, leaving me to work the plot alone. I simply cannot put in the number of hours that is needed to maintain a high quality plot as well as fulfilling other commitments in my life. Whether I give up the plot completely or give up half the plot is yet to be decided, but the time has come to downsize in one way or another.

I’ve loved the last three years on the allotment. It’s done much more than just providing me with fruit and veg. But things move on.

As for this blog, well, I think I have said all I can say about my allotment. This will be my last post here. The blog has been an integral part of my allotment experience. I have really enjoyed using it to express my feelings on the success and failures I have encountered. But I don’t feel that I have anything more to add, so I really should stop!

The best thing about writing the blog has been the communication with the people who have read it. Blogging is fantastic in that it connects you with other bloggers, people with the same interest as you and people with whom you can share your experiences. I have loved reading other peoples blogs and the comments that people have left on my posts. Both have been sources of motivation and inspiration. Thank you to those who commented and to those who read without leaving a message.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/flat_bob/sets/72157621875216716/

Well, it’s been a while. I’ve been worrying about the allotment for the last couple of weeks, so much so that I was scared to visit it. Due to work commitments and a lack of motivation to tend the cabbages, which I don’t particularly like anyway, I hadn’t been to the allotment for ((((((six))))))) weeks. So in my mind the plot had been ransacked by looters, invaded by weeds and probably had a notice stapled to it telling me that I was being evicted. But today was sunny and I was driving past the plot, so I took a deep breath and went to take a look.

This may look a mess to you, but it’s a huge relief to me. OK, there are lots of weeds, but it’s all relative. No allotments look great in November, not unless you have too much time to spare on them. While there is plenty to do it is manageable. And at this time of year there is the added pleasure of knowing that any work done to tidy up the plot will keep it looking tidy until the spring.

Safe in the knowledge it was still there, I left my allotment and went back to the house. The digging will have to wait for a bit longer. But at least the fear has gone, and I absolutely will go back in the next couple of weeks to do some work on it. I promise.

My mum and dad’s garden was the location of a BBC Newcastle show this afternoon. You can listen again to it here (click on ‘Garden Mania with Marian Foster’). If I was better organised I would have told you beforehand that the garden was open this afternoon as part of the British Red Cross Open Garden Scheme. So unfortunately you’ve missed the chance of visiting this garden, but you could find another garden to visit, perhaps on a slightly drier day, whilst also raising money for the British Red Cross.

I didn’t plan the allotment to be organic but we haven’t used chemicals on the plot since we took it over 18 months ago. As we cleared the first half of the site we managed to dig out the weeds and cultivate the soil without using and man made products on it. This is largely due to the black plastic which covered half of the land. You see we cleared this half first.

And although it was bloody hard work pulling out plastic sheets that had been in-situ for about 5 years and had brambles and couch grass growing through it, once the sheets were gone all that was left was to dig the man made junk out of the soil. This took a long time and was very frustrating but there was no other way of doing it.

We cleared the pile of rubbish in the corner of the plot over winter – again a long job, but not one that could have been done any quicker.

Over the last 6 weeks the task has been to clear the final part of the plot. This didn’t have any plastic put on it so the weeds are thick. Very thick. The progress to clear it has been painfully slow and has now ground to a halt.

Thus, the decision was made to us weedkiller. Now as I say, I had no specific intention of having an organic plot but seeing as we had got this far without spraying it was a hard decision to go chemical. The alternative was to spend days pulling out weeds, for which I have had enough. I generally quite like the digging and the pulling out of weeds, but when the weeds are so deep and so dense then I’m willing to admit defeat.

So on Saturday, a beautifully sunny day with no wind I sprayed the patch of weeds with Roundup. There is still a load of junk in the soil to dig out but the herbicide should kill most of the weeds and give us some breathing space to dig. I’ve used a herbicide that breaks down as soon as it hits the soil and one that is as environmentally friendly as possible. I didn’t spray where I knew the frogs and toads were and made sure the wind was not blowing so as to keep the spray on my plot. That said, I did feel a bit bad using the chemical. But it will allow me to clear the final part of the plot with slightly less effort than before, which means I can spend more time doing more enjoyable jobs on the plot. After all, allotmenteering is meant to be a pleasure, not a chore.

I’ve been alerted to the story of Jim and his allotment by allotment 5 1/2. It’s a story I’ve been following for the last couple of months as 5 1/2 has kept the world updated. In summary, the story goes like this…

Jim is 76 and has been allotmenting for many years. Last year he put up a plastic greenhouse so that he could extend his growing season. All sounds perfectly reasonable doesn’t it?

Except the parish council have just served Jim with a notice to quit his plot because they don’t allow plastic greenhouses on their allotments!

This is ludicrous in a number of different ways:

1. An allotment is not a show garden. It is a place for growing food. It doesn’t need to look pretty – it should be productive.

2. A poly tunnel extends the growing season which allows Jim to eat more fresh veg for longer and provides him with more physical exercise – two things we all need lots of.

3. Plastic greenhouses are not a nuisance. There are loads of dodgy plastic greenhouses on my allotment, Some people have even built greenhouses out of spare double glazing windows! It doesn’t spoil my enjoyment of allotmentering and does not produce too much (if any) noise.

4. Jim has the full backing of the National Society of Allotment and Leisure Gardeners who say that the council have no legal right to object to his greenhouse (the council disagrees with this point).

5. Jim is 76 and enjoys allotment gardening. If he is kicked off he is unlikely to find a new allotment and start again. What positive purpose does this serve?

There is a website in support of Jim here.

If you are a facebook fan then you can join a group to Save Jim’s Allotment (I have!).

So thanks to 5 1/2 for sharing this with us. Having an allotment is hard enough, especially when slimy good for nothing creatures try to spoil all of your hard work. As for the slugs…

More T shirts from Howies, the ethically minded do-gooder organic clothing company. I like them. I have allotment envy on my site, but I’m not sure I want to advertise the fact! If you’re not sure about this one, then check out this other T shirt from a previous post.

Keep up the good work chaps.

I’ve been tagged by Simon at The Plot Thickens in one of these tell-us-about-yourself things. I like them, so here goes.

Rules

• Link to the person who tagged you.
• Post the rules on your blog.
• Write six random things about yourself.
• Tag six people at the end of your post linking to their blog.
• Let each person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.
• Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

Six random things about me:

• I prefer cats to dogs.
• I move around a lot. Darlington is the sixth town I’ve lived in in just seven years.
• I don’t read books as much as I should do.
• Since discovering chorizo sausage three years ago it has changed my life.
• I’m never happier than when scrambling around looking in rock pools on the seashore.
• I once wrote a sitcom pilot called ‘Adam’s Apples’ – It came to nothing!

I will pass the tag onto the following people:

Allotment 5 1/2

Our Pint Sized Plot

Clearly this isn’t a list of six as the rules dictate, however I can’t think of any other blogs that I know that either a) haven’t already been tagged, or b) know me well enough for me to send them a random tagging comment. Sorry for letting the side down!

I’m not sure how much time I’ll have on the allotment this weekend. The weather forecast is for heavy showers and I have a bucket load of none-allotment work I have to be getting on with. I’ll pop along later to check on the potatoes and see if I can pull some more rhubarb, but the real work will probably have to wait until next week.

But I’ll still be able to indulge my allotment yearnings by listening to Terry Walton’s podcast. If you haven’t listened to it yet you should, its really good. Much better than the allotment on Gardeners’ World last night. I wasn’t keen on that – patronising? I thought so. What did you think?

I have an admission to make.

It was about this time last year that I was digging over the first patch of the allotment. It was the Easter holidays so I was spending a good amount of time at the plot. The first of the veg was coming through and the strawberry plants were in. The only problem was… it was too dry.

The young plants were drying out; the soil was baked hard making digging even more of a chore than it usually is. And here is the guilt… I said to one of my fellow allotmenteers “I hope it rains soon”.

History records that the following summer was a complete washout. I fear my unsolicited comments played a part in the lost summer. I haven’t told anyone about this until now.

So I’m also nervous about what I am about to say now. I’m a bit fed up with frosty mornings and pouring rain. My seedlings are trying to outgrow their pots. They’re raring to go. So I want it to get hotter.

There, I said it. In case anyone who has any influence over the weather is reading this, I don’t want it too hot, so that my plants wilt. Nor do I want it too dry, so that they wilt even more. When it has to rain, then it can do so during the week (but not on bank holidays). Not too much to ask, is it?

The tomatoes, peppers and chilies are well away and want to get going properly. So do I.

This is a T shirt from Howies. I like Howies. Not only do they make cool T shirts and other super clothes, they also have a really good idea of how a business should run. They ‘aim to produce a low impact product that lasts the course of time’. I like that. I’ve bought loads of stuff from them. I think I’ll be getting this as well. Good on ya, Howies.