The Story So Far Part One

We got our allotment on the 27th July 2006. It is on the St Oswalds Allotment in Newton Aycliffe, County Durham. We were quite lucky that we weren't on a waiting list very long, probably only about 4-5 months, as the town council extended this allotment and added 8 new plots, one of which we got.

Our plot is 15.7 metres long and 6.3 metres wide.

As you can see from the picture below when we got the plot there was absolutely nothing there. On the plus side this meant it had been recently ploughed and treated with weedkiller. On the downside it meant we had to start absolutely from scratch, we had no established beds or paths and no structures such as a shed, compost bins or fencing.

This was quite daunting at the time but as every in times of worry Ann stepped up and made a plan. She used information we had got from books to draw up a plan of the layout of the site including all the beds and things like water butts, compost bins and a place for the shed. All our beds are 1.2m wide as this was recommended in a few books as the optimum size to allow you to manage and harvest from both sides.

As we got our allotment quite late in the year, as far as planting things out goes anyway, we knew we weren't going to need all our space this year. So the first thing we did was to mark out two sets of rotation beds at the front of the allotment. We planted these up with a few bits and pieces that we managed to scrap together. These were:

Carrots - A pack of seeds I had to try container growing at home but had never got round to using
Beetroot - A pack of seeds that my Dad had lying around
Turnips - A pack of seeds that I bought after a request from Ann's friend Becky.
Cabbages, Broccoli & Sprouts - These were bought from Blairs Garden Centre in Darlington. As it was really too late to grow anything this year they were reduced from 99p for 10 plants to 99p for 30 plants (10 of each).

We didn't think any of this would give us any produce this year, and mainly put them in as ground cover to keep weeds down or to use as feed for our pet rabbit Dylan, especially the Cabbage, Broccoli and Sprout plants. As it turned out though a combination of blind faith and excellent autumn weather means that we have actually had quite a lot off and I'll try and include some pictures later.

The next thing we did was to tackle Mount Dung. The pile in the picture was to be split between us and our neighbour. We spread our half over the back half of our plot. This was to surpress weeds this year and then to pass into the ground through the winter. This has worked really well, our plot is pretty weed free, especially compared to the plots that people have yet to start on.