Our first harvest...

So at the end of last week we had rain. Not a lot, not enough by any means, but a couple of hours of this wet stuff has made everything green again (including the chicken decimated sections of the lawn) and my allotment has burst into life.

We have our first crop! This is very exciting as we have never grown anything edible on the allotment before, the only thing we've taken off the plot is rocks and weeds! I'm excited despite the harvest being a small one.Four little radishes which I took home and munched in a salad for my tea. I shared them with the boyf of course!

The weediest, greying of all the seedlings, my calabrese and purple sprouting broccoli have come back with such vigour I am now fearing the gluttiest of all the gluts...

The current darlings of my plot, my beautiful red cabbages have sprung up and are looking even more lovely now than in their purple seedling state. I never thought of myself as a cabbage fancier but these girls have got it going on...

On the advice of a friend, as well as Alys Fowler in The Guardian I have begun a rigorous regime of mulching with lawn cuttings. Luckily the boyf always has a van load from his gardening round so there’s no problem with supply. I covered the raspberry plants a couple of weeks back and the soil which was once dust and concrete dried clay has now become soft, moist and full of worms. My three sisters, corn, courgettes and beans, (currently two sisters as my beans are taking a while to get going) have got a specially thick layer as I am out to prove to the boyf that companion planting is the way forward...

As you can see, his onions are growing obediently in their perfectly uniformed lines. The jig is up though and he’s noticed my little carrot seedlings popping up in between. I’ve just about convinced him that my carrots and his onions are a dream team....time will tell.

Have you got any successful companion planting pairngs? I’d love to know, I’m all about trial and error at the moment! Parsnips and artichoke? Rhubarb and sweet potato?

It's Polyculture...but not as we know it...

I managed to tear myself away from staring like a loon at Mildred and Maude and go and visit my recently neglected allotment. I haven’t been in three days, this is most unlike me.

It’s so close to being finished it’s almost painful.  After the Boyf found some wood left over from a fencing job he set about knocking me up four new raised beds! He really is very handy... and now I have loads of space for my little seedlings which are creeping up in the greenhouse and will soon be wanting out...

However, something is amiss. We haven’t planted much out yet but my strawberry patch is one area I am particularly proud of. After growing the little babas myself from mummy strawberry at home, they’ve managed to survive all winter on our barren plot. The barren plot which now seems to be not so barren...Potatoes have taken over. They’re popping their heads out all over my strawberry patch! The boyf is more upset that they are ruining the lines of his onions and the edges of his wood chipped paths but the strawberries have really got me!

Do I chop them down and restore order. Or do I embrace my stowaway freebies and make sure I dig them all up them all next time? It seems that even though they left the plot littered with tonnes of concrete my predecessors liked a potato plant or two!

Killing them with kindness...

This is the first spring my allotment and I have had together. Our love has been on a slow burn since September, he’s been very demanding and I’ve got nothing back- except emerging arm muscles and occasional rows with the boyf. I’ve lugged off rocks in the rain, I’ve weeded in the snow and I’ve built in the howling wind and now I am nearing the time to grow.

So far, from my mini green house, things do not look so good. Nearly everything I put in either sprouts and then dies or never appears at all. At first I thought I was moving too fast, planting before the seeds were ready but having just spent a few hours at work reading the entire Alys Fowler back catalogue on The Guardian online, I now know what’s going on- I am loving my plants too hard.

Tucked up on their little shelves in their little handmade recycled newspaper pots, the plants are smothered. Not in an overbearing mother sense, I still believe that a friendly chat and words of encouragement in the evening make them grow into big, strong and productive plants, but in the sense that they’re too warm and wet. In the cold, rainy Surrey spring my little darlings are dying. As I watch them through the plastic, afraid to open the flap, like a baker with a cake in the oven, my seeds are growing too hot and then...well not growing at all. Alys says I need to let them breath, open the door and flap my hands over them once in a while. Alys has warned me about “damp off” the term for when little baba seedlings get too hot and too wet and rot in the soil. I’m feeling like a mother who cries when their child becomes so obese that they can’t move because they’ve been feeding them naught but turkey twizzlers for years, wailing “but I thought turkey was low in faaaat!” Well, I promptly removed my precious goldenberry seedlings inside- cauliflower can wait, these little fellas are the first to appear in two years of trying!

So this weekend I endeavour to change my ways. I will purge the greenhouse (I say greenhouse- I mean covered plastic covered shelving unit which I’ve tied to the hedge to stop it blowing away- a real greenhouse is a like an impossible dream for me- no constructions over 4 foot on the allotment boo!) I will make new pots, using a better class of newspaper, The Daily Mail might be making my plants grow a bit slow and closed minded, instead I will use The Guardian to make my little pots and hope that this inspires my seedlings. No longer feeling the need to maintain tropical conditions, I will open the door and flap my hands to let the air circulate and make my little seedlings happy. The next step is a coldframe, time to let my babies go into the big wide world...

The Things I Gain #1 My Allotment

My allotment is my big love. Romance of the year. Crush of the century. I am officially and unashamedly obsessed. Like an over protective first time parent I tend to its every need, lavish it with expensive treats and wake up in cold sweats in the night worrying about it- too much brown compost? Not enough worms? CLAY!

I know how lucky I am to have my little plot. I was on a waiting list for a site literally at the end of my road. I had heard rumours circulating that the wait for a plot here was nearing 15 years, heard tell that there we no newbies admitted since 1992... so I was less than hopeful, I wasn’t quite sure I was ready for the commitment yet anyway...

Then one morning last summer barely a week after I joined the list, I got an email from the council letting me know that a plot had become available on a newly opened site on the other side of town- did I want to take it up? By 4 O’clock that afternoon I was being shown my new little bit of green.

I think enthusiasm must have blinded me to what I was about to take on... I didn’t see the enormous concrete bricks, paving slabs and rubble, I saw bees and butterflies and salad. The Long Suffering Boyfriend bought me back down to earth, him and 40 wheelbarrow loads of rocks taken off one particularly long Saturday in July. Our little plot had been a fly tipping hotspot, the concrete blocks and lumps of twisted metal were the tip of the iceberg. After a few weeks of this a decision was made- We had to raise our beds. It was this or chemically destroy everything living on our plot and start again- striving to be organic, this was not an option.

We now have 10 raised beds on our plot, in varying sizes, which take up about two thirds of the space (the rest is fruit bushes, flowers and containers). We tried to recycle as much as possible, poking around skips, smashing up old pallets but in the end we had to spend a bit of money on wood.  I am pleased with the results and I know they will last forever, but I would love to have done it all through recycling. In order to appease my moral conscience, and to fit in with my ethical lent I have made a new rule- nothing new. No new pots, no new wood, no new plastic hose pipes, watering cans- nothing.

There are only 4 rules on My Little Bit of Green 

1.       Absolutely NO chemicals. None. No sprays, no dodgy compost, no weed killer, no plant miracle grower. All organic.

2.       We will eat everything. (Apart from my beautiful flowers, and I have made sure that even some of them are edible! Lavender biscuit anyone?) Nothing is going to waste. I will chomp my way through it all, or give it away to equally veg fond friends. Anything that dies or is inedible will go on the compost so it will feed my pet worms.

3.       No new. Everything from now on must be recycled or second hand or scavenged. Apart from seeds and some veg as I don’t want the allotment to be bare- though even these I will strive to swap, take cuttings, share, beg and borrow.

4.       Love wildlife. Our allotment neighbourhood is a haven for finches but I was nearly lynched for mentioning the prospect of hanging a bird feeder on my plot. Controversial bird attractants aside- I will have a log pile and a rock pile for reptiles and amphibians and little creepy crawlys, bed and buckets of flowers for attracting bees and butterflies and I’m hoping, even a teeny little pond...we will see.

5.       Polyculture. Inspired by the fabulous Alys Fowler I will grow in a muddle. The Boyf has been given one bed in which he has plant his onions in straight, equally measured lines. Everything else is going to be a bit of a free for all. I want flowers amongst  the veg, I want a wild, beautiful and productive garden. I am a little nervous about this method, I have never tried it before but I think it will be wonderful.

This summer will be our first growing season. I cannot wait to start putting things in the ground, rather than pulling things out of it! Any tips for organic polyculture?

we're slowly getting there...