Here We Hoe Again...

Sunday morning dawned clear and hot, another perfect day for being outside, but not necessarily for working hard at the allotment... Never the less, we headed round to clear the next secyion of weeds and carry out some essential maintenance...

 

As the hoeing progresses, the plot starts to look more like an allotment than the jungle it was just a week ago. Over half of the site is now cleared, the edges defined and Rasberries, Squash and Rhubarb all growing nicely.

The second job of the morning was to re-attach the decking board at the bottom of the plot. An intial inspection showed that many of the boards were loose, with others completely dettached.
Removing the dodgy wood, we knocked down any protruding screws then nailed them back into position.

Today's session was not quite over, the sun baking down upon us, but as we packed up the tools I deciced to open the gate in the fence (rather than just walk around like we usually do), only to find that the gate was holding up the end post, which promptly fell over as soon as the gate was moved...

Hi Hoe, Here We Go...

Once we had cleared the initial section and planted out the squash from home, the only job on the horizon was to clear the rest of the plot, more than 50m² of unwanted plants...

Raspberries, Squash and Lots of Weeds

I decided that each visit to the allotment would have two jobs to be completed, adding a little variety to the routine of weeding, hoeing and cutting back the grass.

Splitting the plot into three sections, the aim for the next visits would be to clear one section per visit, along with a smaller secondary task., which for this visit was to identify the edges of the plot and begin to re-establish the boundary paths.

The First Third of the Plot Cleared of Weeds

 The hoeing went well, quickly clearing the designated section for the day, revealing a bed of deep, dark, rich soil. My new neighbours; Mike to the right and Becky / Liz to the left, informed me that during the worst winter weather, some of the plots at our end of the Allotments are prone to flooding and this year has been worse than ever before. It transpires that the entire site is less than six feet above the Holes Bay water table, meaning that our section of the site needs a lot less watering and has the best soild of the entire area.

Redefining the edge of the Plot

A Happy Hopper and a Hoe Hoe Hoe

It's amazing how quickly a deserted, abandoneed plot can begin to take shape, the simple act of clearing a few meters of weeds and planting the cleared area made it look much better.

The next task was to tackle the long grass and ground weeds...

Cutting back the long grass was harder than I had anticipated, the hot sun had dried out the top inch or two, but underneath was still very wet, soggy and extremely tricky to cut, this was not the only unexpected problem... Every time I cut or removed the grass it continued to move long after I had stopped.

A quick inspection revealed not only hundreds of the biggest, fattest and ugliest slugs I had ever encountered, but a number of other inhabitants that were far more welcome.

Lizard                                                                  Frog                                                                 Slow worm

Along side a very friendly frog and several slow worms we have a small brown lizard, which was quite unexpected, but great to see... On every visit to the allotment to date we have seen the frogs and slow worms, but the lizard is far more elusive, showing himself just twice...

During the time spent clearing the worst of the site, a number of fellow allotment holders have stopped to chat and see how the we are getting on, but consistantly tell me that its faster and easier to strim or rotivate the site. I wonder how much some people know about gardening... I am not a complete novice, but even I know the benfits of not doing so.

Getting your hands into the weeds, soil and environment allows you to connect with the land, find out what you are dealing with at a much more personal level. Knowing what is growing is paramount to being able to plan your clearance strategy and with so many maretails / horsetails on the plot the last thing I need is a rotivator as this would rip the roots into tiny pieces, each of which would regrow making the problem infinately more difficult.

Raspberry Squash...

With the plot now free of its tallest weeds and longest grass, the hard work of battling the shorter, tougher and more invasive stuff began.

But first... I wanted to get something in the ground to justify having the allotment whilst the long term hard work continued, so I cleared a small area at the bottom of the plot, rescuing the raspberries from being strangled by bindweed and tudying up in front of the fence and decking.

At home I had recenrtly built a raised planter to provide a small range of fruit and vegetables. we had three different tomatoes (Moneymaker, Roma and Golden Sunrise), beetroot, carrots, lettuce and strawberries.
On a whim we had also planted a small packet of butternut squash seeds into tubs, all of which greminated and quickly spread out across the patio.
I realised that the squash were quickly outgrowing their tubs and so decided to try and transplant them into the allotment.

I have no idea what the neighbours thought seeing me transporting six squash plants in two big tubs, strapped together by their handles, hanging either side of the saddle on my old bicycle like some old peddlar taking his wares to market. My two girls were giggling all the way as we coaxed our precious load along the five minute walk to the pot.

The first 48hours were tough for the squash with temperatures soaring and constant watering needed, but a couple of cooler days and nightly watering saw them perk up nicely.

A Weekend of Weeding...

On Saturday 19th July the hard work began...

Straight after breakfast I visited the allotment, armed with just a pair of gloves and a pair of secateurs, ready for a morning of weeding, weeding, weeding...
  
The plan for the day was a simple one; to trim the back hedge and remove as many bramlbes as possible then pull up anything on the plot that would come out easily. A quick walk through the site revealed three main types of plants; Tall thick stemmed weeds, invasive low growing Horse/Marestails and a lot of long grass.

Amongst the mess I found a small stand of raspberries, several rhubarb plants and various poles/posts and canes used for previous fruit and vegetables. Anything usable was relocated onto the decking area at the end of the allotment, then anything of no further use was poked into the ground at the head of the plot to define where all the weeds would be dumped whislt awaiting council removal.

After an hours of hand weeding, all the tall thick stemmed stuff was out of the ground and piled at the head of the plot. Two more hours of pulling out as much of the long grass as possible had a huge wall of weeds across the end of the allotment, almsot five meters long, by a meter high and wide...

OH NO, WE'VE GOT AN ALLOTMENT

After almost six years hanging around on the waiting list, the fateful letter finally arrived informing us that we had been offered a plot at the Bushell Mills Allotment, Fleetsbridge, Poole.

The letter informed us that the plot was approximately 100 square meters @ 42p per square meter, a whopping fee of £8.80 for the remainder of this season, ending 30th September 2014.

Natalie contacted Continental Landscapes to arrange payment and was informed that we may wish to visit the site before agreeing to take it on as it had not been maintained to the usual standards and would require quite a lot of work to return it to full use.

A quick visit to the site revealed the full extent of the work required, but not afraid of hard work, we agreed to take it on...