When you own an allotment there’s rules. The rules are varied, depending on where your plot is, the council owning the site and seemingly the phase of the moon. If you have a plot of your own, some of you might know about the various committees that can exist to help the council manage the plots.
Our council is quite keen on our plots not looking like weed infested abandoned bits of wasteland, and if they decide your plot is, you get a nice letter.
Which is fair, mine did look a bit like a jungle but had they waited a few weeks more, I would have cleared it without them needing to send me a letter “requesting” that I clear it.
So I set about the place with my strimmer and rotavator, turning it into this. The main bed is wider and some annoying lumps have been removed. It’ll need digging over properly before I plant anything though.
While moving some plastic sheeting around I discovered some frogs. Hopefully they’ll help produce more frogs now that we have a pond.
Long grass is a problem, it smothers everything and is hard to cut down as it doesn’t fit in the mower and binds up my strimmer. So I decided to go old school and buy a scythe.
It’s as mean as it looks and there’s a definite skill to using it. Get it right and the grass gets sliced down in a pretty satisfying way – you can feel the scythe working. Get it wrong and the grass just leans over then waits until you’ve gone home before springing back up.
It’s let me get rid of some quite long grass that was around some fruit trees, and is good at dealing with nettles as providing you keep away from their long stems, nothing stinging gets thrown around like with a strimmer.
Now there’s been some rain, things are starting to grow on the allotment. Not all the things are wanted though. I’m getting a lot of grass and bindweed appearing, trying to choke things out…
The bindweed just sprouts out the ground at random, climbs the closest thing and snakes across the grass. Dealing with this stuff is the main job.
Some of the fruit bushes are having a go at making fruit, but it’s that dry malformed stuff you get when the weather is too hot. A few strawberries appear to have survived the mower too!
In one of the main areas various things are growing. The beans are a bit stunted, I grew them from last year’s crop so maybe they’re not a good strain or something. I have a feeling all the ground needs more nutrients in it too.
Something that is growing well is the random grape vine that appeared from nowhere. It seems to be growing out of a neighbouring house’s garden. I’ve also planted some cucumbers, I am quite certain they’ll grow a lovely crop of bitter tasting veg.
The pumpkins have so far survived the slugs and other pests that want to eat anything with leaves. All my peas have gone, I’m suspecting the pigeons.
Last year I attempted to grow some leaks, but they didn’t really do much and after accidentally mowing their tops off I decided to give up. The plants however had other ideas and managed to survive, so I’ve let them flower, the bees seem to like them anyway.
Now the intense mowing has got the grass under control, and the strimming has temporarily put the brambles in their place, I can get on with removing the long grass that’s growing amongst the fruit bushes.
There’s bushes in here somewhereWhere there’s grass, there’s bindweedAfter…Now the light can get to the plants
This grass is a pest, it smothers the smaller plants and since it grows right amongst the bushes I can’t stick my strimmer in there otherwise it’ll damage the plants I want to keep.
The solution I’ve found is to use more traditional grass removal tools. I have what Amazon calls a “Japanese Weeding Hoe”. It’s sharp – well it was sharp, dragging it through the ground and stabbing at stubborn weeds has given it a less sharp edge now. I need a file. Since it’s hand held I can get right amongst the bushes and rip out the grass with it.
I’m a bit fearful of the brambles and nettles though, the grass has a habit of whipping back on itself as you try to cut it, and goes right where my hands are. This is fine with grass, but being whacked on the hand with some nettles doesn’t seem like fun.
A giant thorny triffidYeah this thing is sharp
The bit between the fruit trees is too long to strim, and since I can’t see where the trees are amongst the grass it’s not safe to just stick the strimmer in and wave it around. I might cut my own leg off or damage the trees.
I can’t even get in thereChickens are a good way to remove grass
This part contains three rhubarb plants, can you see them? No? Me neither, I thought they’d died.
There’s also a lot of rubbish in here. I’m sure I’ll find that in the winter.
With some careful weeding it turns out the rhubarb are still there! Next year they should produce enough that I can harvest their stems.
To get in amongst the longer grass I need a bigger tool.
Something like this will work. Not sure how you get a large sharp object through the mail, but it’ll be fun finding out!
Standing in the back of my plot is The Greenhouse. It’s actually two stuck together like some sort of human centipede arrangement. We gained one greenhouse free from another plot, and then an ex-colleague of mine gave me his for free too, and they just happened to be identical.
Putting it up was a bit of a mission with no instructions, half the bolts missing and it not being very square. Also it went dark…
They had the usual free greenhouse condition of requiring glass, but that was solved by a trip to a local glass merchant who sold greenhouse glass for a sensible price.
Then, over time the door fell off, wind helped remove some of the glass and then between my own clumsiness and some local thieving bastards the rest of the glass just disappeared. And then the weeds and neck high grass took over.
After much procrastination I decided I really should sort the mess out. Also I had some tomato plants that needed planting properly if I was to get anything out of them this year. Last year’s tomatoes in grow bags were a bit sad looking by the end.
This is where I’m supposed to say it wasn’t as bad as I thought, and that it just needed a bit of strimming. Nah, it was worse than I thought and needed more than a bit of a strim. If you strim long grass it either binds up the strimmer, or lays flat over grass you’ve not yet done and it’s hard to tell which grass needs cutting.
I managed to clear a path towards the back, finding lots of lost and covered rubbish (a visit to the tip is a future problem). All round the thing were pieces of wrist-slashingly sharp glass just poking out the grass waiting for an unwary hand.
Once the outside was “done” I ventured inside. Since the soil was so dry I found a rake and a lot of manual labour was the way to clear things. Except the ants, they seem to live in the corner now. Also I discovered the strimmer’s metal blade is quite sharp.
Finally though, after much sweating, a bit of a sit down out the sun to recover and three bananas later I had my tomatoes planted in what looked to be soil.
A job for the future is to get some new glass to replace the missing panels. Amazon sell plastic sheets the correct size for a reasonable price. Being plastic I should be able to glue them in to deter thieving bastards.
I don’t understand why someone stole the glass out my greenhouse, but didn’t nick my mower when the shed blew over. It’s very odd. Might write my plot number across the plastic panels when I get them.
The original shed hasn’t yet magically disappeared. I’ll get around to it one day.
