That moment when…

….you realise you don’t have a fucking clue what you are doing!

 

I now have my key, so I’m now officially a tenant of Almonds Hill Allotments. This brings me great pleasure. It cost me a whopping £12.12 to keep the plot until the end of the year, plus a tenner for a key deposit.

£22.12 to have a plot of land that is exclusively mine. Seems insane doesn't it!

 

A very fortuitous visit to Sainsbury inadvertently resulted in picking up some tools on clearance at rock bottom prices.

I managed to grab:

Digging spade (clearance £3.75)

Digging Fork (clearance £3.75)

Hand Trowel (clearance £3.00)

Hand fork (clearance £3.00)

Quality shears (reduced from £25 to 15)

Mens leather work gloves(thorn proof) £3

Womens leather work gloves(thorn proof) £3

2 x soil sieves £3

1 Large Plastic Trug £8

2  x large Plant markers £1.33 per 10 pack

....all for around £48. BARGAIN!!!!

Once I collected my key, I spent a little time getting to know my plot, fiddling and poking around. One thing I wasn’t aware of is that you are responsible for keeping the grass pathway around your plot neat. Thankfully I'd anticipated this very problem and bought the shears!

 

I would imagine at some point I’m going to get sick of shearing around and buy myself a battery powered strimmer, but let’s walk before we run…..

 

So after I’d finished grovelling around on bended knee and tackling overgrown borders, tall grass and dandelions, and worst...bindweed(I think we may have more to say on bindweed in future posts), I decided to see what was actually growing.

 

I found:

 

Rows of very poorly looking corn – the leaves/plant is a washed out pale yellow colour – looks half dead to me

Strawberries which had been decimated by slugs and snails – but I harvested what I could

Potatoes by the hundred – I pulled up one to gauge size – it has quite some

time to go by the looks of it, but they are respectable new-sized right now

Garden peas which I sampled and were too young yet – and there are probably only about 10-12 pods anyway – barely one meal worth

Onions – they were in the ground and no shoots out the top – but they are kinda small – I have no idea if these will grow or if they are now full size!?!

Something tall and thin like a tall asparagus with a ball at the top – absolutely no idea what that is(not artichoke)

Broad beans – looking very sorry for themselves

More potatoes in the blue barrels

Some kind of pea in the blue barrels

An attempt at runner beans, decimated by slugs and snails

Rhubarb, munched to hell by slugs and snails

2 Gooseberry bushes

2 blackberry bushes

I was overwhelmed at the sheer number of snails and slugs – they are rampant. I must have found over 50 in the little time I spent poking around. I’m sure some pest control is going to be a necessity at some point. Thankfully slugs and snails don’t like eating bonsai material….

 

But it really left me scratching my head in general – I don’t know what’s ready to pick, how to tell it is ready, what the hell some of it is, and how to find out!!

 

However, for now I’m just going to spend some time tidying and weeding the plot. There’s bindweed everywhere (like ivy, it strangles everything….) I still have 2 of the 4 borders to cut back with shears, which is a pig of a job, and a considerable amount of other weeds and long grass to get in check.

 

Also, the previous owner used the compost bins for general rubbish, so I have the fun job of picking litter out – mainly beer cans and taking it to the tip…..

 

In addition, there are 2 huge ants nests in the compost bins which I broke up, with larvae aplenty. And bazillions of ants. I don’t’ know whether or not to poison them, or whether or not to leave them and they’ll die naturally now that I’ve broken up the nest

 

Some serious work to do!!