Topic: What was your best allotment related memories of this year?

[Mrs Ava]

Great achievements........the Ava_banana patent pending blight prevention tomato growing coverall.  Grew 40 different tomato plants, from black, yellow and red, from plum, cherry to beefsteak, and didn't get any blight when others on the site lost all of their toms very early on.

Followed other sages advice and sowed carrots in drills topped with compost rather than soil, then covered with fleece and left them to it!  Not a carrot fly in site, and thanks to the fleece, we are still pulling lovely long smooth carrots as and when we need them, whatever the weather!

Fruit cage was another bonus, thanks to an old frame tent and lashings of netting.  Picked masses of my most fave berry, the raspberry, followed by black and redcurrants and strawbs galore!

Next year, will remember to create some sort of fleece tent to cover my Alderman peas to stop the pea moth being a nuiscance and sow more spring onions.  Am also going to try broad beans yet again, even though I swore after the birds, mice and voles took the lot yet again I would never grow them again....got some nice scarlet flowered broadies to try.....am going to try and be inventive with chicken wire and decoys!

Best memory on the plot, have lots and lots, but the best are when my darling and the sprogs are with me....firstly digging for those first new potatoes, like looking for buried treasure, then secondly picking the first lot of rapsberries...eating more than will ever make it home, and thirdly, when I am all alone, having a cuppa, watching the birds, or the deer strolling through......happy days!

[katynewbie]

 ;D ;D

What a great topic!! Mine would be the day when I cleared a whole side of the plot and my Mum came and sat in the shade of the cherry tree. She handed out instructions and generally supervised and took the photo you see here!!

[powerspade]

My best crop was 5 rows of broad beans without blackfly 10 rows of onions and 5 rows of shallots. Parsnips and leeks being harvested now yummy. The joy of sitting on my bench outside my shed in the summer and just looking.

[Derekthefox]

You like your onions too then I see powerspade ...

[lancelotment]

Best achievement must be my outdoor toms and french beans and realising that I could spend as much time as I liked down there so long as I brought my OH something back for tea and flowers for the house.  My OH even splashed out on a pair of the brightest wellies I've ever seen so she could join in.

Worst result, not lifting the last of my carrots before two weeks of frost turned them to orange ice lollies.   That, and being flooded out until mid April and not getting any early spuds in.

New plot this year so who knows!!

All the best for 2006.  Lance

[aquilegia]

My happiest memory of the garden (I hope I can join in as I don't have a lottie) is digging my maincrop spuds. I got 20lbs off 4 plants (and more followed a few weeks later). Including one spud that weighed in at 20oz. I spent a very happy afternoon in the garden with Mr Aqui jumping from the bench every time I yelled because I'd dug up another wapper! I also had a little cry about how proud grandad would have been to see his baby grandaughter digging up homegrown spuds with his old allotment fork.

[BAGGY]

I had a pretty crap year on the whole.  We had the gas main excavation fiasco which threatened to take the shed with it and us.  The strawberry-stealer.  Brussels were useless.  Lotty sec on our back contantly coz we lost the will with the gas main plot.  Corn was a non-event.  Fennel failed and summer cabbage turned slimey.  Numerous break-ins and Charlie being nearly beaten coz his stuff got nicked.  Being unwell for a few weeks was a real knock back as it was at the wrong time lotty wise.
On a more upbeat note, beetroot, beans, spuds, squash, cue and a few others did quite well but would do more in sucession next year to prevent gluts.  Def more carrots, onions, spring onions and have a go at celery.  Will also try aubs and peas as these have never happened yet on my plot.  There's always hope.

[Derekthefox]

Yes I am sorry to hear that this last year has been less than perfect for you Baggy. As Wardy says, there is always next year to look forward to  :)

[scumpy]

Best achievement last year was to follow the advice on this site and only clear the plot in manageable bits.
2nd best, plant cleared areas and enjoy.
best growing success was Butternuts 23 from 4 plants, each 2 to 3 KG.

[Rose.mary]

Ilong term memory) I always leave with a smile on my face and a satisfied feeling inside - even if I have just been to look.

I always leave the allotment feeling angry that somebody has turned of the light too soon. I never want to go home. My smile is in the morning when I am just arriving.

Rosemary

[Derekthefox]

I think most of us share those sentiments rosemary. I for one, am always very sluggish when it comes to locking up ...

[Robert_Brenchley]

I often lock up then go for a last walk round the site, to delay the inevitable.

[Mothy]

My best memory this year was looking back down the 150' x 30' plot after finishing digging it. Didn't start clearing it until 30/12/04 so wasn't sure if we would get all the way down.

Other than that, highlights have been onion, shallots, french/runner/broad beans, new potatoes, leeks and garlic. Won't mention the flied up maincrop carrots, the slug eaten main crop spuds and spring cabbage or the stunted swedes  ;) I'll just have to try harder next year.......and I can't Wait!!!!!! 

[Columbus]

My best alottment memory of 2005?

Probably a day when I had time to just sit on a beaten up, faded plastic garden chair on my little patch of grass in front of my newly built fruit cage. One hot day in the summer when the little compound in front of my sheds was a stopping off point for lots of birds that didn`t seem to mind me at all. When everything that needed to be built was built and everything that was supposed to be growing was growing. There was a great sense of achievement and satisfaction, surrounded by food and flowers that I had grown, enough for my needs and some for the future and some for friends. I could have stayed on the plot forever.

I promised myself more of the same now digging and weeding doesn`t take as long, composting is ongoing for the future health of the soil and irrigation doesn`t need me to stand and hold a hose.

Now ... If I can just stop the slugs from eating all my seedlings and keep the pigeons off my brassicas I can doze all summer long  ;D

Thanks for this thread, Col

[derbex]

Autumn Bliss raspberries -yummmmmmm.

Hopefully apples next year -just a few please.


Jeremy

[agapanthus]

Making a lunch of stir fried veggies with oyster sauce with my lottie neighbour Jean whilst sitting next to the pond on the lottie in the sunshine ;D absolute bliss.... 8)

[Derekthefox]

I was transported as well Wardy, it was wonderful to feel that summer heat buzzing for a little while ...

[mc55]

Stepping into it for the first time at the end of October ... got chills of excitment as I hacked my way through the gate !!!!

[mat]

Last Year -

Best memories - taking on the plot in Mid October, getting the first row dug, getting in the first autumn onions and shallots (my first crop planted!!!) and not quite last year, but yesterday, planting out 93 cloves of garlic (6 varieties) I started at home in seed trays (I never realised how much root growth they would make in a few weeks of frozen weather...)

I know what wardy means by holding on to the memories of how the plot "used" to look.  I have just looked at the photos of how it was and how it now is.  It made me realise how much I have achieved from the weedy, rotten carpet, rubbish ridden plot it was.  It's now 1/3 dug (all by hand by me) to the amazement of the "old" guys that a "lady" has stuck it out  ::)  I hope to get at least all the rotation bed area dug by end March (24 beds - 6 per rotation, I have 12 dug so far...) and the quality of the soil once dug looks fantastic, much to the surprise of some people.

This year -
Hopefully some of my cropping plans will succeed... all planned on a spreadsheet...
Ensure I get on top of the bindweed...
Keep a photo diary of progress
Oh and find a way to eradicate some of the mice population... I dug up two dead ones a couple of weeks back (poor things obviously froze to death in the artic frosts we had) and I dug up a mouse store of bird food yesterday.  I stood there and swore what the f*** is that? At first I thought it was a huge clump of strange eggs, then I realised it was seed (never seen seed quite like it) I finally twigged it was an underground mouse food store of what looks similar to bird millett!
Asking you for advice  :D

mat.

[agapanthus]

All in good time Wardy...too bloody cold for outdoor cooking at the mo!! ;D