Allotments 4 All
Allotment Stuff => The Basics => Topic started by: joji on December 26, 2005, 22:04:26
-
I thought I would start this thread as it is comming to the end of the year.
What was your best achievement this year ?
If some thing went wrong will you do anything different?
What was your greatest growing achievement ?
Is there anything different you will be trying this comming year that you were worried about growing last growing season ?
:)
-
So many achievements for me this year as it was my first year with an allotment which meant so much more could be grown.
Soft fruit was the biggest success, strawberries, raspberries, gooseberries and blackcurrants. Growing lots of onions was great, oooh and potatoes...I love growing potatoes, great fun digging them up and the anticipation of how many and how big they're going to be, same applied to sweet potatoes. And the sweetcorn and pumpkins were great fun to grow.
To do differently next year...I'll grow more potatoes and onions as they didn't last long enough. And I'm determined to get a decent crop of carrots next year. Oh, and keep on top of the weeds...they did far too well this year. ;D
-
Our best achievement was putting up a large netted fruit cage, digging out all the grass and weeds and planting strawberries, blackcurrants and ...later, brassicas.
What went wrong? The pigeons ate all my brassicas in the veggie plot so I had to start from scratch again and put them into the fruit cage. Unfortunately they were then so late that the summer varieties of purple sprouting, cabbage etc have been destroyed by frost. Next year I will put netting right across the area where my brassicas will be.
Greatest growing achievement has to be the onions and potatoes that my husband planted. I helped with the weeding. I was also pleased with the strawberries.
I will be trying to grow squashes and hope to be successful in germinating parsnips. We will also double the amount of onions we grew and triple the potatoes. Hopefully they will then last us through the winter.
Pauline
-
Getting my polytunnel up.... and learning from Wards the non dig method!! Cos after that I'm never digging again.. ;D
not to be too fussy, to be kind to worms, and there's nothing wong with just sitting, looking and smiling for awhile..
-
to be kind to worms
...but don't put them on your head! ;D
-
The best was last spring, with Trillium kurabayashii, crown imperials and masses of snowdrops. The worst was last summer when I was too unwell to do any more than watch the weeds grow.
-
We have had a really good year this year, and seemed to have learnt a lot by previous experiences. I have been pleased with my salad crops this year, and instead of planting the seed in situ, I have done them in pots in the greenhouse first and then planted them out seperately and they have really benefitted so I have had nice big healthy lettuces that didn't have to fight for space.
I have loved growing squashes and pumpkins and they really reward you with their quick growth and big fruits, they are a joy to watch grow and have made me smile more than anything else I have grown this year.
I have also used the plastic cloche sticks I bought cheaply from Wilkinsons this year,covered in netting for protection of crops and it has really paid off. Far better than previous years just draping netting over bamboo stick with pots underneath, which I constantly tripped over and found awkward to shift so I could weed underneath. Our plot is a lot more organised this year too with proper bark chipping paths which make it so much easier to keep tidy. We have a new bed to organise this coming season in our wild patch at the back and when we do that I'll feel completely satisfied at how our plot is arranged. I can't wait to get cracking again. :D busy_lizzie
-
Being my fist year there are lots - the best of all though was the day I had finally clearedthe plot and got my first seeds in. Just stood leaning on the fork and contemplating the coming year - peace contentment and hope!
Biggest mistake was frsh mauring and not watering my broccoli enough. Result - 10 big plants, number of heads 0! Know a bit more now. Oh that and a grand crop of zero peas - with advice from here hopefully the toilet roll propagation will see some results this year.
-
...but don't put them on your head! ;D
Thank you, Jess! At least some will be safe next season, whilst others are wrecklessly experimenting with worm balancing......
Still haven't got the hang of this quote milarky..... ::) something to achieve next season, I feel.....
-
Best memories? They have to be my onion and carrot crops. 800 onions, with some real whoppers in there, and carrots the size of marrows ...
I tend to blank my failures so I dont dwell on them, but I have determined to only use fresh compost for growing tomatoes ...
New crops for this year? Tomatillos and cape gooseberries are two ...
-
Four perfect little cauliflowers - found abandonned in a patch of weeds...
-
My first year too, and I can look back and laugh when I think that I did not know if I could dig or not at my age. I then went on, not to dig one plot but two. The last one my permanent one. Oh! and the pleasure of " my first". What a miracle putting little seeds in and watching them struggle with me >:(, each one of us determined to win (not always me) :o
Also finding out I could make a compost bin and cold frame and oh so much more.
A Happy New Year everyone and happy gardening.
Love Rosemary
-
beiggest ;D was putting the Greenhouse up. Toook it down at one place transported and refitted all the bits together. and now its up. pride and joy of the lottie! ;D ;D
-
Adam you are so lucky. I have had a new 8' x 10' greenhouse since October, and it still is not up. It is either the weather or getting somebody to help me and then I had 3 weeks holiday, and then Christmas, I have got somebody who advertises in the local paper to do odd jobs and he has promised to help me for a day (£80) but so far when I have rung up he has been busy. DON'T PANIC!! DON'T PANIC!!
By the way I have put the sides together and put the foundations down
Rosemary
-
Best allotment related memory............................GETTING ONE..........and not having to make to with small veggie patch at home. ;D
After that came getting my shed.........................closely followed by a JCB ;D
CUCUMBERS..................wow the first year I've ever managed to grow a decent cucumber, problem is that I have no idea what I did differently this year that made them so successful.
What were yours Joji?.................either I've missed something, which wouldn't surprise me, or you haven't told us yours................... :)
Well done rosemary keep going and you never know you might get it put up without having to fork out £80 :)
-
New crops for this year? Tomatillos and cape gooseberries are two ...
I'm also trying cape gooseberries this year for the first time. :)
-
I'm also trying cape gooseberries this year for the first time. :)
I never made a conscious decision to grow these, but acquired some seed from a generous benefactor, so I want to see if I can manage them, as my daughter loves this fruit.
-
Getting an allotment, and then soon after getting the house adjoining the lottie.... then getting stuff to actually grow; eating our first potatoes and sweetcorn, stringing up onions... and too many other good memories to list
-
just getting one :D
-
Everything is a good memory ... Those first broad beans, the peas , the new potatoes... All a miracle that grew from what was only a patch of weeds a year ago...
Wonderful :)
D
-
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!
-
;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!!
-
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.
-
You like your onions too then I see powerspade ...
-
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
-
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.
-
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.
-
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 :)
-
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.
-
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
-
I think most of us share those sentiments rosemary. I for one, am always very sluggish when it comes to locking up ...
-
I often lock up then go for a last walk round the site, to delay the inevitable.
-
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!!!!!!
-
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
-
Autumn Bliss raspberries -yummmmmmm.
Hopefully apples next year -just a few please.
Jeremy
-
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)
-
I was transported as well Wardy, it was wonderful to feel that summer heat buzzing for a little while ...
-
Stepping into it for the first time at the end of October ... got chills of excitment as I hacked my way through the gate !!!!
-
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.
-
All in good time Wardy...too bloody cold for outdoor cooking at the mo!! ;D
-
Best memories have to be:
1) Finding a lottie near to me in July having recently moved back up North
2) Becoming member of A4A and soaking up all the advice and comments alongside the occasional post ;)
3) Clearing plot
4) Finding some plants in stock at a local nursery and having reasonable success with Cauli, Red cabbage, leeks and sprouts
5) Growing turnips from seed and dealing with the resulting turnip mountain
6) Scrounging rhubarb and strawberry plants from new friends
7) Building compost bin
8) Getting wires and raspberry canes in (December 22nd ;))
9) Planting apple tree, cherry tree, 200 overwinter onionsn :P, garlic and blackcurrant bushes.
and 10) Feeling part of something really special - mainly thanks to A4A.
Doing differently/plans for next year include sorting out some proper beds, keeping weeds down, spending more time on the plot, getting the shed down to the plot and generally growing lots more stuff ;D
-
I'm with Wardy here - the fact that anything (edible!) grew at all.
Plus first meal that included stuff I'd grown.
Oh, and trying Romanesco for the first time - now one of my favourite vegetables.
And watching my son watching a monstrously huge dragonfly patrolling its territory over our plot and catching bees and butterflies on the wing, then devouring them on one of our raspberry posts. (The dragonfly obviously, not my son!)
List just goes on once you get started :)
-
Noticing my snow peas for the first time when they had fully grown :o I wasn't expecting it at all & so soon.
Harvesting my first salad. Pulling out my first beetroot...
The rest of my family can't understand this affair I am having with my vege patch.
Looking forward to my sweet potatoes that have finally emerged after planting 5 months ago!! That was the reason I started gardening and most challenging as what I have read sweet potatoes are not suited to my climate here.
Anna
-
Getting the letter to say there was a plot available. (February)
Inheriting a really well tended plot.
Getting accepted by all the recalcitrant male plot-holders as they grudgingly admitted I was getting some things right.
Persuading my 2 lads, their cousin and his wife to help with the digging and the planting.
Watching my 4 year old granddaughter dancing with butterflies.
The tomatoes, the courgettes, the broccoli, the raspberries, the brambles (from untended plot nearby), the swiss chard, the turnips, the onions, the garlic, the spinach, the parsnips, the joy ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D
The planning how to change and develop.
Getting a plot with 2 sheds and a greenhouse on it.
Feeling able to take on a new unkempt, overgrown, untouched for 8 years plot just beside our fabby one.
Peter (OH) deciding to take up scything again.
The downside: I've been too busy to take photos. :( That is about to be remedied however ... ;) ;D ;D
-
hey baggy,
what about the day when bexley, dartford and all around was flooded, but your lottie survived? ;D
that was a happy one for us over in abbeywood.
other happy memories include, coming home from glastonbury festival to find lottie key arrived and work could begin!
the day i looked up to find sophie (age 3) chatting happily to not one but TWO foxes! :o
wandering home with filthy, tired kids clutching (more like swordfighting with) their veggies for tea.
ooooh, roll on spring, i can't wait to get started again.
Tara xxx
-
I got my plot in late November and haven't planted anything yet. But I've enjoyed visiting the site with my daughters on those crisp frosty days we had a few weeks back. They said lifting the ice from troughs was the most fun ever! I also saw a fox one sunny frosty morning. :)
-
I think the best moment of the yr was when I got my plot, and as a stop gap, taken the shed from my sister in law's and getting to the plot. erecting it. and then having my father in law, come to have a look and recognizing the shed he put up 30+yrs ago...lol
worst memory. after starting work on the plot. finding out that I needed a operation and haven't done no work in 5 months. but on the mend and even went up there today.
wishes for 2006. hope to finish getting the plot ready. green house up. and looking forward to some tasty veg and a bumper crop.
-
Picking strawberrys as the sun comes up
-
Wow :o
You all seem to have achieved so much.
I just hope that we can acheeve as much as you all have when we start this spiring. Already got the tomato seeds growing. ;D
-
d&t - cant remember the flood. Head like a seive me. Must have been too tied up with the gas main fiasco. Still onto spring when I am moving plots.
-
Probbaly should now be last year! This year though was a massive bonfire at the weekend after pruning my new apple trees, finally collecting together the cut down asparagus and pulling up some of the old rotten bed runners from the previous occupant.
I loves a good fire me! Wifey not impressed by the smokey smell and ash deposited on the sofa when I got home though..oops ::)
-
My best memory from last year was last summer when I was bending over pulling weeds from my onion bed when I heard the most glorious sound, I looked up into the sky and watched a Spitfire circle round for a bit & then head off in a northerly direction, a RR Merlin always gets the hairs on the back of my neck standing up
-
I once heard an incredible noise, it was awful. I looked up and there was a Concorde going over. Not a plane I remember with any fondness; it used to rattle the windows every night when I was in Cornwall.
-
I once heard an incredible noise, it was awful. I looked up and there was a Concorde going over. Not a plane I remember with any fondness; it used to rattle the windows every night when I was in Cornwall.
I have to admit I missed concorde when it stopped flying over me on an evening walk I sometimes do. Sadly it was quite conforting that at the exact same time in the evening, it would fly over the ridgeway... on its way to America, but then again it didn't rattle any windows as it was too high ;)
-
It used to go supersonic down the Bristol Channel. There were so many complaints about the sonic boom that they re-routed it further out to sea, but it could still be as bad as ever, depending on the weather.
-
Quite agree about jet engine noise (after all I do work at an airport), but the sound of that V12 Merlin is wonderful
-
The shock of the eight-foot high Mini Sweetcorn, the delight at the triffid-like Cape Gooseberries...
...but the best feeling of all was going out in the garden on Christmas day to pick my very own home-grown Brussels Sprouts for Christmas dinner.
Beat that, Santa!
(oh, and by the way, please can I have an allotment this year?)
-
1st year of allotment so growing anything and being able to say I grew this ! ;D
Mags