Allotments 4 All

...make my mind up.

I've got £7 in vouchers to spend at my local garden centre. I've have been and looked around and come away with nothing.   :(

I looked at packets of seeds but couldn't decide which to buy. Do I buy for the lotty or for my garden at home?  I looked at some straggly Japanese Acers thinking I could add to my collection of two but they looked so bedraggled I thought no. I looked at heated progagators thinking I could put the money towards one of those. I don't know enough about them,would I get alot of use out of one? I looked through the books nothing gave me a spark. I need some ericacious compost...boring. I steered clear of the pots...I'm pot mad and have enough already! Seed trays? Cloche for the lotty? Bamboo canes? What would be most useful? I even looked in the gift bit...not even a useless dust catcher in a chicken stylee to be had.

I left confused, a bit miserable...I hate going shopping and getting nowt.  What to do? What to buy?   :-\

So experienced allotment holders. What would you buy with a bit of slack cash in your pocket?

Oooooooh Heldi! You're a braver woman than me! I couldn't leave a garden centre without buying anything  ::)

How about going for something 'silly' or out of the ordinary? Thompson & Morgan do some great packets of 'kids' seeds that are basically unusually shaped gourds etc. I bought some the other day for my little boy - called 'Slithering sam'. A gourd that looks like a curly snake when it's grown and then you can paint it (I bought it for me, not him really  ;D )

Or some giant sunflowers - something cheerful like that!

Trixie x

Christmas, was given a £10 voucher for Wyvales & a £5 one for Wilkos. Never any great bargains to be had at Wyvales :(, so it might go on potting compost, vermiculite, whatever, when I start to sow. The £5 one for Wilko's tho.......can buy so much for a fiver there, gonna be spoiled for choice ;D ;D ;D

Trixiebelle I was absolutely depressed at leaving the garden centre with nothing,nuthin,nowt,zilch  :(   But I got so curfuffled and the lotty was drawing me one way and my garden pulling me another.

I like your suggestions though  :)  :) 

Alishka...you lucky thing 5 quid to spend in Wilko's. I want to know what you buy! I hope you find something in Wyvales too but if not potting compost etc never goes amiss does it.  :)

Trixie has the right idea I think, Heldi.  Buy something you wouldn't normally buy yourself.  Go for something a bit unusual. I know exactly what you mean though, it takes me ages to spend vouchers as I am so indecisive.  I slowly go through all the possibilities and imagine buying it and what I would do with it.  I think I analyze it to death and then I'm too exhaused to buy anything -  mad or what?  I have £25 worth of M&S vouchers that I am still pondering over. 

I have just been to Wilkinsons this afternoon Alishka, and all their gardening stuff is really appearing now.  I bought some red onion sets and some shallots sets and two packets of seeds for starters,  - they have the buy one get one free offer on at the moment. :) busy_lizzie

Busy I sat here and found myself thinking.."Hmmmm £25 of Marks and Spencers vouchers what would I buy?" I ended up I visualising myself in the food aisles standing by the chocolate cakes!!

Heldi have you bought your seed potatoes yet? £7 would be about right to buy 2 bags and they're in the garden centres now, I bought mine this week. :)

No I haven't Jesse.  I don't know what to go for. I'm not asking folks!!! I'll do a search for some suggestions soon. (Which won't work and I'll have to ask someone to find a thread for me because me and the search facility don't get on!)It's my first time planting up my lotty and I'm a bit over whelmed as to planning it out etc.  Got broad beans in at the moment which I keep mentioning but I'm totally made up to have anything after all that rubbish I had to shift. I plonked them in as soon as I had a bare bit of soil in the Autumn. So not much planning there then!

I often wonder what people first started off with when they first got their lotty?

Leeklings. Was given about 70 of them more or less on my first day. As totally clueless, bunged them in freshly rotavated soil after marking out bed. Now very hard to find them in bed of couch grass, but they did grow and were the only thing not attacked by slugs or birds. Basically idiot proof, as proved by this idiot  :)

Heldi - I know exactly where you are coming from!  I'm not sure where to start really either.  I've bought various seeds and ordered potatoes and onions.  I've dug one and half beds but no idea what to put in them first!  I'm hoping it will all become clear eventually....

The way I started was to decide what we eat most of and what is worth growing. Once I had made a list of these things then I had a look around the shops and internet to decide what varieties I wanted to try. Once I had bought all my seeds I sat down with seed packets and excel (you could use a piece of graph paper) and drew up a "map" of my allotment, roughly each square on the grid being half a meter. I categorised the plants into beds and have ended up with six beds, that sorts out what is going where and how the rotation will work each year. After that I made a planting diary, copying information from the seed packets and from books I have, it gives me a month by month account of what needs sowing and other things to do. Have a look at my website (link below) for my example, but lots of people here have done their own plan/diary, each persons will vary depending on how they want to lay out their plot and what it is that they grow. This year I'm not growing cabbages/brassicas so my plan wouldn't work for someone who did want to grow them. I'll be growing most of my tomatoes at home rather than the allotment so there's not space left for them on the plan either. Although the best plans are always tweaked as the season goes by, it's nice to have a general idea of what you should be doing and where to put things, and it's a record for next year so you know where things were. I've also included a diary page to record when I sow seeds, when they germinate, when I plant out etc, that way if things go wrong or right I know what I did for next year and can either change or keep it the same. :)

Bupster I wouldn't know what to do with leeks. I've saved some of the tubes that were lying around the lotty in the hope someone will tell me. I'm assuming the tubes are for leeks   ???   :)

Nice to know I'm not the only one to have the jitters about getting it all started Amanda  :)

Jesse I've taken a look at your website. It's brilliant. You are sooooooo organised with writing things down and your grid. Fantastic. I can't imagine being that good. I was so engrossed I've let me pasta go too far...oops!

If you like eating them (I love them - steam them when they're babies or bung them in stews etc when all growed up) then they're relatively easy. You can start planting them quite soon, indoors and out, and then you separate them when they get to pencil sized. The trick is to dib a hole for each leek and just drop them in it, without filling in the earth - just water them gently and the earth will sort of trickle in.

Haven't a clue what the tubes are for. Maybe blanching them so you get a longer white stem?

Jesse's scarily good, isn't she? Must get organised... have everything written in about three separate notebooks, all with different plans etc. Oop.

Hello Jessee (and others)

What a lovely website you have Jesse.  I loved reading your diary for January 2006.  I was a bit worried that I had put my potatoes out in the greenhouse to chit too early but was pleased to see that you have also done so.  I am going to be doing Kind Edward as a main crop and Pink Fir as another.  The packet said they were also main crop and not early though??  What do you think as I have seen them referred to as earlies??

I was also interested to see that you do patchwork - alto I have only done a sampler and have tons of material, books and designs just floating around in my head.  I see also that your family is far away -- mine are in South Africa - can you beat that? 

I am new to this list and cannot seem to be able to email your private number, maybe if you are interested you could email me seperately or on another forum on this site?   ;D

Jitterbug

get acers,  and im not joking! for £7 you will get a decent sized ones, it wont have many leaves, but go with it,  just look after it, maybe wait til spring before planting into the ground.

it will be a bargain, acers can be a bit temprementle at times and dont always show through in the spring, so when there like this they sell them fairly cheap, just incase. Then when thye bud thye stick the prices up.

i got one for £6, orange dream, 4ft tall, went back in the spring and noticed the same ones, infact oen we had looked at, for.......£60!!!!  :o

Buy a Cornus
Im going through a Cornus phase, (people on the beeb boards know about it!), they are magnificent in a garden. If not why not buy a...

Euphorbia
Not the most exciting name but every garden should have one!

These are only suggestions BTW!

Happy Gardening/Growing/Buying/Planting/Sowing/...whatever... ;D

Bupster,Jesse is brill. Do you think she could be persuaded to do a tour to visit my lotty and my notebook?

Oooooh Adam you have swayed me back towards acers....I was just about reaching for Trixies gourds an all! OOer!

Dan your persuasive manner with your moving parts made me laugh but I don't do cornus. Don't you remember?? They give me nightmares.