Free Seeds with the BBC!

Get your moneys worth from your licence fee and apply for your free seeds from the BBC Dig In campaign to encourage the British public to grow their own.

There are also lots of useful tools and tips on the BBC website including a Gardeners Calender which reminds you what jobs are needing doing now...  As if you haven't enough to do.  A great feature rich site...

Late Summer and Harvest 2009

In an attempt of making amends for failing to blog throughout the whole of the second half of last year. I have rifled through a few of the photos I took down the allotment and put together a couple of collages of my first allotment growing season...

The first collage is of my first harvest, a rather eclectic mix of mixed success. The winner by far this year were the squashes. Over 20 Festival squashes (top right) for the second successive year (we had a good crop in our garden last year to). The secret with these colourful critters is too keep them well watered during the dry months and feed them with epsom salts if the leaves start to go yellow. This treatment has worked wonders for me the last two years... Just starting to get tired of Squash soup >;-) Just found this recipe for a spicy version which I might give a try...

The french beans were a real disapointment this year. I planted them in the same bed as the squash and the sweetcorn (the three sisters I mentioned in the article One month in...). I think they were just squeezed out by the other two. If I try this again I will make sure I give them more room and sturdiercanes to grow up. As you can see I did resue a few for replanting this year.


The potatoes were another success, I had only just caught the planting time so only planted a small crop. I had been told I would be lucky to save them from the wireworms. However I kept a close eye on them and once I noticed a few had been eaten by the little critters in early september I dug up the whole crop. This meant the potatoes were on the smaller side, but they did last me till christmas, which gave me a sense of achievement!

The sweetcorn grew very well and as you can see looked good when picked. However in hindsight I think I picked them too early as the kernels were quite pale and not as sweet as you would hope. However my hand was forced by the badgers. As you can see by the two samples below the green box. The badgers had decided they were ready for eating so I had to harvest. I notice that everyone else in the allotment who grew sweetcorn had it very well protected with chicken-wire fencing. I had foolishly hoped to get away without it. I should have guessed they didn't go to that effort just for fun!

Finally the second collage show a few photos taken during the growing season around July and August. Notice the contrast between the large image in the top right corner and the photo of the allotment in February I posted earlier.

The Plot in February...

The rather sorry looking plot in February.  Most of the Cabages, brocolli and cauliflour didn't survive the snowy winter.  Though to be honest that may have been because I wasn't brave enough to get out and look after them during the poor weather.  Still hopefully I will get out and make a fist of it over the next few months!

One month in...

Well the first month has been and gone in a flash of an eye!

Week three was the week of neglect as I managed to pop down once to do some watering as work and other things seemed to get in my way. While week four saw me clear and dig another bed. Not before time as my three sisters (sweetcorn, green beans and squashes) that have been growing in the cold-frame in my garden are desperately needing to be planted out. That is what I will be doing at the weekend hopefully!

I also witnessed my first notable bit of wildlife in the allotment this week (apart from worms and slugs and things). Under one of the mats keeping the grass down I saw what I think was a slow-worm - a lizard without legs. I think it was a slow-worm rather than an adder mainly because it was pretty slow when I moved the mat. It was a shame I didn't have my camera with me. perhaps i will come across it again. It can stay as long as it wants as far as I'm concerned as its diets includes slugs! Just as well as it is a protected species in the UK.

As expected I have pretty much only managed to fit in a couple of hours here down the allotment over the month, I'm probably averaging 2-3 hours a week. But I am pleased with what I have achieved, perhaps because I had low expectations in the first place. Starting so late in the season means I can experiment without expecting too much, and get things in order for a full season of growing next year.

Week Two: Freecycle is my saviour...

The second week saw me set about acquiring tools and other useful things that I desperately needed for my allotment...

Freecycle is my saviour, and a must for any allotmenteer. For those not familiar with freecycle it is basically a network of local message-boards that allow people to post lists of things that they don't want anymore for other people to come and take away. It works on the principal of one mans rubbish is another mans treasure.

That second week I picked up two double glazed doors (which I hope I will one day get round to making a cold frame with). A number of bits of old carpet, four pallets for creating a compost bin and a selection of tools including a hoe and a fork. A big thankyou goes to Malcolm who after dropping off the doors, kept me in mind and was kind enough to call me up and offer me some bits of carpet and the tools. As a thankyou please check out his website.

If I was desperate to dig a bed and start growing in week one. My efforts turned to stop things growing in the little time I spent down the allotment in week two. It being the end of May the temperature had shot up as had the grass and weeds. The old bits of carpet I got through Freecycle allowed me to cover most of my plot. I then attacked the rest with my rotary push mower. Hard work, but I want to see how long I can last without resorting to powered tools such as strimmers and rotovators.

Week One...

Well I had to start somewhere... First off I bought myself a spade. I am hoping to recycle and use second hand tools and equipment as much as possible on the allotment. However I figured with a lot of digging ahead of me I could treat myself to a brand new spade a Spear & Jackson number, with currently a third off at Homebase. With willful enthusiasm I got stuck in and started removing the turf from what will be my first bed.

By the end of the week I had finished digging the bed and was just about to plant some King Edward potatoes. When I was told by a neighbour that I would be lucky to get potatoes from my allotment over the next two years as they would most likely be eaten by something called wireworms. Well my bed was dug and the seed potatoes wer poised to go in the ground so despite the warning I planted the spuds and will keep my fingers crossed. The plan for the rest of this year is to plant small amounts of lots of different things and see what does well and what doesn't. The RHS say companion planting Marigolds may help keep wireworms away from tomatoes, so I may plant some near my spuds. Do your best wire worms!

The Beginning...

It was a Friday lunch time a couple of weeks a go. Checking the post, a key dropped out an envelope, on further investigation of the contents I was thrilled to find I had finally acquired an allotment. Well half an allotment as it happens, but its more than enough for me to fit into my busy life.

It was a surprise because I had signed up for one around 6 months ago. But as there has been a surge of interests in allotments over the last couple of years, like many areas there is a fair old waiting list in and around Tunbridge Wells. So much so in fact, that a number of growers couldn't wait their turn and took things into their own hands earlier this year...

I however, a much less militant gardener (and pretty much distracted by the one hundred and one other things that occupy my life) was happy to wait my turn. So it was that Friday evening early in May, after work I jumped on my bike and headed down to survey my new plot to check it out and take some photos.

My first impressions were that it was not as big as I thought it would be. But that feeling soon passed as I sat in the middle of it, on the grass (it was pretty much all grass, it hadn't been dug in a while). The realisation dawned that it was plenty big enough to start with, and that I was starting from the very beginning. I didn't even own a spade...

I hope the Allotment Monkey blog will record my progress over the coming months and years. hopefully it will also becoming a useful reference for myself and anyone else who stumbles upon it. A record of a young(ish) aspiring allotmenteer fitting his plot into his hectic life.