Wow! Wait a minute. I just remembered that I have this website on allotmenteer.co.uk, logged in, and noticed my last posting to the site dates back nearly 4 months!

OK - let’s say it was during winter this happened - you could sort of understand. But as it happens summer is nearly gone, and this place should be bustling with reports of a bountyful harvest from my plot, so why is it that nothing has happened?

I’m afraid that this season has been another disastrous one for me! The two main reasons being lack of time due to work and family commitments, and a massive, massive mistake I made at the beginning of the season. Let’s rewind……

My previous post read:

On top of that I have, over the last month or so, wheeled in an additional 2-3 tonnes of manure, and spread it in a 2 inch layer on top of the soil. Yesterday most of it was turned into the soil by rotovator (I still need to run over parts of it another time or two), so my entire plot is now ready for sowing and planting out.

I have now learned the hard way! Never - never ever - use fresh manure on your top soil!

Now - some of you may want to know why? Simply because seeds that would have been part of the diet of the animals that produced the manure may not have been digested properly (this is particularly true for grazing animals), and so they will germinate and grow on your plot.

Result? When I came back from my holiday at the end of May, my plot looked like something in between a nice meadow and a lawn! Sad - but true! Now - it takes enough out of me to get the time to go and tend to whatever crops I’ve got, so having to weed out grass from all over the plot was simply more than I could bear to think about.

Needless to say - but most of my plot has been in a horrendous state through most of the season. In saying that though - I have had a decent crop of strawberries, peas, raspberries and beetroot. Also I have had a few carrots - and a few brassicas that I don’t yet know how will turn out. Oh - and my sons sunflowers have been a tremendous success - second season on the run!

I have learned my lesson! I shall get up - brush off the dust - and move on! Success on my plot will happen the third time around - and I’m still adamant that this site will evolve into a valuable ressource for allotment plotholders and/or vegetable growers in the UK and world wide.

Just watch this space….

Technorati Tags: Allotment Digging, Allotment Gardening, Manure

Yesterday was a day of great achievement in my allotmenteer career. After 18 months of hard work I finished double-digging my entire plot! This means that every bit of soil on my plot has now been dug over, using my “Cheat version” of double digging.

In reality, even though this technique is not a labour intensive as “real” double digging - make no mistakes - it still takes a considerable amount of effort, along with (quite litterally) tonnes of organic matter! My estimate would be that over the course of these 18 months, I have wheeled in well in excess of 50 tonnes of horse manure onto my plot, and dug it in.

On top of that I have, over the last month or so, wheeled in an additional 2-3 tonnes of manure, and spread it in a 2 inch layer on top of the soil. Yesterday most of it was turned into the soil by rotovator (I still need to run over parts of it another time or two), so my entire plot is now ready for sowing and planting out.

I’m going to do some of that tomorrow (it’s a bank holiday in the UK), while I promised to also run the rotovator over another plot or two, belonging to some elderly plot holders who would have no chance of doing it themselves. Those machines in themselves are worth a few hours in the gym - so if you’re 70+ years old - you really don’t stand much of a chance. I love helping people - so it’s a problem solved!

Technorati Tags: Allotment Digging, Allotment Gardening, Manure, Rotovating

As I told you last week, I ordered a new wormery to go on my allotment plot (eventually). I had 2 reasons for buying a new wormery. First of all I wasn’t too impressed with the one I bought last year (for more money than what I paid for the new one!) - and secondly I figured that I could just take some of the worms from my new wormery to re-populate my old one - and get them both going.

On one point I was “let down” bit - but it’s all good!

My new wormery is fully up to the standard I would have expected it to be, having bought it directly from a professional worm farmer with 30 years of experience. It’s built out of very sturdy plastic boxes, rather than the cheap ones from the pound-shop, and have a few seemingly essential features that I’ve missed previously.

The “let down”? Well - since I bought this wormery from a worm farmer - he didn’t send me breeding worms as I thought he would. This means I’ll have to hold off re-populating my old wormery for a month or two, as all of my new worms are rather small. The biggest of them are around 2 inches long - but once they get down to business of munching through some of my green waste - they’ll soon grow bigger.

For those of you interested in worm composting - I’ll be posting regular updates here on how things develop over the season - and hopefully I’ll be able to encourage/help some of you getting going with your own wormeries.

Technorati Tags: Allotment Gardening, Worm Composting, wormery.

I saw a very interesting feature on the BBC breakfast programme this morning. Apparantly it’s now “in” to go to the green gym.

So what is a green gym then? Simply a number of community projects set up for people to come and do some gardening activities, and do a bit of a workout that way, rather than going to the more traditional gyms and pull some iron rods around etc. Apparantly an hour doing light gardening is as good as, if not better than going on an excercise mashine or doing “steps” for 20 minutes, and it’s free! I know which one I’d prefer.

A doctor interviewed on the program confirmed what we allotmenteers have known for ages - twenty minutes of digging every day is more than enough cardio-vascular excercise for the average person - and there’s social and psychological benefits in it as well.

Personally I love the idea! Not only for the health benefits, but also (maybe particularly) for the benefits of the communities in which this work takes place. I hope that a lot more people becomes involved in things like this, and that the powers that be will start to realise the need for projects like this, and start setting up more allotment sites in order to meet the demand.

In other news I ordered a new wormery for my plot yesterday. I can’t wait to get going again, and I’m going to get my old wormery started up again, as well as setting up some more wormeries as and when the population of worms allows it. Before the end of the season I would like to be able to set up a complete “professional” worm-bed on my plot, but we’ll have to wait and see if my time and finances allow for this. Fingers crossed! My new wormery should be here this coming friday.

Technorati Tags: Allotment Gardening, Worm Composting, Green Gym.

I must admit I’m starting to get a bit anxious, as it seems every time I plan to go and do some work on m plot, it starts pouring down. The party stops before it can even start - and by now my first seeds should have been put in the soil!

Ah well - I know my plot will be one heck of a lot more successfull this year than last year - simply because last year was a disaster

This has also given me a bit of time to surf the internet - and think about what I’m going to do on my plot and on this website in the next few months - so it’s not all lost!

One thing I’m going to focus on this season is composting. This should be the backbone of every allotment plot - producing your own compost - and recycling as much of your green waste as possible. Both of these things are something I’m rather passionate about.

As you may know - I invested in a wormery last year - and all of my worms drowned in the torrential downpours! In the coming week I’m definately going to get it going again, while I’m also going to invest in another kind of wormery just to try it out, and also I’m going to build myself another two kinds of wormeries based on some studying I’ve done over winter. If you’re interested in these sorts of things at all - watch this space!

As far as surfing the internet goes - I came across a rather interesting downloadable e-book for those of you interested in organic allotmenteering. Organic Food Gardening Beginners Manual is just that - a guide that will take you by the hand and teach you about growing your food organically - but perhaps more interestingly comes with a number of bonus tools such as a garden planner / diary - a guide to collecting your own seeds - a 4-year plot rotation plan and direct email consultation with the author.

I have not yet bought the manual - but I plan to do so and give it a proper review at a later stage. Meanwhile - if you fancy taking a look at it - please do, and post your thoughts in my comment section.

Technorati Tags: Allotment Gardening, Worm Composting, Organic Food Gardening.

Buying seeds for your allotment plot is probably one of the more exciting tasks you get to do as an allotmenteer. Gone are all the tedious hard work of digging over your plot in preparation for the coming years crop and making plans where to plant them.

In the good old days you’d go to the garden center, a DIY store or even a supermarket at this point, but these days there’s a new option to go with! You can now buy your seeds online, straight from your favorite seed merchant.

Buying seeds online is easy, convenient and time-saving (for some of us anyway). In just a few seconds you get the entire catalogue from your favorite seed merchant up on the screen in front of you, and perhaps this is the number one reason for ordering your seeds off the internet.

In comparison to the high street shops, where you’ll only find the mainstream crops, you can get every variety you can imagine online. Have you ever seen “Broad Bean Red Epicure” seeds in the shops? No? Well - you’ll get them online - along with a great selection other fruits and vegetables, not to forget bulbs, flowers, herbs and allotment “hardware” such as nettings, cloches, plant supports, watering systems etc., all in one place.

I have bought my seeds and plants online over the past few years, and there’s no way I would do it any different this year. Here at Allotmenteer.co.uk we recommend the following online seed merchants: Dobies, Suttons and Unwins Seeds. All these seed merchants are main players in the UK market, they have been supplying allotment plotholders with seeds for years, and all of them are known for outstanding customer service.

Technorati Tags: Buying Seeds Online, Allotment, Buy Seeds Online.

Today has seen a new online seed merchant added to Allotmenteer.co.uk.

In saying “new” - Unwins Seeds is not a new player in the market - just another option to shop for seeds, bulbs and plants for your plot from this site. In fact, Unwins Seeds is a major player on the UK market, so if you have previously bought your seeds from places like Tesco and B&Q, chances are that you’ve bought from Unwins.

Their online store at Unwins.co.uk offer seeds of all kinds and varieties, but it doesn’t stop there! If you prefer to buy your vegetables ready to plant out, if you’d like to grow all kinds of fruits, or if you’d like to get a seed collection for your kids (highly recommended - they love it), Unwins will cater for those needs as well.

To visit their store, click one of the links in this post, or the banner in the meny to the right.

Technorati Tags: Unwin Seeds, Allotment, Buying Seeds Online, Vegetable Seeds

Winter is losing its grip, and today I went back to my plot for the first time in nearly 3 months. I really enjoyed being back, as did my 4-year old son, but boy did I feel out of shape at the end of the day? My goodness - if I am to achieve anything of what I want this season - I’ve got to kick it into a higher gear!

In saying that though, this year I have invited one of my friends on to the plot with me, and he was there with me some of the time today. I’ve done this mainly for 2 reasons. First of all, there’s just no way that I’ll be able to manage the plot on my own this year, so I thought it would be an idea to invite someone in to share the benefits that can be had from the plot as well. Secondly - it’s amazing what you can accomplish when you work with someone else - rather than on your own.

Between us we managed to pick up well over a ton of horse manure from the local riding school, transporting it onto the plot, and digging just over half of it in. We used my “Cheat version” of the double digging method, but as well this year I’m planning to spread a layer of manure on the top soil, before the whole plot gets turned over with a rotovator.

As far as I’m concerned, you can’t dig in too much organic matter of this kind. It would be different with stronger types of manure, like cow/pig/chicken manure, but horse manure is quite mild - and excellent to get some air into the soil. I’m hoping to see some results of my hard work last season, digging in tonnes of manure, in terms of an improved soil structure as well as a sharply increased amount of earthworms to help me do some of the hard work.

Talking of worms - I cant remember if I mentioned this before - but all the worms in my wormery was wiped out last year because of all the rain. This year I’m going to start all over again - and we may even start a proper wormery on the site - because we have found out that it can help us with composting, while it can raise some funds to improve things on our site. I’ll keep you all updated on that one.

Other than that I’ve got nothing much to say today. I promise updates to the site will start to become more regular, as I get the time I need to build it, and I’ve got something worthwhile to tell you about.

Technorati Tags: Digging, Allotment, Manure, Riding School

Just wanted to pop in and say Happy New Year to everyone visiting Allotmenteer.co.uk.

Although it may not look like it at the moment - I’m still here - and my plans for the site hasn’t changed. I’m just tangled up in other projects right now - but rest assured that things are going to happen here in 2008.

Thanks for visiting - I hope you found some of what you came for - and that you’ll be back soon.

I hear you say “What?”. By now you probably think “This guy is off his head! Isn’t he 2½ months ahead of time?”

Well - no I’m not! In fact I’m 2 weeks late - because I’m talking about the gardeners’ and allotmenteers’ New Year - October 1st. This date is among gardeners reconed as the start of a new season - we can take stock of the season behind us - and start looking forward to a new season with everything that brings with it.

You may well have noticed that not a lot has been happening on Allotmenteer.co.uk these past few months. Those were the months where I should have told you all about my crops - rejoyced in the fruits of my hard labour - and showed off what was happening on my plot during summer!

Problem is - I’ve had nothing to show for all my hard work! As I’m sure most of you guys would agree - the “summer” just gone has been nothing less than an absolute disaster - and my allotment plot has been no exception! This doesn’t mean that my labour has been in vain - I’m sure all my digging over and incorporating truckloads of organic matter to my plot will pay off in seasons to come - but this year has been a massive let down.

My main crop this year was potatoes! They were doing fine up until the last week in July, and as you can see in my previous article I was still optimistic at that point, still digging and planting (hoping to get a good yield at the end of september), and hoping for better weather to come round. At that point most of my potato plants looked as if they were doing just fine - with exception of a few plants that I thought had been subject to slug attacks.

One week later all my potatoes were gone! Dead! Obliterated by blight - not slugs - and all my tomato plants followed suit! There has been two successful crops on my plot this year! My Squash (marrow) plants gave me a few fruits - nothing like they would have with better weather - and my son’s sunflowers excelled! That’s it! Everything else ended up absolutely useless!

Not that it was any consolation to me - and then in a way it was - I visited my college tutor and his 2 colleagues in the walled garden at Croxteth Park, Liverpool. Their vegetable garden didn’t look any better at all - and between them - these guys have got more than a 100 years experience growing vegetables, fruits and ornamentals. I guess it isn’t just me who was hit hard then!

Now - obviously - this has hit allotmenteer.co.uk quite hard as well. Not that I wanted it to - but with the summer we’ve had - I turned my attention to other projects. At a later point I’ll tell you more about what I’ve been doing - although it has nothing to do with allotmenteering - but I need to see it work first.

I will get back to updating this website more regularly, putting new information on it that will benefit allotment plotholders, but for the time being I have to keep my focus on other things - including getting my plot ready for next season. As previously announced I’m also expecting an addition to my family in about 5 weeks time - and those of you knowing what having a baby in the house means - will know why my postings will remain erratic for some time.

This is just to keep you updated on the goings on around here. Please bear with me - this website is not dead - just in a bit of a slumber. I still intend on making it the place to come for allotment plotholders and vegetable growers worldwide.

Technorati Tags: Allotment, Rain, Sunflowers, Blight, Potatoes, Croxteth Park, Liverpool