Allotment update – 1/7/2025

I suspect that if I look in my draft posts folder that there will be one from earlier this year about my allotment. I’m sure I at least started such a thing and I would be unsurprised if I never finished and posted it.

The allotment ticks over in very small increments so there never seems to be a significant point at which to do a post. I should do a monthly version and this being the first of the month, that could be a good date to follow up on. Don’t hold your breath on August 1st.

Something significant did happen today on the allotment front. For about ten years I rented plots 3 and 6. I started with plot 6 in 2013 then took on plot 3 a year later. I informally sublet half of plot 3 and when they quit, leaving me with the whole plot, I quit that plot altogether. That’ll have been about a year ago.

My neighbour on plot 7 has for a long time been winding down his activity on his plot. He decided over last winter to give up half of it, which was agreed to by the site owners but they then didn’t get anyone to take it on. Unlike many, perhaps most, allotment sites, there is no waiting list for ours. The half he abandoned was the side adjacent to my plot so every time I go up there I see this unused ground adjoining my plot. At the weekend I finally cracked, established that it had still had no takers, agreed a price, paid up and took possession. As much as I did yesterday was to trim the grass along the front fence; it was very hot.

Today, which was maybe a degree cooler, I put the strimmer over the whole piece, cleared the most recently cultivated section of weeds and encroaching grass and sowed seeds of carrots, perpetual spinach, beetroot, chard, spring onions and lettuce. I didn’t dig it, just skimmed the weeds off with a spade. This section had mostly been dug over during the winter. I’m expecting seedling weeds to be a major issue.

None of these are things I would normally direct sow, having had very little success so doing in the past. Mostly I put that down to slugs and being much later in the year and much drier, I am hoping there will be few about. I will need to water to get the seeds started but hopefully I still have time enough to get a crop.

The piece I have cultivated is about a quarter of the full length of the plot and I have no immediate plans for the rest of it. I shall probably just keep it cut until winter then think about what I am going to do with it. In effect I now have a plot which is 50% wider than it was before. Then again, I have a bed of strawberries which are sending out runners every which way, I might need to clear the next bit quite soon for transplant them.