We’ve had a very frost week and that’s put quite a check on growth, but we’ve still seen an uptick in our harvest volumes compared to last week and last year. I know from experience that even though I’m always concerned that I’m harvesting too much at this time of...
Last year I decided that planning my allotment on a spreadsheet wasn’t for me. I’m a visual person and I found messing around with a spreadsheet was a real chore, I wanted to enjoy my planning. I decided to use Airtable as the basis for a solution, I chose it...
This document captures answers to the most common questions that I get about our allotments, what we grow and how we grow. Where are you? England North west Lytham St Annes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lytham_St_Annes The allotments are here: https://goo.gl/maps/3XBLthZwqp8AddHh7 Are you really by the seaside? The house is ½ a mile from...
This is the third draft of my guide to growing an abundance of vegetables all year round, especially in the so called Hungry Gap. The “jobs for the month” sections have been expanded in this version and I have new photos! I’d love a bit of feedback on how useful it...
We’ve had a very frost week and that’s put quite a check on growth, but we’ve still seen an uptick in our harvest volumes compared to last week and last year. We normally have only a handful of frosty days a month in winter, but we’ve been enjoying string of...
I love writing these monthly reviews, although January is perhaps the most boring of them, because everything slows down to a crawl. This year though it’s a much more exciting month because grow lights are allowing me to squeeze in additional harvests in lots of my beds and especially the...
It’s been another extremely slow gardening week, but next week picks up a bit and then we are full steam ahead in the new year. We’ve had a few issues though. The last two months have been very damp and as a result we have lost about 1/3 of lettuces...
The slow growing season continues. I’ve had very few reasons to go to the allotment, or even into the garden. The good weather has seen me out on the hills instead and I’ve had two excellent walks with friends. But the allotment is on the way home from the hills,...
As predicted it’s been a very quite week on the allotment, I’ve visited only a few times. Apart from harvesting I spent a few minutes weeding, aired some of the beds, watered the under-cover brassicas and spinach and that’s about it. The only sowing I did was micro-greens and to...
We still have a huge amount left to harvest but as we welcome winter, we notice a very significant slowdown in growth. As soon as that happens it’s like a shock to the system and I realise that what’s in the ground now has to last us until February, with...
I love writing these monthly reviews and plans for the following month, so much seems to happen in such a short time and our diet changes as each month clicks by. The fruit changes the most. September saw us overwhelmed with tomatoes/peppers/cucumbers and plums and October saw the winter squash...
It’s been another very light week on the allotments, although I’m still finding the odd jobs to do. This week the main accomplishment was cutting back the asparagus bed and covering it with a thick layer of home made compost. I’ve also done a little weeding in the garden and...
We’ve just past the ‘£11,000 harvested and processed’ milestone for the allotments this week and even though we intentionally switched a lot of production to lower value staple products, we’ve still exceeded our £40/m2 tally for last year. Next year I’m doing a lot more creative interplanting, so I think...
I’ve just checked my diary for the week and I’ve spent 7.5 hours on the allotments and garden, 4.5 hours of which was spent harvesting, so it’s been a light week. That’s partly because my youngest daughter got the keys to her new house on Monday, so Debbie and I...