January Tour of Debbie’s Plot

Everything is as it should be on Debbie’s plot. She’s mulching the beds with her excellent home made compost, pruning the apple trees and training them to their support wires, and continuing to harvest.

At the moment the most prolific harvest is coming from the winter miners lettuce, but the lambs lettuce is also doing well. We are also regularly cropping kale and broccoli leaves.

The onions, garlic and broad beans are looking good and most of the runners from my strawberries have taken well.

The flower bed – that runs beside the path – is bursting with bulbs and should look amazing soon, just as she starts to ready the plot for it’s spring plants!

On the infrastructure front, one of her fence posts broke in the Christmas gales, so she’s replaced it and the associated rotting pallet with a ‘new’ one.

If you are new to my allotment videos you might find a bit of context useful. We have three allotments in my family, mine (Steve), my wife’s (Debbie) and one of our daughter’s (Jennie). We also have a small kitchen garden at home. They are all managed in an integrated fashion, so don’t expect to see the usual mix of veg on each plot.

On Jennie’s plot for example we focus on potatoes, squash, alliums and brassicas. This video provides an overview https://youtu.be/q1k-2vIoSQ8. I do a monthly tour of each allotment, roughly one a week, you can find the tours here https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFhKoRR-NiCJn5Y6rZf0RCCqycu3xvofX.

Our approach to allotment life is to: grow as much as we possibly can, to be self sufficient in veg all year round and in fruit in summer, to give away our huge surplus to friends and family, and to have as much fun as possible.

My wife and I spend about 4 hours a day, 4 days a week on the plots (on average) and we keep nudging that down as we eliminate non-productive work: like grass cutting, weeding and watering as much as practical. We are both newbie gardeners, only starting the allotments in 2016.

I’m a bit obsessive about the nutrient density of the veg that we grow and making the plots easy to work because it’s through this allotment lifestyle and food that I’ve overcome a debilitating auto-immune disease. I’m always aware though that it might not last so I make sure that I don’t work too hard, eat the most organic fruit and veg I can and design the plots so that I can still work them if I flare up again.