Every week I do a tour of one of our gardens/allotments and today it’s the turn of the kitchen garden. We mainly grow fruit here and pest sensitive veggie’s, which fair reasonably well without any protection. Today’s highlights are the cherries and strawberries, but the beetroot and carrots are all...
It’s hard to title harvest videos, but I’m cheating a bit to say this is a record breaking crop, because every week is now a record breaker as we move into summer. Even so, this one was worth a video as it’s exciting to see the crop move well beyond...
We took on Debbie’s plot a few months ago and it was one of the biggest challenges on the site. Neglected for years, used to store a boat, covered in broken roof tiles and rubble, with carpet on top, through which couch grass, bind weed and mares tail had grown...
We inherited Jennie and Jon’s allotment plot 7 weeks ago and we’ve been working it for the last 6 weeks. It’s gone from a thick sea of weeds to a little oasis and today I finished planting it. We put in a lawn, cleared the ground, put down a heavy...
A quick video to show what a typical lunch time looks like for me, cleaning, processing and preparing salads for the next few days. Everything grown on the allotment in March or traded with neighbours in return for veg that I’ve grown – ah the simple life! To be honest...
This video describes the way that I’ve designed all of the raised bed frames on my allotment plot to be a standard size, with optional mesh, poly-tunnel and cold frame tops. The frames can be stacked to create deep beds and hot beds too. The video then goes into more...
It was only one year ago today that I planted my first seeds in the allotment beds and I cropped my first salad leaves about a month later. This year I’ve improved those times considerably, in fact I’ve been eating almost all of my veg from the allotment (or bartered)...
It’s taken me a while, but I’m now in a suitable mood for setting new years resolutions. December saw me laid up with man flu and January had me mostly confined to the house with food poisoning and a torn stomach muscle, but all these problems are now fading and...
Although New year’s resolutions seem to be going out of fashion I still like them. I print them out and stick them on my desk wall but I also have them on my phone in Google Keep, each one decorated with a nice photo as a visual reminder. I think...
This post isn’t for me, I’ve already committed to retirement, it’s an answer to the regular stream of friends and colleagues who ask me this question, it’s my attempt at a well thought through answer, rather than a quick email reply. To get started it might be worth taking a...