Allotment Tales - April 2018

Towards the end of March, on a rainy Tuesday, when heading out of the house with the dog for our regular morning walk, I noticed a very nice pallet in next doors front garden, which I assumed they didn't want.  I made a mental note and when I came back from the dog walk, I knocked on the door and asked if I could have it for my allotment. They very kindly agreed and I carried into the house and put it in the garden. Here's a picture of it:

I say a very nice pallet, because as you can see, it's slats were very evenly placed and it looked the perfect size to make a small deck for my allotment. I had the idea of making a little corner, where I could put a chair and a plant pot or two and sit and relax between bouts of digging, especially in the summer months.

I'd wanted to do this at my last plot, but never actually got around to clearing a space to do it, but because my current plot is lovely and small, closer to home and much more manageable, it's easier to find the time and energy this time around.

It took a few weeks before I could progress any further with my idea, as for the next four days OH was away and had taken the car, so I couldn't actually take the pallet to the plot, as it was way too heavy, even just to take around the corner. In addition, after quite a lot of rain, the ground was very muddy, so I thought I'd wait until the weather dried up a little.

In the meantime, I decided to staple some weed suppressant fabric to the underneath of the pallet to stop lots of weeds growing up through the slats .  This also meant that I could easily move the pallet around if I wasn't happy with it's position. I needed to buy some more fabric, as we didn't have any left from when we renovated the garden.  OH ended up buying me some from Amazon.

In addition to the decking, I also found this rattan raised bed like surround on the way to the gym the other day.  Someone had thrown it out, so I popped it into the car and brought it home.  I took this to the plot too and it made a lovely little raised bed next to my decking.

Here is a picture of the decking and raised bed in situ.  I bought and planted some dahlia tubers in here, as I'm intending it to be a small cutting garden area. I also bought a rosemary plant, and some small violets from B&Q at 20% off and potted them on to decorate the deck. I may  remove some of the soil from underneath the decking and add it to the raised bed so the decking doesn't sit quite so high, but is set into the ground, as it feels a bit like a stage when you're sat on it.

Whilst I was at the plot I decided to finish digging it over. It took a few hours, but I was glad to get it all done and ready to plant and sow into on my next visit.  Here's a picture of the plot as it looked when I'd finished.

It feels good to get more structure into the plot and get all of the hard digging work done.  It's now a ready for me to get busy growing in. I think I might start by sowing some sunflowers behind the deck and see how they grow here, as I can tie them back to the fence. At some point I want to plant something that climbs here, to give me a bit of a privacy on what is a very public site.

Next month, I'll let you know how things are progressing on the growing front.