Allotment Update: making beds little and often...
I finally feel like I am back into my flow on the allotment now, spending a little time down there most days of the week and I am just flying through the chores.
I honestly don't know how I managed to lunch out most of July by hardly going there at all, now I've back to my regular 4-5 days a week, only for an hour or two, my quality of life has improved hugely, it really is a nice place to be!
The main thing I'm currently working on is making some nice tidy and well organised beds for winter but mostly next year...
This is one of four, and it was quite a lot of work, nicely edged on all sides, with the use of string, which I've since moved to the next bed along.
You can see I've got boards (and enough for maybe three beds in total - this is quality shit - leftover decking from a friend's garden which would probably do a decade as raised beds, they are nearly an inch thick and treated.
However I'm not sure I even need them, now I've straight edged this first one I think it'd be easy enough to maintain without the boards, so that's now an option not essential.
I've got to go back through this one and take out most of the grass that I dug up widening it, but the fact that I've got the basic shape in place makes me feel as if I've achieved something.
Only another three to go, all the rest have things in still, so I can only do halves or thirds for now, but no rush, I'll easily have all of them done and be able to keep things strimmed and the dreaded hedge at bay all by the end of September.
And even if I don't October and November will still have some decent not too cold weather days I could use.
I like to feel and be ahead of the game!
It is warm till Jan here. What do you think to plant?
Not 100% sure - winter greens and green manures are on my list though!
Green manures?
Yes just over winter things that you dig back in spring!
right, like clover or ??
But are they not better as mulch than dig in? My understanding is that no till is better so as not to disturb the microbiome
I tend to get better results digging!
Looking neat. I've heard some say that putting boards around beds just gives slugs somewhere to hide, but then actual raised beds are supposed to be a good thing.
Ah that's a fair point about boards, I've seen some lurking, I will maybe make a proper set of raised beds at some point once I've got my head around what I'm doing!
I myself do it this way in my garden and I know it takes a lot of work and grows much better if watered on time.
Nice and tidy :) I've tried allotments, but always got distracted. I've had a patch in my back garden since the spring that the pandemic started (less possibility of getting distracted when it's outside your back door), but we were expecting to move house earlier this year so I didn't get round to putting anything out there.