It’s not picture perfect, but there’s lots of life in the soil
Many people think that an ideal allotment plot ought to look a bit like a child’s picture book illustration with neat rows of vegetables, a hut and a spade in the ground. The reality is not often like that, particularly on my plot.
There is just a short period in July and August when the plot is pretty as a picture. There are potatoes, peas and beans in abundance and patches of salads with hardly any soil visible between the rows. Strawberries are ripe and redcurrants are hanging in bunches on the bushes.
For the rest of the time, the appearance of the plot is very much “work in progress”. For example, when early potatoes get dug up, patches of bare earth remain for a while. It’s nearly impossible to prevent these being colonised by annual weeds and as there are many other more pressing tasks at that time the area can look a bit unkempt.
As winter approaches it is difficult and not often desirable to keep a plot looking like that picture book image of a vegetable patch. There will be bare areas of soil, hopefully waiting for mulching with compost or sowing with green manure when the occasion arises. All the various recycled items that are so useful on the plot become more noticeable when the foliage dies down. Supports for netting used by plotholders are seldom pretty – I use blue alkathene water pipes bent into hoops over some beds, and rusty metal posts topped with old tennis balls to stretch nets over the cabbages.
I’m keen on salads and equally keen
For most of the year, the appearance of the plot is ‘work in progress’
to avoid buying plastic wrapped supermarket salad leaves. A sunny windless day in winter is often the precursor of a sudden nighttime drop in temperature, sending me scuttling down to the plot to make sure the leafy vegetables are protected. A temporary covering of fleece keeps the cold off some hardy winter salads and perpetual spinach. With luck they’ll keep going all winter. Rocket, lamb’s lettuce, mizuna and radiccio are particularly resistant to the worst winter weather.
However, I can’t pretend that grubby fleece, several years old, is the prettiest thing on the plot! I sometimes long for a large purposebuilt cold frame but they’re expensive. Recycled sash and case windows salvaged from skips can be supported on bricks making a sturdy, cheap alternative, with the advantage that they can be moved from place to place on the plot as needed. n