Terry Walton looks back on his year at the allotment
It’s been challenging at times but all in all a good year on the plot!
It’s nice to get back to normality once the Christmas festivities are over. I love the company of friends and family but the week of feasting creates a few pounds of extra weight and I can’t wait to spend an hour or two gently digging to work them off!
The family disperse to their everyday lives and I return to my other family of friends on the allotment. This community share the same passions as me and the daily banter and fun soon get me out of the melancholy of another Christmas passed.
With 2018 creeping out the door, I love to reflect back on the year on my plot. It started with a cool winter and all was going according to plan when March roared in with cold winds and went out with ‘The Beast from the East’ depositing large amounts of snow. Fortunately fruit trees and bushes hadn’t yet flowered and this cold check actually did them good. This resulted in a bountiful crop of bush and tree fruit throughout summer and autumn.
With the season being delayed by four to six weeks, Mother Nature then decided to be kind to us and April had its normal rainfall. In May summer started in earnest and temperatures rose while rainfall over the next four months was rather scarce!
This hot, dry weather suited all members of the squash family and these delivered huge crops. Salad days were many and the plot delivered all my needs of lettuce, spring onions, radish and beetroot. The high temperatures suited the inhabitants of the greenhouse and cucumbers were in abundance, along with many bags of tomatoes. So many in fact, the freezer was called into play to house the surplus.
Not all plants loved the heat and runner beans showed their discontent by dropping many of itheir flowers, resulting in a lower yield than normal. The climbing French beans compensated for this shortfall and the freezer is well stocked. For once potatoes stayed free of blight and cropped well and root crops benefitted with deep roots in search of water. All in all a great summer!