Manchester Drive Allotment Society

2007 started well. I dug over two new areas of plot 44 - one that had been covered with carpet, and another that had been grass. More carrots, Onions and Chalottes, Runner Beans, Sweet corn, Lettuce and Rocket, Brussels Sprouts, Broad Beans, Swiss Chard, Butter Nut Squash (BNS), Courgette, Pumpkin and probably a few more.

The beans were great again, and cropped from May through until late October. They did well in the freshly dug grass area. Carrots didn't grow again. Sweet corn was delicious, but there are too many seeds in one packet - don't sow them all! Swiss Chard was also delicious, and very colourful. I don't like spinach, but this was nice. Unfortunately, no-one else liked it, and the 20 plants that I planted produced way too much for us to eat. 

The BNS / Courgettes / Pumpkin were planted at the front of the plot. Everything was very slow to get going, but the BNS produced a nice number of vegetables. The pumpkin didn't amount to anything, and I grew was is probably going to be my biggest Courgette ever. It was about 3 ft long, and weighed enough that I didn't want to carry it too far! I have a photo somewhere - I will put a link here when I find it.

I built a cage for the Sprouts. It was a wooden frame covered in netting. It worked well at keeping the birds out, but the butterflies just flew straight through the netting. A net with smaller holes would be required for better protection. Judicious picking of the resultant caterpillars seemed to keep the damage to a minimum. The sprouts were delicious at Christmas, but a lot smaller than those available in the shops. Mine came pre-frozen by nature though .

I trimmed the pampas grass as it was stopping me from getting into the shed. I used a hedge trimmer, which worked well, then burnt the remaining stump and trimmings. This didn't make much difference to the size of the plant - The stump being around 3ft in diameter and about 4ft tall!!

I built new compost bins. These were much larger than the original, and I separated them into three individual bins. They were made out of old pallets staked into the ground and tied with wire. They were lined with a combination of old iron roof and chicken wire. These have proven to be very successful, and produce a large amount of compost. The largest bin I have used to compost leaves. These are collected in large sacks - the 1 ton grabber sacks that you see sand and gravel being delivered in. These were purchased from eBay for a reasonable £4 each. They have proved to be very useful, but only just fit inside the boot of an estate car when full! My largest compost holds about 6 sacks, and then after a couple of weeks another 3-4 if you tread them down. 

The leaves I used were Sycamore. They are large, and probably don't rot as fast as some, but there is a large supply of them from a quiet road close to my parents house. All I need to do is sweep them up and get them into the bags before the council arrive! No, I didn't have small Sycamore trees sprouting up all over the place - the seeds all decompose in the compost. After a year it makes a wonderful mulch, and after 2 produces a lovely additive for the soil. The mulch also works well if dug in at the end of the season - it is broken down over winter and leave the soil much lighter and less clay-like.

My Mum had purchased a box of Garlic from The Garlic Farm on the Isle of Wight. She had planted as many as she could in pots at home, but still had quite a few left. I hurriedly dug over a very wet and cold bed to try to get them in before the coldness of deep winter arrived. It was November, it was cold, and it got dark quite early! I can remember freezing my fingers off whilst digging and planting these cloves. 

I had problems with people driving over the corner of plot 45a. It was handy to cut the corner off, but unfortunately my Asparagus and Rhubarb didn't like it much! A metal stake on the corner was simply removed, so I resorted to moving the Rhubarb. The Asparagus was still being trampled, so I resorted to three car tyres, two metal stakes, some rocks and a lot of soil. This was planted with flowers, but really needed to settle, as I had to add a lot more earth as everything was watered down into the tyres and rocks. 

This still didn't work - people were simply cutting off more of my plot! Comfrey was planted next to the bottom road, and once it started growing (despite still being driven over!) the corner of my plot was mostly safe!!