Manchester Drive Allotment Society

With the purchase of a Mantis Tiller Rotovator over the winter, I was rearing to go this year. It was a bargain at £45 - collection from somewhere Whitam way, with a slight difficulty starting. After downloading the user manual and adjusting the carburettor, it ran like a dream!

Over the winter months I dug out another bed at the front of plot 45a, but the soil was too heavy and compacted to break down. Instead I broke apart what I could, and then piled the sods which were too solid at the sides of the bed. These were then covered with black plastic to stop the grass re-growing, and all of my squashes were planted in-between these mounds. The idea was to give them some protection from the wind early on in the year, and try to create a slightly warmer environment for them. The construction of this bed raised many questions... and suggestions! Most of them involved the construction of a swimming pool or large pond! With the black plastic covering the mounds, I could see exactly where these ideas came from, and it certainly seemed like I was digging enough earth for a pool!!

The Squashes were planted in their new home, but still didn't seem to be doing as well as they could have been. I hit upon the idea of a mini / temporary green house, and covered the bed with clear plastic. The plants really appreciated this, and absolutely exploded with growth! I had lots of squashes, and even my first Pumpkin (which my children loved), but it still wasn't as good a harvest as my first year. I still don't know what I did that worked so well that year.

The rest of the plot was dug over and rotovated. It took me a while to work out the most efficient way to use it, but I soon had a great technique going. The soil when I had finished was beautiful as the mulch that I had applied the previous year was well dug in. When I stood on the soil whilst rotovating, my boots sunk down about 8-12 inches!!

I planted early and late potatoes in the north half of the front bed. Carrots and Salsify were planted in the front of the other half, and Celery and Parsnips in the back half. There were too many Potatoes, and there were about 30 times too many celery plants!

Sprouts and Broccoli were planted and covered in plastic netting over a bamboo frame cage. I need a stonger cage! The bamboo worked, but the plastic netting was troublesome with it's lack of strength and problems with weeds growing up it. It also didn't like the wind or the snow!

Onions were planted along with top sprouting / walking / Egyptian onions. These caused a good discussion point amongst my many visitors. I found them growing in a kitchen garden in France a few years ago. There was one onion which had fallen to the ground, so I took it home. That one bulb produced about 5-10 new bulbs, which were grown at home. They produced many bulbs, which were planted at the allotment.

Unfortunately my son was taken ill towards the end of the year. He had a persistent digestive problem since birth, and in December it was discovered that he was having Hypoglycemic episodes. This culminated in a 4 month stay in hospital, which ended up with a probably diagnosis of being unable to digest fat. We are still working on this, and it will probably take many more trips to London for this to be confirmed. However, he is now much happier and healthy on his minimum fat diet. All of his food must be less than 0.5g of fat per 100g, or less than half of one percent fat.

The upshot of this was that the allotment was untouched from late November until June 2010. I apologise to everyone for the state that my plot managed to get itself into during that period, but I am hurriedly making amends. I will be taking a year out from growing in 2010 as it is now so late in the year, and will focus on getting the plot into a much more manageable state for next year. There are some minor engineering works that I want to undertake which should make my life much easier in the future. There will be a small number of crops grown, but there probably won't be many green plants to see throughout 2010.