20210531 Brassica cage starts

20210603 Brassica bed growing

20210603 First tomatoes outside

20210603 The asparagus bed

20210603 The brassica bed 2

20210603 The planting of brassica bed 2

20210603 up the plot

20210604 Giving peas a change

20210604 The top bed

20210604 Up the plot

20210617 Black Peas - menge tout _ Sugar snap

20210617 Brassica bed uncaged

20210617 Broad beans

20210617 Onions

20210617 Tomatoes

2021 The Allotment Emerges

2021 June and July - the growing season.

Using my 'compost dump' area for growing. The crops should be over by October so I can use it for manure delivery again.

The lottie has amazed me in the amount that has worked. There are still lots of lessons learned but I'll save those for the blog! But here we are. My target was 30% success rate so I am incredibly chuffed.

Been a bit busy sowing and growing so just in pictures this time. I will come back and give descriptions to the pictures later in the year so do pop back, but this is what I have done for now till beginning of July.

Recently I was asked to write something about what the allotment means to me. For those of you who like information in words this is what I wrote.......

My motivation for signing up for the allotment was fears about food following the Brexit result. We are low end of moderate income people and food is a big part of our expenditure.

I am in my first year and now producing my first food and I could not have anticipated what abundance the allotment has brought me - and not just in food.

It has given me an opportunity for learning - I am loving researching no dig, polyculture and most excitingly permaculture (which I had never heard of prior to starting my allotment).

It is a wonderful supportive community of like minded people with the common denominator of growing which transcends race, gender, age, religion, ability. I love our rich diversity and opportunity to learn and share. In terms of community it has also had an added bonus of sharing surplus with my neighbours where I live. And I am looking forward to contributing to the food collections we donate as an allotment to local charities.

Like many people I have 'got on' with Covid but I do feel an underlying anxiousness that prevails. I have found the allotment fabulous mindful therapy and has certainly benefited my mental health literally being 'grounded' by the soils, seeds and seeing nature work it's magic.

I also love the whole recycling, repurposing, reusing ethos of allotmenting and the wonderful structures people have created from trellising to compost bins. It has inspired my creativity to find uses for things that would find their way to landfill.

Having done a few before and during videos for close friends I have been delighted to have inspired one or two to start to experiment with growing food and organically.

So what my allotment has given me is inspiration, a place of life long learning, a vital space for reflection and mindfulness, helping my mental wellbeing and activities to inspire others, and a splendiferous discovery of new and wonderful likeminded and different friends. Plus a rich source of delicious organic food so we now eat like we shop at Waitrose rather than Aldi.