My Allotment Year






Well, it's the time of the year when we all engage in a little navel gazing and decide what went well, what could be better, jobs for next year etc. etc. So in this tradition, here are the highs and lows for Plot 14 this year.

Highs

Strawberries - 23 punnets (peach sized punnets that is) in 10 days (5-15 June, our holiday to Wales halted the count). I reckon the warm Spring weather gave me 100% fruit set

Potatoes - allotment old hands were amazed that I was the only plotholder left with a maincrop growing at the end of June, courtesy of a blight resistant variety, Sarpo Axona

Carrots - carrot fly free for the first time thanks to the use of the holey galvanised bucket I found in the ancient ditch bordering our site

Fennel - self-seeded on the plot, producing plenty of seeds for our pizzas and pots of fennel tea

Robins - they returned to nest in my shed this year and helped keep down the mega slug population explosion thanks to the summer wet

Firetongue beans - my new crop for this year and grown up my lovely self-made willow obelisk

Lows

Tomatoes - even my insurance crop on the garden patio failed

Pears - 1 tree succumbed to scab

Sweetcorn - just 18" high and little cob formation to speak of

Parsnip - not 1 seed germinated

Compost bin - I think a rat's got in there

Carpets - they've been banned from all Chippenham sites. They've been my weed supressant measure in previous years until I got round to planting all the beds up

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