A New Year - A New Garden

Well, you'd never guess what arrived in our post this morning...

Our seed packet!!

I found a fab company to buy from Real Seeds. They only sell heritage seeds - nothing genetically modified, and no hybrids. So you can save your own seed from your plants and save money next year. And they grow all the seeds they sell, so they know that they work here in the UK climate. Brill!

I went outside today -into the freshly falling snow!- and measured our garden plot. Then came back in and plugged all the numbers into our other favourite gardening site GrowVeg (which I raved about last year as well). Then the children and I spent only a few minutes and planted our virtual garden. How exciting!! It is so easy to do on virtual paper ;)

But, it will be a while until we can do the physical planting - this is what my garden looks like right now:



Of course I was overly ambitious in shopping for seeds and bought way too many. So we will be looking for another section of the yard to appropriate into another kitchen garden.

Allotment update

Here are some pics of the harvest from our Allotment - we have had A LOT more than this... these are just the pics we took of our first harvest.

You'd never guess what is in our garden!

Amongst the scraggly leaves of our pot-grown potatoes is hidden a real treasure! You'd never guess what it is!



Can you see anything yet?? Look closely!!



Now that the mama left for a minute, we can get a closer look!





We found this little treasure on Saturday, just before we left for the beach! I decided I really should water the potatoes as the heat is just scorching right now. I got a big bucket and dumped it onto the backside of the potato plants, as the leaves were all drooped over. Suddenly I saw a robin sitting in the front of the barrel! How strange, I thought. I left to go get another bucket of water. And while I was gone, Mariel peeked at the potatoes. She came running to me shouting -there's a nest! There's a nest! We went back and sure enough there was a nest! And mother robin was sitting on the fence looking at us nervously. In the nest were 3 newly-hatched babies and 1 egg, stiil unhatched.

On Sunday, I went to check and see if the potato leaves had perked up a bit to provide them shade, and I found that the other egg had hatched and there were now 4 little babies in there.

Progress on the Plot

Well here is the progress we have made thus far on the allotment:



Little Miss and Mr Man are standing at the back corners of the plot & Little Man is standing on the compost heap we've made so far.

Here's a closer look

We've got mail!

The children received some seeds in the post - so I guess we will be planting those as well ;)

More seeds planted

I know its getting a bit late for sowing seeds.... but here we go. Tomatoes this time - and we made the pots too!

We have the key!

We finally have the key to the allotments! So, we were able to go onto our plot for the first time today and look around. Here are a few pics:


Plot 81!


From the left front side of the plot, looking to the right and the back:



From the right front side of the plot, looking to the left and the back:




Standing at the back of the plot looking to the front:

Planning the Plot

I found a REALLY cool website which allows you to plan out your vegetable plot and design your vegetable garden. It lets you make as many garden plans as you like, and you can base your current year's plan on a previous years plan as well. If you do that, then it will tell you where *not* to plant your vegetables based on crop rotation. Very convenient! It is SO easy to use and user friendly. And it is FREE to use for 30 days... after that, if you decide you like it, you can continue using it for only £15/year. Very reasonably priced too!

Check it out for yourself!

GrowVeg

Here is our tentative plan for this years garden. I should say that this is not written in stone at all and very much subject to change and it is very optimistic. Considering how much work is needed to clear the lot, we likely won't be able to plant the entire garden this year. Take a look and if anyone has any suggestions, please let me know :D (click on it to make the picture bigger)

Woohoo! We have an allotment!

We have been assigned allotment number "81" at our local allotment site :D We had a look at it today and it looks fairly level and seems to be in a sunny location :D All the brambles have been removed and the lawn has been mowed down... so now we just have to dig up the turf and start planting :D We have some final paperwork to do next week, so hopefully we can get started then.

Our allotment size is approx 25'x 60' or approx 7m x 18m or approx 5poles! :D

Seed Planting

We planted some seeds and they are in our mini greenhouse in hopes of eventually being planted in our allotment plot. Hopefully planting time will coincide with the allotment plot being cleared and ready for planting!






So far we have planted cucumber, courgettes, and various squash - including Patty Pan.

Some books that I am currently enjoying are

Grow Your Own Fruit



Grow Your Own Veg




The Allotment Handbook



As you can see my reading selections follow a certain theme...

An Allotment??

Well the blog has been sadly neglected as of late.. but I will try to get us back on track.

After much lengthy discussion, the family has decided we would like to get an allotment.

What is an allotment you say?

I found a very good definition, with historial reference, to explain what an allotment is.

What is an allotment?
For the benefit of any foriegn readers, an allotment is a plot of land made available by the local authorities for a small annual rent. This is an English custom that dates back thousands of years to the days when the principal landowner was the Church. In those days, the land was made available to those that needed it in exchange for 10% of the produce, known as a tythe.

The traditional measurement of land in England is the acre. One acre being roughly the amount of land a man with a team of oxen could plough in a day. The acre was divided into quarters called roods, the measurement of which is ¼ chain wide, (1 pole) by 10 chains long. The 10 chains length was considered the maximum practical distance for ploughing and became known as the furrow-lengh, furrow-long or furlong. Remember, in those days the plough could only work in one direction and the ploughman had to lift the ploughshare up while the oxen pulled it back to the beginning ready to start another furrow. The chain also just happens to be the length of a cricket pitch.

That was rural life in the dark ages. In more recent times, successive wars created food shortages in the towns and cities and several laws have been passed to force the local authorities to provide land at economic rates wherever there was the need. As city dwellers lacked the teams of oxen, the rood (¼ acre) was divided into quarters to make a piece of land of 10 poles. This was considered enough to keep a family of urchins full of greens. Nowadays, these plots have been further reduced in size to 5 poles.

We have made enquiries at our local allotment site and hopefully we will be able to meet with them next week to get our very own plot!