Well it’s been a whole year with my allotment plot and I must start by saying that it’s definitely been a mixed bag of success and failures. Nonetheless it has been an enjoyable year learning and experimenting. The weather had been up and down and the slug invasion has been problematic. Not wanting to get into chemicals and to try to be as organic as possible means that I have tried to love with any pests that have come along. I believe there are definitely preventive measures I can do to reduce problems in the coming year.
The successes of the year have been the potatoes, runner beans, parsnips and the established asparagus that was kindly left for me along with the existing apple tree. The failures have been the 1st crop of peas that were eaten, the brassicas, carrots and broad beans. Not all of which were entire failures it must be said.
Onwards and upwards. Plans for the coming year have already started with the planting of 30 strawberry plants a few weeks back and today I got down for a couple of hours to plant some broad beans and to see if any carrots sown now will grow and be ready for winter roasts in the coming months. The parsnips I’m harvesting are ginormous, almost mutant compared to what you buy in the shops. Going to see if I can find a parsnip crisp recipe to use on some of them. We’ve also got the first few pods on our late peas and dwarf beans showing so hopefully I’ll be harvesting them by the end of the month. Also teh first signs that the purple sprouting broccoli has germinated and so hopefully will have some of that in time for Christmas.
In preparation for the coming of winter we have also covered over some of the empty beds with weed suppression mat as before. Next year we plan to make some capital investment in the plot not that we’ve got a few things established. One of the main things we are going to do is introduce some more fruit trees as these will only need to be planted once and will keep on giving fruit year after year. I’m also going to build some raised beds as these will hopefully help in deterring some of the pests. Also going to create a separate bed to devote to salad crops.
All in all it’s been a fun first year. I’ve enjoyed the hard work and been pleased with the outcome. Hopefully the coming year will prove to be better and the plot will go from strength to strength proving me with more and more of the delicious fruit and veg to eat all year round.