Sunday 3 March 2013

A Trip or Two Down The Allotment

I had a couple of trips down the allotment in the last few weeks to get things moving with my new raised beds... first thing I needed to do was get some compost for the strawberry bed and the root bed. I opted for the councils recycled material compost or as they call it 'soil conditioner'. I picked up 40 bags of it from our local tip.

Each bag contained 40 litres, I had to make 4 trips. The paths at the allotment was so bogged down I couldn't risk taking the car up the tracks in case I got stuck. So I had to carry each bag 100 yards. I can tell you I was exhausted after doing that 40 times! To make it worse I kept slipping on wet sloppy mud! Further more after loading my last 10 bags and about to leave the tip... the guy who took my money then told me that I could of actually got it delivered to my plot! I took the chaps number and said I would do that next time... Not my favorite allotment trip!


As you can see I had no energy to place them down nicely
Then I lugged those 40 bags down the plot to empty them into two beds. My strawberry bed took 12 bags and my root bed took 28 bags, my root bed is not yet fully filled but it will do for this season I think!
The root bed...
The strawberry patch...
The main reason why I bought this compost is the price... £2 for 40 litres is very good price so I came to the conclusion that I will use it as a bulking agent and at a later date I would be able to add better quality compost or farmyard manure. I will also be using seaweed extract liquid that I got from Shropshire Seaweed.
Last week a local brewery delivered a few sacks of spent hops! So of course I nabbed myself 3 sacks and one sack went into the strawberry bed and the other two sacks went into the root bed.

The spent hops
The hops before I raked them in
The hops smelt gorgeous when I first got them but after a few days they stunk, as my wife kept telling me yesterday. I have heard good things from other plot holders that spent hops work really well for them. So I took the chance and mixed them in my new compost. 

Yesterday myself and Lauren popped down the lottie to plant the new strawberry runners that I bought from Thompson&Morgan. I got three varieties... Elegance, which is a mid season variety. Florence, a late season variety and Flamenco, an ever-bearing variety which should flower from May to November. Its a good thing that myself and Lauren love strawberries. 

Me separating the strawberry runners (I think I need a tan)
We have a week off this week so hopefully we can get a few jobs done at the lottie like taking a few trips to the tip to get rid of some rubbish and getting the ground ready for planting for the coming spring. 
So all in all I have had a trip or two down the allotment....

Thanks for reading...
Stuart (@allotadventures)


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1 comment:

  1. Stuart I feel exhausted just reading about you lugging all those bags of compost to your plot. Let's hope you are rewarded with plenty of tasty strawberries in the summer:)

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