Fathers Day Digging!

Living proof that Linda helped out on the plot today. I think it was her intention to do the one fork full just so she could say she helped, half an hour later she was still going and removing bricks a plenty from our rubble bed! Nice work Linda, thank you!

Well as you can see from the pics todays visit to the plot was pretty productive but thats not all it was. It quickly developed into a social gathering for family and friends. We had a great deal of digging, hoeing and rakeing to do today and, given the visitors, I think we did pretty darn well. Ok, so its not like it's finished but still, we have things in the ground again so that has gotta be good.

I like this pic as it is a prime example of of the hoe at work (by hoe I do of course mean the gardening tool my better half is sporting) and a fine job I think you will agree!

This pic is a another fine example. This is Louise preparing the ground for what will be our pea bed, its not a massive plot so we have to use ever piece of land available!

I love this shot, a perfect action photo of a family working in harmony together, Tam and Louise to the left sorting the pea bed, Matt, Linda and my Dad removing yet another semi-detatched property from the largest of our beds and Me, well I took the photo of course. It was pointed out that I was less than productive on the plot today, however, the bed you can see on the pic to the left was prepared almost in full by my tender hand today and I did, of course, have to play host and entertain our guests. We all have our talents!

Other than family, we had friends visit the plot today too, they came bearing beer which was very very much appreciated, well by me anyway! They also agreed to join us in the "save the ducks" campaign that we are about to launch. The conditions are not as we would like so we gave em some fresh water and hatched plans to try and get a pond in there for them to swim in! So Liz, Sally, thanks for the beer and the volunteering to dig out a pond, will give you a shout when you return from Cuba, lucky swines!
For those of you that have been following this blog, you may remember that we planted some leeks in this bed a couple of weeks ago and some cabbage and they barely lasted the weekend before the rabbits got em. It has to be said Matt has made a since made a fine start of rabbit proofing the plot, its not complete yet but we feel a little more confident about planting again. I think the above pic probalby demonstrates that. We have almost the entire bed planted now with leeks and celery. We will be making more regular visits now for watering and rabbit watching purposes, wish us luck, think we may need it!

So, just to recap on the events of the day, it being Fathers Day we were a little later to the plot than normal, however, my Dad saved us a journey by coming to visit us at the plot, was nice to show him around and get his and Linda's thoughts on what we have done so far.

Digging began in earnest today, the big bed is gonna take some preparing. The little bed is pretty much done and just needed hoeing and leveling. We managed to get the little bed planted up and are well on the way to getting the pea bed ready, the big bed may take two or three more sessions to get it ready for planting, just in time to plant out our sprouts and broccoli!

We you add all that to friends visiting with beer in tow, I think it's safe to say, a good Fathers Day was had by all, and to finish off Matt and Louise headed off home to catch up with Matts son, Lucan, his wife and their new baby Zak, perfect I would say!

Where's Elma Thudd when you need him?

Please join me in a prayer........no stuff that, please help me find Elma Thud and his cartoon shot gun! Bloody rabbits have eaten our cabbages! Seriously, they have only been in a few days, looks like we are gonna have to be clever!

Ok Mr Bunny, you wanna play dirty, let the game begin!!!


Wabbit Stew anyone?

Where did the sun go?

Sun? What sun? Yes it is true the heat wave has left us all too soon. Did it take with it our enthusiasm? Not quite. The first weekend after the return to school and we were there. Saturday was out as Tam and I had foster training and Matt and Louise were car hunting, a task that took them well into Sunday. Considering that we decided to meet at the plot in the afternoon, giving us all chance to deal with the rest of our lives.

Tammy and I arrived first and found ourselves slightly at a loss as to what to do next. Should we begin digging or start clearing the rear half of the plot that has so far been untouched by our now callous forming green fingers. We deliberated and decided to dig the borders ready to place the retaining "wall" for the main bed. Matt and Louise were not too far behind us.

With their arrival we had a wee chat about our plans. We had been given, by Tammy's mum (Thanks Terry) some leeks and cabbages. What the hell we collectively thought, lets bung em in, would be nice to see some green in amoungst the rubble! (Give us a break, we are gardeners after all, we wanted to grow so we did)!!!

Seeing these tidy bits of green poking though the soil spurred us on, we dug the entire middle bed. When I say we, I do of course mean the brawn of the team, Matt and Tammy (I know Matt, you can thank me later for referring to you as brawn, ya big stud!!!) Louise and I were chief root pickers and gave encouragment to what quickly became a race. There is no need to mention which team won as we are, of course one big team (hee hee yeah right, Tammy and I won of course).

Once the diggers had recovered there was another task that we decided needed doing before we left, a tincy wincy iccle, erm, well, tree root! Yes the diggers were not done digging, it was only a small tree root, dunno what the fuss is about really. Louise and I, I hasten to add, were very encouraging and our prescence was necessary for motivation and erm, well, we did stuff ok!

Oh, I had better not forget to mention that Matthews Axe cherry was popped! Yes I know, embarrasing to be 40+ and still be an axe virgin, but no more, in fact the popping of the cherry was so vigorous that Louise was concerned he may lose and eye, arm or worse develop a fixation with the axe and want to take it home! (Strange pair those two).

So we left with joy in our hearts as we closed the gate to a completley dug bed, a root free second bed and first evidence of this piece of land becoming a fruit yeilding allotment.

Watch this space for some garden art as Louise is insistent on doing something interesting with the tree root that was so expertly removed by the diggers, if memory serves, think Louise may have done some tugging there too. Just me that was a lazy arse it seems, oh well, I have a reputation to maintain after all!

Just the Two of Us!

Well the school holidays are over and so the allotment tending is now reserved mainly for the weekends. However, Matt and I occasionally get days off in the week. That was the case on the first week back at school.

Matt and I arranged to meet down at the plot and get some more weeding done. Although it now seems like a distant memory, we were still in the midst of our heat wave and it has to be said, a full days graft was not on the agenda! Hooray for me, my signature short sharp burst approach was entirely acceptable given the heat. Having said that with my expertise in emptying the wheelbarrow and picking up in the weeds in Matt's wake and Matt's terribly impressive enthusiasm, we managed to clear the left hand side of the plot.

Forgive me for singing our praises, but we had expected this to take weeks to acheive and we had managed it in a week! This was an acheivement to say the least. Though it did come at the cost of burnt ears, chests and arms and the consumption of much orange juice, not to mention Matt and Louises ingenious frozen bottles of water (sounds impressive but to be honest, the buggers wouldn't melt and they ended up drinking our juice!!!!)

So another visit over in just a couple of hours but our chests were well and truly puffed out, we were impressed, in fact, the elation we felt as we left the plot that, well, you would have thought the whole lot had been done that day by, as the title suggests, just the two of us!

(I will add pics to demonstrate our progress to this point shortly)

Hot Hot Hot

Sunday, the day of rest. Yeah right! No rest for us, we must, of course, be wicked! So the day started with a trip to the car boot to see if we could find any gardening tools at cheap cheap prices, we came home with a ball of string! No bargains to be had on this day!

This fruitless shopping trip meant Tammy and I were a little late going to the plot. Matt and Louise were already there and had made great progress on the weeding, we could really see the difference when we arrived. Today was even hotter than yesterday so my customary "short spurts" were significantly shorter. Tammy and I did, however, get stuck in and gave it our best shot. Matt and Lou had to leave early as they had a prior engagement of the BBQ kind (touch of the green eyed monster on my part I'm afraid, I do love a BBQ), so Tammy and I stayed on for an hour or two just to show willing.

It was not quite as dull a day as that sounds, Matt did a bit more digging and us girls were giggling at the amount of bees were bugging him, the colour of his tee shirt had obviously attracted them, well, you'd think so, but no! My brother Matthew in all his enthusiasm had managed to dig into a bees nest right in the middle of our first bed. Seriously, you didn't think this was going to go smoothly did you? That is not how our life works? The odd test here and there to keep us on our toes will not defeat us. So that particular area has been marked off and we will attempt to leave the bees undisturbed. I will, however, keep the picture in my mind of Matt swishing the many bees away from his face like a kitten with a ball of wool, classic!

Sadly, no pics of today's efforts as we forgot to take the camera, will be having another trip down on Tuesday and hopefully will have both of my brothers there to keep me company and help me take some pics! Watch this space!

Full First Team

This was the most exciting and productive session so far. It was the first time all four of us managed to get to plot to work and we gave it several hours. It has to be said, it was bloody hot, the hottest day of the year so far in fact. Not the best choice of days to be grafting on the allotment to quite the extent that was necessary.

Our objectives for today were to dismantle the shed, move and set up the watering system and, well, clear some weeds of course.

Progress was slow, we had plentiful "helpful advice" from our plot buddy, from here on to be referred to as "chicken girl" in that she keeps chickens. We ended up manually lifting the shed, getting it on a flatbed trolley, taking it off the flatbed trolley, attempting to slide it on fire doors, and eventually, parting it from the very heavy base, move the base and rehouse the shed on the floor, we were "advised" on many occasions to put it on a pile of bricks to help reduce the risk of rats! This we didn't end up doing cos, to be fair, it was too bloody hard, we had already spent three hours on the damn shed, and lets face it, its pretty dilapidated as it is.

Once the shed was moved we cracked on with clearing some weeds. Beneath the shed was a concrete square that we think had previously housed a greenhouse. So, bed number one was born! So much so that Matt was even able to start digging.

Louise, Tammy and I continued with the weeding until the sun finally had us beat. We were frazzled! Tammy is as red faced as I have ever seen here and her ears are pretty much burnt, Louise has achieved a first of some form of "tan" on her arms and nose (you can refer to red as "tan" can't you?), Matt, under the insistence of Louise, smothered his head in suncream to protect himself and began to look like a member from the Blue Man Troupe and I am a wonderful colour all over my arms and face but have a chest the colour of a well ripened tomato!

Needless to say, we managed most of our objectives, but not all, the water collection system is gonna have to wait, its all a bit more complex than we thought, this one is gonna be Tammy's baby!

Quickie Visit

This session was just a quick one, Tammy and I just couldn't resist popping down on Friday morning to do a bit. I had work that afternoon so it truly was just a couple of hours.

We were slightly overwhelmed when we first got there so decided to prioritise. We cleared a very narrow patch and built a bench, c'mon, we were gonna be working hard, we needed a place to sit! I only work in short spurts, a rest place was essential. Alright alright, enough of the face pulling, I WANTED a bench, so I made one!

Before I get any grief for being sat down, again, I think its important to point out that in between sitting, we managed to almost completely clear the the new site for the shed. The shed was already there but slap bang in the middle of the plot. Given that at least three out of the four of us have some form or other of OCD, a shed in the middle of a perfectly good growing space was never going be acceptable. Ha, if only we had known what lay ahead!

Anyway, on this occasion, weed clearing was a success and we managed to clear the shed area, as pictured below, we were quite proud of this mornings work!

Day One!

Ok, so today we face the daunting task of turning the rubble filled wasteland into a productive allotment. Hmmmmm, alright, so its not going to happen over night, with that in mind we decided to just clear some, well, crap!

So, armed with nice new pink edged gloves and an unrelenting enthusiasm, Tammy, Matt and I got to it (Louise was otherwise detained playing, aghem, BINGO with her sister!!!) The results are pictured below, tho it looks pretty rough still, check out the previous blog for what this patch of land looked like before the rubble move!

I kinda wish we had counted the number of fire doors, UPVC double glazing units and random bits of metal, not to mention the breeze blocks and bricks we moved during this visit but it's fair to say, this was not a gardening session. Given that none of us have manual jobs, this was quite the baptism of fire as regards grafting.

As you can see, we had some pretty big pieces to shift with nowhere to really put them. In the end, we have had to sacrifice our dreams (OK my dreams) of a super duper composting system. This is going to have to wait until we can systematically rid ourselves of the countless window frames, seriously, you could reglaze half of Doncaster with whats on that plot. I'm hoping my failure to provide an adequate composting system is not held against me by my composting hero, Monty Don. One day Monty, one day!

And so it begins!

So, where to begin. I guess I ought to start with an introduction to what this blog is all about. In short, myself (Obi), my other half (Tammy), my brother (Matt) and his other half (Louise) have been growing edible stuff in our humble back gardens for a couple of seasons now, and have most definitely caught the bug.

After all, growing your own is the new black these days. So, given that we now consider ourselves gardeners, well, our gardens just weren't cutting it. And so our quest began for that ever elusive allotment. Given its new fashionable status, it seems a vacant plot was to prove hard to find.

Thanks to Matt and Louise's perseverance and obsession with free cycle, we managed to get our hands on a shared plot, our co-gardener keeping chickens and ducks on her half of the plot leaving the rest for us to do with as we please. This may seem like a dream come true, until you actually see the plot, I think these pics give the best representation of we had to deal with.

I am sure you will agree, this is going to be quite an undertaking, we have a shed to move, rubble to move and a well established grounding of weeds to dig out, the whole site is covered in broken glass too.

This blog will follow our progress, perhaps not daily, but as regularly as I can, it may be dull and for that I apologise, but please bear with me and I will try to make growing veg an entertaining adventure!

Ha, what a geek!

Let the growing begin!