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!