7th May 2018 - 86a Update

Today was all about 86a, on 26th November last year I told you that Mr L had been given the plot next to mine but for various reasons we've not been able to get moving with it.  Today I wanted to try and get down to a blank canvas so that I could start planning properly.  Mr L is my 'handy man' and so I needed him to help me with all the heavy jobs.

The plan was to remove all of the beds, as you can (kind of) see in the "before" picture there were 4 really big beds; 2 of them had new compost put into them a couple of years ago but weren't covered and the other 2 were covered but didn't really have any compost in them!  There's also membrane on other areas of the plot but it needs to be everywhere to be effective.

Mr L got cracking on taking up all the scaffold boards and, because I'd not done anything with it since strimming in November, he had to strim it all again.  He had to do the beds again because the new seasons weeds had taken a hold, and then he moved on to the areas around the fences where most of the brambles are and where they were starting to shoot up again.

The 2 beds that had the additional compost in stayed in the shape of the beds because the roots of the weeds were holding it all together.  I'm going to have to try and break that all up to spread it across the rest of the plot so that there isn't a step.  I'll use some of it to fill the holes that have been left from the trees that were pulled out.  I tried to break it up with the spade but it was just too hard.  I'm going to take my multi prong cultivator up and have a go with that.  Ideally I'd like to break it up enough to just spread it evenly around the plot and then I can cover it with membrane.


You can just see at the back of the plot in this final picture that I've started to put some membrane down.  My neighbour behind has membrane down on her plot as well so I made sure that it overlapped as much as I could.  It was difficult around the fence posts and there were some areas that couch grass had really taken a hold and grown into the fence that I couldn't avoid so I'll have to keep on top of that but hopefully it will be much easier to manage.  I also cut it long so that I could tuck it under the fence at the right side of the plot.  

The hedges, that you can see in the first pic were really overgrown so we trimmed them back and down, external hedges can't be more than 6' high so we brought it down to that level. 

We had inspections for the allotment this week and so of course I had everything wrong with this plot that could possibly be wrong!  It's just one of those things that we had been planning to get work done on the plot this weekend but at least we'll be able to show a clear progression in the coming weeks and certainly in time for the next inspection in 6 months time.

I will be using www.growveg.co.uk to plan the new plot, as I did with my original plot.  It has a free 12 month trial but the subscription is reasonably priced and as well as tracking your plans each year, reminding you where you planted things in previous years so you can maintain your rotation, you also get regular newsletters and additional support.  They've also recently added a garden journal which gives you the opportunity to track when you're planting things as well as detailing watering, tending and harvesting.  You can add photos and make notes (which you never know, might end up being a blog for me to read in future!!)

I will need to go back up to site during the week to try and get more of the plot covered with membrane before it all starts growing back again.  I'm not going to keep doing different posts for the two plots but this time I thought that as I was planning to do a full day just working on the new one that it made sense.

I hope you've all had a lovely bank holiday weekend and been able to enjoy the sunshine.  Until next time - Happy Gardening x