After five and a half years of waiting...

We have an allotment! Time to get back to that old blog eh!

Literally at the top of our street is an allotment with only 9 plots and we have one. It was a long time to wait, but it is of course worth it when you actually get one. Plot 6 can be seen here and includes a shed, greenhouse, pond, cold frames and potentially more. We managed to get in for a sneaky peak. Once we have the keys and put the wellies on I will post some pictures.

So in my excitement I found http://www.allotment.org.uk/ and purchased "Vegetable Growing Month By Month". You can buy it signed direct from the publisher for on £5.99 and I promise you it is amazing (You can get it cheaper from Amazon but buying from the publisher means he should get more profit). It is exactly what a beginner needs. It is simply all the things you would have been told by your dad/granddad if they was into growing their own. As I need to start the growing bug in my lineage I am thirsty for the knowledge to pass down to my son.

Onion Patch

On Saturday we decided to put some more effort into the design of the garden. Remember, our idea is to make the most of what we have rather than dwell on what we don't. And one thing I do have a lot of is brick. When digging up the 13m length privet last Easter I found loads of bricks buried in the ground. A few of these have been used to boarder a patch we are going to use the grow some onions. I had to move a couple of compost bins to a new home and I still have some serious digging to do, but I think it looks good. We also headed to the DIY shop to buy some concrete slabs. One of these has been put down along with a brick path to the bins. I used some nice bricks that I got from freecycle that all have "Wombwell", a town only 10 miles away, stamped into them. I have another 5 slabs to put down and we are going to take up lots of our turf to extend the growing area.

Behind the onion patch we have got lots of window boxes to grow many salad vegetables which will use the tarmac area more efficiently. These were filled today, it started to pour with rain before I could get a photo.

Next to the pond, at the back of the garden, the last root of privet was too much of a challenge to remove. It still took a serious battering and a chainsaw through the top, but guess what, it is now growing back. What the heck am I going to do with this thing? I think an axe and some copper sulphate drilled into what is left is in order.

Plant Weekend

Today we headed out to the local village of Bolsterstone for our yearly visit to their village hall "plant weekend". The fundraising event is a great way of getting our hands on some cheap plants. The idea was to buy some nice vegetables ready for planting into our many weed filled pots, which we did.

We got there early enough this year to have a wider choice and the herb and vegetable selection was really quite good. We started off by picking some herbs. I want to make my own mint sauce one day so I chose some "garden" mint. Laura then saw some "country cream" oregano and "compact" marjoram. We also decided on two young rhubarb plants, two well grown broad bean plants, two "hot" pepper plants and two "sweet" pepper plants. Don't forget the tray of marigolds. Pretty good for £11. Tomorrow the plan is to pot them up!

Did you know that all marjorams are oreganos, since the genus name for both is origanum, but not all oreganos are marjorams?