Regaining the plot

On the sheer joy of growing food

Over the course of the last week the sodden ground on our Yorkshire hill has finally begun to dry as the woods and grasslands start into growth with the longer days and warming soil. Drawing the incredible amounts of moisture from the land up into their expanding stems and leaves. With their rush of energy and the longed for warming sunshine, I too have felt the energy rise inside me with the return of the growing season.

I’m happy to be out on our allotment again, to be growing but also because I was worried at my lack of excitement over this long, wet and dull winter. Part of me worried I’d lost that enthusiasm I’ve clung to over the years but no, my body was just waiting for the right moment. And as I stepped onto the plot’s path, I looked for a simple job, that first little task, like a new leaf emerging to test the temperature. It came naturally to me again.

I looked at our heaps of compost at the top of the allotment, that had merged into one huge lump, and I could see good compost stating to form, rich and crumbly. So I set into sorting the pile, first using a large muck fork inherited with the farm for the bigger bits, then a spade to move the crumbly, almost-compost.

Hard work that felt good. Good to move my body in this way again, to run out of breath, stretch my muscles and test the strength of my arms and back after a particularly lazy winter. I need to build my fitness back up and gardening can help our core strength at the same time as a bit of cardio.

When we first moved here I spent ages researching sustainable compost bays, but hardwood is expensive these days and I eventually realised the obvious: you don’t need anything to make compost! So now we just have good old fashioned heaps that I’ve organised into three piles: the ‘almost-compost’, the ‘rotting down’ and the ‘new stuff’. I’ll turn them along the row like a pass-the-parcel over the next year, using the almost-compost on veg beds to make way for the new-stuff. I’d love to be able to produce all of our compost for the veg plot and I’m fairly confident it’s beginning to happen.

Then I cleared an area of ground, 1m wide by 3m long and used some of the almost-compost from the heaps to prep an area for our first mangetout seedlings. I love mangetout for the taste and also the ease of growing and using them. Spacing the plants about 20cm apart.

Around the little plants I pushed hazel twigs into the soft soil that I cut in winter from our hazel coppice. We have lots of pheasants around us, released irresponsibly into the wild by someone on another hill. Pheasants eat seedlings, with a particular liking for legumes, so I went overboard, surrounding the rows with extra barriers of twigs to try and protect them until growing tall.

Rhubarb never lets us down and also tells us when the growing season has begun. Our patch is full of leaves and stems now. It’s important to look for the flower stems too, they’re starting to appear among the leaves. Snap these off to ensure all energy goes into leaf production and not flowers.

Today I picked our first few stems which we’ll cook later with a handful of sweet cicely leaves to form compote.

With all of this going on, I finally sat down to work out a rough organisation for our allotment this year which I’ll show you below…

I rotate the crops in light green anticlockwise to minimise effects of soil born insects and fungi, such as carrot rootfly and clubroot on brassicas (you can see previous year plans here). It’s also useful for economic use of compost because onions and the allium family don’t need new compost, while the brassicas and pea family will. Allowing me to concentrate in certain areas, but over the course of five or so years, the whole plot receives its fair share.

The main change this year is that I’m moving the cut flowers to the furthest and least accessible bed at the bottom of the slope, and bringing the perennial veg bed slightly higher. This should make it easier for me to look after these year-round plants. I’ve also extended the horizontal path from a middle gate, which will make it easier for me to maintain the four main beds linked to it.

This year my aim is to increase efficiencies because I want to try and grow a bit more to be able to sell excess veg to local community veg schemes. Contributing what we can to the amazing local organic veg farming initiatives.

p.s. don’t forget paid subscribers can follow along with which crops I’m sowing and when in this post…