Our Allotment

Okay, so it’s been a few weeks since the last update. What can I say; things to see, people to do…

Last thing we heard, the plan was to define the beds negatively by setting out the paths; the beds would be the areas in between. Sounded good, but when we came to start setting out the paths (on a day which was only a little bit breezy) the underlay membrane kept threatening to escape and it turned out I’d drastically underestimated the sheer quantities of bark we were going to need. Once again, the scale of the plot fooled me. A couple of weeks later, and the paths were still ill-defined, the string with which we’d marked the beds was fraying, and the whole thing was looking a little less rosy than I’d previously hoped…

Fortunately, a local business’s waste disposal problem turned out to intersect nicely with out timber needs problem. Webb’s Forest Furniture build sheds, fences, birdfeeders and so on, using logs as their source material. These logs are sawn into planks, and the offcuts and oddments are then bundled up and piled outside their premises. They were only too happy to give us a stack of timber for a very reasonable donation, which left Storm and myself with the task of transporting the wood to the allotment…

With the back seats folded and the front seats crammed as far forwards as they’d go, we were able to stack a fair haul of planks into the boot of the car. The driver’s seat position wasn’t optimal for driving, but we managed to ferry the wood to the plot and pile it at the end. Two piles: Wide-ish planks suitable for edging, and narrower oddments and peggy bits which I hoped to use to fix the boards in place.

 Storm and I took turns , with one laying the boards out in position on the plot while the other used a makeshift sawing table to saw the fixing posts and pegs. I’d already tried out a method of placing the boards which seemed to work reasonably well (a 1′ stake behind the board to hold it in place, with a narrower peg hammered in in front to press it against the stake) and by the end of the day we’d managed to build a whole bed.

Okay, doesn’t sound (or look) like a lot, but we’d also laid out the boards ready for the other nine, and we’d worked out some details of how to finish the rest off. We’d also gathered about a pound-and-a-half of blackberries, so we figured we’d get away with calling that a job well done…

Thursday evening, the boys and I went lookin’ for scrap wood to recycle. I’d spoken to a manager at a local DIY store, who told me I’d be welcome to help myself to pallets from their loading yard. We’d just need a way to transport them home for breaking. Sadly, our car isn’t really designed for the transport of pallets, so I hit upon a plan B: We’d take the pallets, and break them in situ, then load the scrap wood (which would be far more compact) into the car.

Plan B fell foul of the store’s general manager, who saw us helping ourselves to pallets and sent a minion to tell us that we weren’t welcome to help ourselves at all. Apparently their pallets are shipped back to bla bla bla. Yadda yadda. Bottom line: No help here.

So we mooched around, found a couple of scraps here and there, and after a couple of hours of fun, frolics and hitting things with hammers we had a carload of scrap wood, mostly about 1m long, which we took home. As I drove, I calculated that it would take two weeks, collecting scrap wood at the same rate (assuming we could do so every evening) to gather enough wood to form our bed edges, and that even then it would be a bugger to work with. Clearly another plan was needed.

Plan F*, then, is as follows: Let’s not bother with the bed edging. They’re really only cosmetic unless the bed is seriously raised, and as long as the paths are clearly defined the beds will be defined as the spaces between the paths. Sounds reasonable, right?

Right.

So today we hopped into the car, with a handful of garden pegs and a whole cone of cotton, to mark out the plot into beds. Yet another fun way to spend a Sunday afternoon, and the end results can be seen here:

That’s right, ten beds, 1.5 * 6m, with 0.5m-wide paths between each one. I had originally planned to scoop some soil from the paths into the beds, but plan F dictates instead that the paths will be covered with weed-suppressing membrane and bark chippings. They’ll sink as we walk on them, and the beds will stand proud.

Next: Defining the paths, I guess…

*Plans C, D and E were: To ‘borrow’ timber from local fences, to use some offcut galvanised steel sheeting we spotted in a skip, and to bike around the area looking for people disposing of useful planking. each of these were dismissed pretty much as soon as they came up, either as illegal, impractical, or involving endlessly cycling around in a downpour…

Okay, so we didn’t get an awful lot of gardening (or allotment work) done this weekend. The weather was dead against us; I think we can reasonably claim that this wasn’t our fault. On the other hand, the veg patch in our back garden yielded still more delicious beetroots and spinach for our sunday dinner, and some decent-sized unrotted courgettes for this evening.

 I was prompted by this morning’s report on McDonalds’ plans to re-investigate the subject of biofuels. More specifically, biodiesel. The more I look into this, the more I think it’s something which we ought to be doing - converting a waste product into a valuable resource (and reducing the need for fossil fuels as a result) can only be a good thing. The only question is how much time and effort can I afford to devote to yet another project?

Well, it’s a thought at least. It’s also worth considering that this biodiesel would also work as fuel for an oil-fired boiler, for example. Not much good for us (with our condensing gas boiler… Oops…) but there it is.

Hmm… I wonder whether freecycle might be a good source for transesterification processor parts…

The weather’s been something of a drag for the past few days; pleasant enough during the day (when I’m at my desk at work) but drizzly or worse by the time I hop on my bike to cycle home. Needless to say this, combined with the need to attend to the kids, has left me frustratingly unable to contemplate visiting the allotment, let alone start working on it.

On the other hand, the small veg plot in our back garden has been quite productive; yesterday Julie made the most wonderful lasagne, with our very own courgettes and spinach. The courgette was so special that even Storm had some. He even went so far as to declare it palatable! I’m afraid I’ve allowed the weeds to take over a little. There’s no excuse, but it’s just so disheartening to start tracing down the stem of yet another sodding bindweed tendril and find more and more of it wherever you look. Our persistence earlier in the year must have had some impact, surely, but I know some more work is needed now. Maybe this afternoon, weather and kids permitting.

I’ve been thinking about raised beds for the allotment, and was a trifle shocked at the cost of the timber we’d need to set them up. Oddly enough, at almost the same time a colleague told me about an interesting website, or online community, or rather collection of online communities called “Freecycle“. The idea here is that if you have stuff you don’t want (clearing out the attic, say) you can offer it up for anyone who wants it. Similarly, if there’s something you’re looking for you can post a message saying what you’re after.  With any luck, someone else on the site will have been meaning to throw out that buggy / sewing machine / pile of floorboards and will offer them to you instead. It’s two sides of the “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” triangle; the idea is to reduce the amount of stuff going into landfill, and make better use of the resources we have. Keeping the networks local also limits the amount of transport involved; unlike eBay, there’s no need to post these items; they tend to be collected en passant. It’s a great idea in principle, and I hope it’s as successful as it deserves to be. I’m also hoping that someone out there in freecycle land has some spare boards they can donate. In the meantime, there’s some plot-planning to be done. But that’s a story for another day…