Any advice for newly married allotment (garden share) owners ?

[Newallotment]

Hi everyone

After spending the last few hours (where does the time go?) reading posts on the site I thought I should say hi.

My husband and I (still makes me smile saying that) got an allotment recently (a few months ago) and we have spent every weekend clearing and digging it over (it's only 30ft x 15ft, already wishing it was bigger now we have come to planning planting for next year). Yes, I hadn't heard of the no dig or lasagne method, plus I like top the satisfaction of knowing that the grass and pesky weeds have gone (or greatly reduced). Soil is pretty good - it used to be the kitchen garden for the old lord, so haven't been cultivated for 30 years at least. Rather than adding our names to the 500 strong waiting list for allotments we signed up for a garden share scheme through Food 4 Macc. Basically you get a plot of land in someone's garden who haven't the time, inclination or aren't physically able to grow on it themselves. In return, you give them some veggies (about 10% of your crop). We were lucky in that our plot is an actual allotment behind the houses rather than part of someone's garden.

Very giddy this Xmas as all our gifts were garden related, so my mum and dad gave us a greenhouse they found on eBay (we had to collect it, dismantle it, clean the glass and put it together again on our plot) and they also surprised us with some handmade staging for it which my dad made, best present ever. I got some tin /enamel mugs and a tea can from my lovely hubby, and mum got us some mugs that said stay calm and keep gardening

Found a supplier of organic manure and just planning our planting (bought seeds in a sale for 50p a packet).

My question is, I want to grow lots of different crops to see what works, but hubby reckons we should stick with a few and grow more of each. We have 3 beds, 4ft wide and 13ft long and we plan to plant in rows across the width rather than lengthways.

Any ideas what you would plant? I have done a plan using growveg.com - I should be able to send a link if anyone would like to have a look and check we aren't setting ourselves up for a fall!

Thanks
Sarah

[veggiechicken]

Hello Sarah and husband (do you like that ) and welcome! How exciting - so many new things in your lives. I can't help you with your planning but I would say this - only grow the things you like to eat - certainly until you have the hang of gardening. That's not to say don't experiment with different types of say carrots, or beans, just don't put your efforts into something like salsify or celeriac unless you know you like them!
Could you put your location onto your profile please - so that we have a better idea of your local weather conditions.
Any questions, just ask - someone will know the answer

[Sheneval]

Welcome Sarah good luck and enjoy - bags of knowledge on this site so you should find the answer to any queries - I see VC has already given some good advice.

[Two_Sheds]

Hello and welcome. I'm off out, so I'll be brief

Found a supplier of organic manure

make sure it's aminopyralid free

I want to grow lots of different crops to see what works

that's the way. Some will do well, others won't. If your spuds fail, at least you'll have cabbages (or beans, or salad).

we plan to plant in rows across the width rather than lengthways

More important is where your sun is. Tall crops go at the north end, so they don't shade out shorter ones (generally)

Any ideas what you would plant?

That's easy. You plant what you want to eat

[petal]

My advice is to just plant what you fancy in the first year. We don't grow 'bog standard' onions or carrots as they are cheap as chips in bedfordshire! However, we might grow shallots or purple carrots.
The greenhouse will make a huge difference to what you can grow and your husband is involved - perfect! Mine is a waste of space. Bless him.
I do like 2sheds advice about observing where north is.
the only other thing to remeber is to make a note of where you plant croips and to segregate them into groups. We have 4 groups: potatoes,(manured ground) legumes, brassicas(limed ground) and roots. Year after a crop of legumes(including corn/squash) , we (well, I)plant brassicas - after brassicas- roots (including shallots), then lots of manure and potatoes go in.
Good luck and enjoy!

[WendyC]

Don't do what I did the first year I had my plot and plant out about 30 cabbages all at the same time, which all were ready over the same few weeks. How many cabbages can a family eat in one go? Especially as I don't think the boys were cabbage eaters at the time! Little and often is the way to go!

[Kristen]

My advice to a "Newbie" would be:

Plant what you like to eat. No sense growing something experimental, that you don't particularly like, the crop then failing and you getting despondent as a result and potentially giving up.

Grow high value crops, they have immediately feel-good factor for the money they saved. Runner beans is a good one, if you like them. Huge crops, expensive in the shops, taste much better picked small and often. Courgettes give a good yield-per-area too. Do NOT plant either of those early !!

Grow crops that taste better home-grown. Obvious one is Sweetcorn. Cooked within minutes of picking it is far better than shop-bought. The moment you pick Sweetcorn the sugars start turning to starch, which is why you need to pick-and-cook and why shop-bought will never be as good.

"Tastes better" can also be achieved by careful choice of variety. Its very subjective though and "Ask 2 gardeners and get 3 opinions" applies However, what is true is that varieties grown commercially for Supermarkets are invariably grown so that they are uniformly ready for harvesting, or don't bruise easily (e.g. Tomatoes with thicker skins, which usually taste bland).

Worth buying several varieties of seed and having a taste-test (although that ups the cost rather, but seed for most things will last a several years if kept in dry, air-tight, container away from heat / direct sunlight).

You should be able to find a local garden centre that sells Seed Potatoes "loose", so you would be able to choose a selection of those to taste-test. Don't bother with main crop potatoes to store for the Winter. Farmers have much better chill rooms and keep their spuds much better than you can. Best to grow First & Second early initially (and maybe a salad potato like Pink Fir Apple if you like that sort of thing - but they take up quite a lot of space)

Grow high yielding crops - particularly if you have a small area; but even if you have lots of space the high yielders will be less area to maintain in the early years. Sweetcorn is not good in that regard, best to assume that you will only get one cob per plant.

Keep records. Date of sowing, planting out (if applicable) and the First & Last cropping dates. That will help you in future years to predict when a crop will finished and the ground will become free for the next crop, and so on. Also what variety, how many you planted / grew on, and whether that was too few/many and if the two of you liked the taste. Thus you can grow more/less next year. Note that a variety won't always taste the same year-to-year, so you might re-try a variety another year -more/less rain/sun can make all the difference.

Make sure you divide the area up for a crop rotation. You don't have to be too OCD about it, but it is better to start out right than introduce disease, or nutrient imbalance, through not doing it right.

If you only buy one book get D G Hessayon "Vegetable and Herb Expert" book. Very succinct, will tell you yield-per-unit-area and timings etc. which will help with planning.

Hope it goes well

[ancee]

Firstly ahhhh you and your new husband - you sound cute! Don't mean to sound patronising (If I do!) But I remember saying "My Husband" for the first time, instead of my boyf - I loved it too! Think you have loads of great info off all the pros, so i'll just say welcome to the vine

[legume]

Firstly, congratulations to you and your husband. (I've been married 5 years now and I STILL get a thrill from saying 'my husband', so I completely understand that!) :-)

We started our very first allotment last year, so I can only tell you what we found worked for us:

As the others have already said, grow only what you definitely know you like to eat, so you make the most of your growing space and enjoy the rewards of your hard work. Otherwise you just end up staring dismally at a giant row of Swiss Chard for weeks, before consigning it to the compost heap. (Been there, done that...)

The initial digging, preparing the beds, setting up the greenhouse/shed etc. is the really hard bit. You're likely to feel a bit jaded by it. But persevere: once the 'hard landscaping' is done, the rest is a lot easier!

Really really clear the ground of weeds before you start planting (esp. the perennial ones like nettles, thistles, ground elder and docks) or you will spend the rest of the year fighting with them.

Choose 'easy' plants for your first year, as you will only get discouraged if you don't see much success: runner and french beans, peas, potatoes, beetroot, salads and cabbages are all pretty much guaranteed to grow. This is not the year to attempt trench celery and espaliered pears!

Pay attention to spacing instructions - if you pack plants too closely weeding becomes virtually impossible and the plants are miserable and do badly.

Don't plant too early: you'll be itching to get out there and start a'sowing, but if it is too wet and/or cold then you either end up with leggy, miserable pot-bound plants stuck in your greenhouse for weeks on end (as mine did...), or no seeds germinating.

Brassicas (brussels, cabbages, kale, swedes, broccoli etc) MUST be netted or they will be eaten alive by birds and butterflies, and carrots too absolutely must be covered or they'll get carrot fly.

You WILL have failures and make some mistakes: some things just won't grow how you expected (or at all). Don't be disheartened - that's just gardening. :-) Even Alan Titchmarsh doesn't succeed every time!

Increasingly, I am finding that in order to live OFF an allotment you practically have to live IN it. Yes, you can grow huge quantities of veg, but wave goodbye to your social life if you attempt it. It is best to just enjoy a few 'tasters' of the veg you like and experience the thrill of how much fresher and better they taste compared to shop-bought stuff, rather than trying to be completely self-sufficient.

6 runner beans, 6 french beans, 20-40 seed potatoes, 1 (and I do mean ONE!) courgette plant, 9 sweetcorn plants, 6 brussels sprouts, 6 cabbages, 6 calabrese, 20 or so leeks, 1 pumpkin / squash, 1 cucumber, a couple of short rows of carrots, a couple of rows of peas and 3 tomato plants are roughly enough to provide some decent meals for two people. Do NOT plant 3 courgettes unless you want to be buried alive in them.... :-)

Good luck!

[Farmer_Gyles]

My question is, I want to grow lots of different crops to see what works, but hubby reckons we should stick with a few and grow more of each.

typical! lol!

i met my partner about 15/16 months ago .... i've been growing veg at home for a few years, she had really only ever done tomatoes and like you, wanted to do anything and everything!

she was very disappointed when we had to chuck 60+ tomatoes on the compost heap, even though we still had 60 plants (several varieties) .... she soon learnt that the more we grew, the more there was to look after .... and all the tomatoes got blight before we got any tomatoes ....

by sowing loads of different things, she learnt one hell of a lot very quickly .... she loved it .... it was good for her to learn so much .... i didn't stop her, but i did plant out a variety, some of whatever we could fit in, and a lot more ended up in the compost as there wasn't room for it .... and she loved having different coloured cauliflowers, different coloured carrots etc ....

sadly the weather was so poor that things didn't work out too well ....

hopefully she has a much better idea of what she wants to grow this year and what not to bother with ....

[Kristen]

Increasingly, I am finding that in order to live OFF an allotment you practically have to live IN it

I know I've been doing it a long time, so I probably instinctive know how to tackle various problems ... but I have a large vegetable patch and spend very little time in it.

I DO, deliberately, spend a LOT of time raising veg plants in the Spring, but once they are planted out (1st of June, say) I have very little weeding to do, some watering if it is dry (once a week, twice if we have a drought), and other than that there is just crop-picking.

6 runner beans, 6 french beans, 1 (and I do mean ONE!) courgette plant, 9 sweetcorn plants, 6 brussels sprouts, 1 pumpkin / squash, 1 cucumber

Sorry, but I disagree with those qtys. Folk will really struggle to get a meal from so few plants. A courgette plant will produce perhaps 3 at once (yes, it will do that every few days). 3 small courgettes is probably enough as a side dish for two people, but if you have anyone round you'll either won't have enough or will be storing some from earlier in the week (which for me loses the benefit of growing your own, if they aint fresh they might as well come from the supermarket).

If you are very tight for space you won't have a choice (well, you could grow more plants of fewer varieties), but if you like to entertain then grow more; you may wind up giving excess away, or composting them, but I would prefer that if it means I have plenty when we have friends around - everyone raves about our fresh veg. which has a Feel Good factor all to itself!

[Florence Fennel]

Hello and a late, but very warm welcome to the Vine!

[PyreneesPlot]

Hello and welcome.

So many people have said so much good stuff that all I'll add is make sure you enjoy what you do and it doesn't become a burden. Gardens and gardening should make yolu feel good. If a bit achy.

[legume]

[/QUOTE]Sorry, but I disagree with those qtys. Folk will really struggle to get a meal from so few plants. A courgette plant will produce perhaps 3 at once (yes, it will do that every few days). 3 small courgettes is probably enough as a side dish for two people, but if you have anyone round you'll either won't have enough or will be storing some from earlier in the week (which for me loses the benefit of growing your own, if they aint fresh they might as well come from the supermarket).

If you are very tight for space you won't have a choice (well, you could grow more plants of fewer varieties), but if you like to entertain then grow more; you may wind up giving excess away, or composting them, but I would prefer that if it means I have plenty when we have friends around - everyone raves about our fresh veg. which has a Feel Good factor all to itself![/QUOTE]

Yes, you are right about that: you won't get very much from those, just a few meals and 'tasters' (though I found the beans and courgettes never seemed to end - I couldn't give them away in the end!) I will be planting a lot more this year to get really consistent quantities of veg through the year.