Where to start!

[greenangel]

I have recently aquired a nice sized allotment. Have never done anything like this before but can't wait to get started growing my own veg!

Where do you start? The allotment was over grown with weeds so I have dug it all over and now am looking at a very vast expanse of soil!

What is the best way to plan out the plot?

Any suggestions welcome!

[Alice]

Welcome to the Vine, Greenangel. Hope you will have great success with your allotment. You're right to plan it out before you do anything. You need to allow for rotating your crops so it would be wise to divide it into 3 or 4 areas. Also think about what you and your family like to eat and decide what to grow. There is already a lot on the vine about planning allotments. If you type the key words into the search box it will bring up previous posts for you. I'm sure the lottie experts will be along to help you.

[Mrs Dobby]

Hi Greenangel and welcome to the madhouse known as the vine! There's a good bunch of friendly and helpful folks on here, so I'm sure you'll get loads of advice (plus as Alice has already said, there's loads of info in some of the threads that have already been posted, so may well be worth a look!)

Whereabouts in t'potteries are you? I work in Congleton, and grew up in Biddulph, so know the area fairly well!

Congrats on your new plot, and on getting it cleared, we got our plot 12 weeks ago, it was 8' deep in weeds and has taken a lot of hard work (but huge fun too) to clear and put in some raised beds and paths, does your new plot have any structure to it? If not it may be a good idea to plan out your beds and get them sorted, 3 or 4 areas would be ideal for crop rotating, and make sure your beds are no wider than you can comfortably reach from your paths (as that way you dont end up standing on them, compressing the soil and having to double dig it every year!)

If its now dug and clear of weeds it may well also be a good idea to cover the beds with some weed control favric / black plastic / mulch to prevent any weeds from sprouting in your nice fresh soil!

As to how you want to plan out your growing, make a list of everything you like to eat, then work out how much you can store and grow, plan out your planting to ensure that the crops stay within their 'families' for crop rotation, and then the fun bit, choosing your seeds!

There's quite a lot of good sites out there doing organic seeds, and a lot of discount ones where they are a lot cheaper than the local garden center too, take a trawl through the forums and you'll find lots of info and links!

Anyhow, thats probably enough to think about for now, No doubt some of the other grapes will be along shortly to welcome you and offer their own excellent advice!

[nick the grief]

Hi GA,

Welcome to the Vine. Not a lot to add to what Alice & Mrs D have tld you really. With the weather as it is you can 't really do much on the plot, so What I'd do is go down armed with a tape measure, paper & a pencil (biro's smudge pencils won't) Measure it all up & then ypu can make a plan of your plot.

Then you need to call a family meeting & discuss what sort of things you like eating & then you can split them into four groups. Also I'd give some consideration to growing a few cut flowers as this will give you five groups then for your rotation which will be better still.

Once you've decided what you want to grow you get the fun bit - looking at seed catalogues & picking varieties. There's a lot of ideas on what to grow F1 hybrids or open pollenated varieties the main thing to consider is that a lot of F1's are really amed at the commercial producer so your crop may all be ready for harvest at the same time whereas the open polenated varieties will give you a smaller harvest but over a longer period which may suit you better and some of them taste better too.

A couple of books that you'll find useful are

The Vegetable expert by Dr Hessayon
Grow your Own Vegetables by Joy Larkom
The Allotment Handbook by Caroline Foley

The first two are really useful and are well worth getting. The last one is a really good book as well but I'd get teh other two first.

Then come the spring away you go & we look forward to the photo's