A bigger future?...

I sent an email to the lovely lady in charge of the Saintbridge plots a few days ago expressing a few concerns I had about having this starter plot over the winter months. Nothing bad, I'm truly grateful to get my little plot but I'm well aware that in 6 months or so time I could be offered a full/half plot and all my work at the baby plot would be nothing more than 'practice'.

I have a meeting with her on Tuesday at 5pm to view.a.bigger plot, yippee!

My mahoosive compost bin arrived yesterday too. It's huge and will have to live in the flat till next week but it does take up what little space we have in the tiny flat. Heyho, needs must :)

Composting...

I found some useful information at a website called Recycle Now which is all about composting and the "do's" and "dont's" so I thought id post it up as a quick guide for me and anyone else who reads this blog :)

Things to add - Greens

Things to add - Browns

Things to keep out

And then the rain came...

On the way to the plot today we stopped in at Homebase to buy one of those cheap (I say cheap, £30 for some plastic isn't bloody cheap!) plastic greenhouses so that I can start potting stuff at the start of next year. 
I only have a tiny front garden at the flat so Mum has said that I can stick the greenhouse in her garden, which is nice :)

Spent 2 hours at the plot today trying to make a start on things but it quickly dawned on me that I truly have no idea how to dig, and that this isn't going to be as easy and simple as I thought it would be! It's a challenge though and a learning curve, and I'll look back on this blog in 6 months time and laugh at how lost I seemed "back then" :)

There isn't a huge amount to report though except that the rain came down hard about 1.5 hours after we got there and completely washed us out. Its been a beautiful week with loads of sun and no wind, yet the one day that I get a few hours to do some digging and the heavens open :(

I did manage to peg down some cardboard over the horizontal bed closest to the compost bin (which still hasn't arrived yet) but all in all today was a complete muddy washout :)

I wont be able to get to the plot now till next Tuesday now as I am super super until then. I hope those weeds die a horrible wet, cold death over the weekend :)

My plot on day 1 :)

New plot layout idea

Having read the book that Mum bought me I've decided to try a new (and more refined) layout.

Plot layout version 2

4 rows, better to "crop rotate" than 9 little ones, and easier to board up the beds I think.


Im going to the plot later for the first time since I saw the plot on the weekend to dig out some weeds and cover it with some cardboard (damn those pesky weeds!).


Hopefully Ill also take some photos and get those uploaded later too :)

A successful day in Cheltenham!

As I mentioned yesterday, me and Urshie went over to Cheltenham car boot today to have a look for some gardening bargains.

It was a lovely morning, frosty but with a blinding sunshine, the perfect weather to try and blah a few bargains!

I managed to find myself a fork, a spade, a soil rake, massive soil bucket thingy, an organic vegetable growing book, a hoe (turns out that really I need a dutch hoe but I bought 'the other sort' by mistake) and a kneeling pad/seat thing all for £35!

Everything bar the book was brand new so I'm very happy :)

I don't think ill be able to get to the plot till Tuesday after uni though, and I really need find some wood to edge the plot out with and build the raised beds with...

In addition to my boot sale buys Mum bought me a book called Your Organic Allotment which is a great read and a great help in these times of allotment newness, thanks Mum :)

Plot 2..

So I finally got introduced to my starter plot yesterday, and what a beautiful piece of land she is :)


My plot is only a few metres away from the main entrance and main water tap which is good, and comes with a beautiful sunflower plant growing out of one of the borders.

I was under the impression that the site would be 5m x 5m, however it turns out that they are only 4.5m x 4.5m, but at £4 per year I cant complain too much :)

Potential plot layout

Ive planned a design for the plot, feel free to let me know what you think of the design. I stuck with a maximum of 1.2m wide beds as 60cm (half way) seems a comfortable distance to bed over and weed.

To my eyes the plot looks small, and seeing that design makes me wonder how it will look after I've finished with it. I cant wait though, I just need to get over to Freecycle and get some materials :)

Ive just bought myself a 330 litre compost bin and kitchen 'caddy' from www.getcomposting.com/ for the grand sum of £24 posted which isnt a huge amount considering how many years of use I'll hopefully get from it.

We are off to the car boot sale in Cheltenham today to try and blag a bargain, more updates to come :)

My first tool purchases!

Maybe im getting a little too excited by the allotment project, but surely that's no bad thing...right? :)

I popped into Homebase in Cheltenham today on the way back from University with Urshie and picked up some nice hand tools, namely a small hand fork and a small hand trowel :) I'll try and post a photo later, that way I can test out posting pictures to this blog.

Me and Ursh also popped into a really nice garden centre in Norton, somewhere in Worcester, and bought her a gooseberry bush for the very small front garden that we have here at the flat (its literally a 2m x 2m bit of grass...but we love it nevertheless!). Gooseberrys remind Urshie of all the times she used to spend with her Nan so I'm glad we got that for her, and I'll no doubt enjoy eating some gooseberry filled crumble/pie over the coming years :)

Saturday at 11am I get to meet the lady from the Council and finally get to see my plot, I cannot wait and I'm doing all I can to make sure I've researched as much as I can. As I have mentioned before I have a lazy trait about me and I'm desperately hoping that if I go into this project with as much knowledge as possible it will keep my motivation levels as high as they are now :)

Sunday we are off to the car boot sale at the Cheltenham Racecourse. It's by far the biggest boot sale in the County and hopefully I'll be able to grab all sorts of bargains whilst Urshie goes on the hunt for vampire books!

Only 3 days to go... :)

After weeks and weeks of chasing the Council around by telephone I finally got a phone call from the them (Gloucester City Council to be precise) telling me that they were happy to offer me a "baby plot", but also stick my name on a few lists...great!

From the conversation that I had with the nice lady on the phone it seems there are quite a few plots in Saintbridge (Cheney Close) going begging that are owned by some parish association thingy.

Apparently there have been over the years quite a few people who take on full sized plots only to find that its bloody hard work and therefore they never bother even going to their plots for the remaining months of their tenancy and obviously the plots go to pot...as such. Therefore the Council has struck a deal up with this association that they will offer "baby" plots of 5m x 5m to people like me, lottie newbies, whilst bigger plots come up on the normal lists :) Result!

My name is Cris, I live in Gloucester and have spent the last 27 years of my life being a rubbish vegetarian.

When I say 'rubbish' I dont mean that I am one of those "chicken/fish/a cheeseburger isnt meat" kinda people, I mean that at least the last 15 years of my life has been spent tucking into the vegetarian classic; pizza and ice cream, and my diet has suffered for a lack of 'real' produce that doesnt come ready for the microwave.

My long suffering Mum spent every waking day whilst I lived at home trying to get me to eat healthily, eat my greens, enjoy my broccoli and basically to eat lots of healthy food but I always resisted..now for some reason I've had a big change of heart and really really excited about the idea of growing my own veg, cooking that veg and enjoying healthier (and hugely tastier) meals :)

There is, however, one downside that I can see of my allotment dream...I am proper proper shit scared of snakes!

That wasn't an issue until I read a post on an allotment forum some weeks ago about a guy finding a slow worm in his plot. Now, I know that a slow worm isn't a snake but I had a very bad experience with a slow worm when I was very very young so to me they are all the same really. I then started to have a look around and found more and more people talking about their experiences of finding adders and grass snakes around their allotments *panic*!

So, as the title says, only 3 days to go till I get to meet my "baby" plot face to face. Im kinda hoping that it will be nice and flat and smooth as a baby's butt, but I fear that it's going to be a desolate weed haven :)

Heyho, let the fun commence :)