Allotment Gardening

I paid my allotment rent last weekend, £3 for the year for a plot that we've worked out to be about 160 square yards. Its such a bargain.

This is the 11th year I've had the plot and so by now I have had successes and failures and have settled to growing what grows well and maybe trying something new each year. My staples are leeks, parsnips, perpetual spinach for harvesting during the winter and broad beans, courgettes, butternut squash, onions, sugar snap peas and a few potatoes for the summer. I also have fruit bushes, blackcurrants, redcurrants, gooseberries and also rhubarb. That just about fills up the space.

Things I've tried and given up on include carrots as we have very gravelly soil and by the time they have split and suffered from carrot fly then there isn't much left although I have planted just a few seeds of a resistant variety this year. I also stopped growing things like purple sprouting broccoli which take up a lot of space for a long time.

This year the new things I'm trying are Pak Choi which will need netting as the pigeons are starting to eat it as soon as it germinates and dwarf french beans. I used to grow runner beans but they were either eaten by deer or the beanpoles were smashed by vandals so I'm hoping that dwarf beans might be the answer if I can just discourage the deer.

Everything is coming on well in this warm weather, now all we need is some rain.