Jan 2024

Gardening Groundwork: Clearing the Path to Shed Serenity.

The rain that seems to have been pretty constant since November has taken a break for a few days, and so we have jumped into action clearing the waste ground area behind the old shed in an attempt to get it ready for a new shed to be erected.

When we first took over our allotment a couple of years back it came with a self made shed, which has been great for a temporary structure to store some tools, but it was not in the best of conditions and the plan has always been to rebuild and also reposition it to enable us to move our greenhouse into a more sheltered position away from the wind.

As with all best made plans things don't always go as expected. One thing we have realised since taking on an allotment is that nothing is ever as simple as it seems and will likely take ten times longer and need much more effort than first thought.

This area seems to have previously been utilised as a bit of dump by the previous tenant and it had many nasties hidden under all the plastic. In reality it has taken probably a good week of hard work to clear this ground with multiple trips to the local authority refuse site to make it ready for a new shed.

The area was full of plastic sheeting, bricks, glass, carpet...more plastic, bindweed, couch grass, more plastic, and more bricks.

While this may not be the most glamorous part of having an allotment, for us it is unfortunately one of the biggest challenges that needed to be tackled and so with a bit of hard graft (that may be understating it a little) and some determination, things start to look a little clearer and the hard work begins to feel worth it.

Having managed to salvage some old flags from other areas of the plot we have been able to create a make shift base for the new shed. While not perfect it looks much better and has turned an area of our plot that was really a waste of space into something usable.

We have a big list of jobs to be getting on with including taking down the beast of an old shed and we hope to share our progress with you as we look forward to a productive year of growing our own.

Top Tip: Winter is a great time to be getting on with the bigger jobs?