One of the great things about an allotment is the way it fights one's ordered mind. I had planned 5 beds of roughly equal size. The reality is 4 beds of different sizes. The previous system was designed so that I could literally rotate crops, (clockwise, for goodness sakes!) around the plot. One needs more subtlety. I'll be thinking from hereon in about patches rather than beds. So long as I mark (and blog), say, where a tattie patch is, then I know not to plant tatties or tomatoes there for 3 or 4 years.

Bottom left of the plan is the long bed, currently about 20% riddled. The white rectangle is the poly-tunnel, but that is going to be moved every year, (counting as tomatoes/tatties in the rotation). The shadowy ovals are the shadows cast by the cherry trees (bottom right-ish) and ash tree, (top left-ish). The purple-ish oval is the pond, (maybe not to scale, I haven't measured it). The dark red areas are paths, the skinny paths will all be removed except for the one at right angles to the central path, by the pond, which is covering a drain.

I've allowed 3ft for the width of hedgerow, which it will grow to in the next couple of years. The dark blue rectangle is the base for the shed, and the orange is the shed itself. In the top left hand corner is my temporary tool store and rain shelter, which I've grown quite fond of, and will retain.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Leech or flatworm? Ants and Swiss Chard

Image
For the 2nd time in a week or so, (1st time regarding dwarf beans ), I'm following Alys Fowler's advice, this time with regard to Swiss chard .  Long story short, after midsummer plants which often bolt if planted in spring will resist the impulse to do so, probably because of shortening days; (I say shortening, but in Glasgow, in July, we're still getting 18 hours of daylight).   I got a packet of Bright Lights , at a good price, (another reason to wait until July before sowing, lots of bargains, I've noticed). But where to sow them? Most of the 2nd bed is under a tarpaulin, but it wasn't quite big enough to cover the whole bed, so the last 5ft or so went under a sheet of plastic, (in the background of the photo in this post, here .) Transparent plastic was a foolish idea, weeds were growing underneath it, so I covered most of it with sheets of metal from the old shed. I decided to leave the tarp, but use the area beneath the plastic for the chard. Who-ah there
Read more

LTPTP XXV: We Shall Overcome

Image
We shall indeed.  It's a lovely wee tune to learn.  I've almost memorized it this morning, the idea being, when I encounter a piano, I want something to sit down and play on the bugger.  I've a feeling that my keyboard's keys are lighter than a proper piano's, and there'll be a bit of effort transferring the skills I've gotten so far.  Probably, at some point this year, I'll be in workplace with a piano.  I'll print off some simple music and scales, and work at it, but it's likely to be in a public place so I want something to avoid making a twat of myself initially. It feels right that this should be the first tune I learn by heart.
Read more

"Chevy Chase. Fuck ever happen to him?"

Image
As Paulie Walnuts said in The Sopranos. It got me thinking. As it happens, he's been working steadily , but you can see what Paulie means. It's like that with film and television actors: you don't see them in anything for a year or two, and you wonder if they're dead or perhaps on a lengthy charlie and booze session. Or maybe doing proper acting on the stage? Only appearing on the telly gives them meaning to us. That video with Paul Simon was on one of the cable music channels the other day. It always makes me smile. As for Paulie and the rest of the crew, the clock's ticking. Of course, America already knows how things finish, but we don't. My mate Ian was telling me about a friend of his, visiting the States a few weeks ago, flicking through the channels in his hotel bedroom, he hit on a repeat of THE final episode, just beginning. What a quandry! He watched it, as it goes, but kept shtum when he came home.
Read more