Clearing the dereliction

Our involvement with the allotment began two years ago when Dad took it on. He has an allotment in the next village, Marley Hill, but lives in Whickham. So it is easier for him to get to Sunniside. His plan was to get the allotment in Sunniside up and running and then give up Marley Hill. But he was ill shortly after taking on Sunniside and began to think of giving up the new allotment and sticking with his old one.

Then we stepped in to take on Sunniside. To cut a long story short, Dad fully recovered but kept on Marley Hill and Sunniside is now ours. Since the allotment was completely derelict (we think it hasn't been used for about 10 years at least), we found ourselves with a big job on our hands getting it back into use. 2007 saw our using one very small patch.

In reality, we were not attempting to get any crops. we had taken on the allotment too late for that. But in the autumn, after I had picked all the wild blackberries (and most of the allotment was covered by a thick bed of brambles) we began the process of getting the land back into use.

We spent a couple of months clearing the undergrowth from just over half the allotment. They are the areas which we have been cultivating or are about to cultivate. We have graducally encroached on the remaining derelict part and this is now about one third of the allotment.

If we are to become self-sufficient, we cannot allow that dereliction to continue and the land needs to be cleared and restored. This will be one of the big jobs for this year. The brambles and weeds will need to be cut back and the large amounts of rubbish dumped either by the previous occupier or other people using it as a free dump will need to be removed. There's lots of it and it will involve a number of trips to the official waste site.

The hedge bordering the derelict area will also have to be cut back. At the moment it is doing a very good impersonation of the hedge in sleeping beauty. I actually made a start on Sunday. Once the site is cleared, we'll need to dig out what brambles and weeds we can and then get another load of manure. What fun that will be! The photos below give an indication of what we are up against.

Digging the beds

When we took on the allotment, we knew we would have a big job to get the soil back into shape. After all, the site hadn't been used for at least a decade. If the soil is no good, we don't get sufficient produce and our dreams of self-sufficiency are gone.

Last year we brought 3 beds into use. They are pictured below (the third bed is top right where the fruitcage is. The first two beds were successful. We manured them well last year and got a good crop of onions, courgettes, beans and peas and especially Swiss chard.

We put potatoes on the third bed but put on hardly any manure. The soil there was damp and contained a great deal of clay. The potatoes were a failure. We have learnt our lesson. Potatoes like lighter, well composted or manured soil. We have used bed 3 for the sight of the fruitcage and it has been well manured. The fruitcage now contains 3 black currants, 3 red currants, 35 raspberries, 2 blueberries and about 60 strawberries.

Beds one and two were manured in January and over the weekend we dug it in. We are rotating the crops obviously so the bed with the courgettes and onions will be swapped with the one that grew chard and beans.

There are beds waiting to be dug. Bed 5 was used last year for strawberries (all now moved to the fruit cage) and this year we will grow the potatoes there, though they will sit next to a nectarine tree and a peach tree, both planted over the weekend, and an apple and a plum tree, both planted last autumn.

Plot 4 was rotovated last year though we didn't use it. As a result, it grew a good crop of grass and the occasional bramble. We spread a thick layer of manure over this bed 2 weeks ago, in the expectation this would smother the grass and help to kill it. When I dug through the manure over the weekend, I found the grass was still green. This experiment may or may not work but we are going to have to do a lot of digging on bed 4.

Anyway, having given all the beds different numbers, it seems to me that I need to draw a plan of the allotment and post it up on this blog. I'll add it to my list of things to do.

In the picture above, I'm on plot two in my mucky jeans and incredibly old and battered gardening trainers. The manure has been dug in so this patch will be ready for planting soon. I spoke to a friend of my today by phone who asked me how my self-sufficiency plans are getting on. He was amused that every time we meet, we are always both in suits and collar and tie. He suggested I needed to be seen more in my wellies, dirty gardening clothes, unshaven and smelling the smell of someone who grows their own food. I don't have my wellies on in the above pic but I certainly had all the other requirements! I since directed Stephen to the photos of me shovelling manure!

Acorn bread

Last year, when I had a test run of using acorns to make flour, I was determined to have a go at using some of it to make bread. The above was the result. It wasn't entirely made from acorn flour. It was 50:50 acorn flour and strong plain white.

The recipe was as follows:

750g acorn flour
750g strong plain white flour
500ml warm water
2 tablespoons of cooking oil
half teaspoon salt
dried yeast

Mix the flour together with the salt and cooking oil. Add in the water and mix until it becomes a dough. Need for about 10 minutes and then leave to stand for about 45 minutes.

Need again for about 5 minutes and then place in baking tins. Leave again to rise for about half an hour.

Bake for about 40 minutes.

The final result is a heavy wholemeal type bread. I was pleased I diluted the acorn flour with plain as otherwise, I think it would have been a bit too heavy. This does of course leave me with the problem of how to produce our own strong white flour as we move towards self-sufficiency.

Neverthless, I was rather pleased with the results.

Even more raspberries and the prospect of honey

Unfortunately, because of work commitments, I am away from home this weekend. However, I am pleased to report that David has been hard at work down on the allotment. He has planted another 30 raspberry canes that arrived through the week. That just leaves the 10 we have to plant in our garden in London (I am heading there now).

Also planted was some of the rhubarb that we bought 2 weeks ago. Half has gone onto the allotment. The other half is in one of my bags, heading down with me to London where I will plant it.

Last night, I spoke to a friend who lives in Northumberland who keeps bees. I want to check out the possibility of keeping bees myself and so we now have an open invitation to see his hives in action. Were we to go ahead with bee keeping, and at the moment it is only something I am considering, it could give us a useful alternative to processed sugar in many, though not all, instances.

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My latest allotment video

I've now edited my latest video about how we are restoring the allotment in Sunniside. It covers January and February. 5 tonnes of manure arrive and the greenhouse and fruitcage are built. Here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQcqZPUFwjE

Rhubarb

despite the allotment being derelict when we took it on, there was one patch of rhubard growing. we added 2 more patches last year but it seemed as though all ot if died off. Last week we bought 2 more sets of roots to plant but over the weekend we found that the older rhubarb had not died after all. There are a large number of shoots coming through.

We will still plant the new ones but again, as witht eh raspberries, we are looking forward to a good crop this year.

Planting soft fruit

Now that the fruit cage is built, we can start to use it. On Friday I planted 34 raspberry canes, mainly a summer crop variety but with some autumn crop as well. Also into the fruit cage went 3 red currant and 3 black currant bushes. And yesterday, we dug up the strawberries that were in two different patches to put them in the fruit cage. Strawberries were the first plants we put into the allotment in a small corner 2 years ago. About 10 went in. Last year we planted another 7 on a different patch. Yesterday I dug up over 70.

This isn't the end of the soft fruit planting however. We have another 30 raspberry canes on order (they will be planted outside the fruit cage) and 10 waiting to be planted in our garden in London. There are also 2 blueberries to go into the fruit cage. They have been in pots on the patio for a year and are now pot bound.

Assuming we have a recent crop, watch out for interesting recipes for using raspberries and strawberries later this year.