Gardening Blog
Allotment Diary
October 21, 2008: banish the woe with a hoe
Chase away the blues with a bit of green-fingered activity, advises Terry Walton
What a great place to be out on the allotments in this pleasant autumn weather. The sun still holds a little of its warmth to enjoy and the gentle exercise and fresh air are a relief from the gloomy economic news that fills the media.
Out on the plot the changes are much slower even if at times Mother Nature can be unpredictable. No money or slumps in markets will affect the way our plot behaves only the extremes of the weather can cause a little mayhem there.
The woe can be banished with the hoe, and a bit of gentle digging can release those happy feelings, banish our cares and take us away from the day-to-day troubles of the real world.
Allotmenteers are natural thrifty beings and never spend unwisely. They recycle objects that appear useless to other people and will beg or borrow to get by. They use all manner of materials that occur naturally and for free to improve the fertility of their soil in order to provide cheap, wholesome food. No massive supermarket bills for the well-organised allotment holder.
Money has never been the currency of the keen allotmenteer, it is the produce that has always been the means of barter among one another.
Seeds can be purchased collectively and this scale of economy greatly reduces costs. Many seeds can be collected from your own produce and reused to form the next harvest. These are the basic needs of the gardener and again reduce the costs of growing your own.
Planning for year-round harvesting will provide food from the plot for at least ten months of the year.
During the times of plenty we carefully store our surpluses in both shed and freezer to be used in harder times, never use unwisely and your daily needs will be satisfied sensibly. Much like the parables of life!
It is true, you cannot live by vegetables alone but they go a long way to meeting our daily diet of healthy requirements.
In these days of credit crime there is another habit which helps safeguard our finances and is useful for the plot. Most of us these days shred all our discarded documents to protect our identity. This shredded paper is perfect dry ingredient to add to our compost bins. Spread in layers regularly in our compost bins it provides the dry material necessary to help aerate and promote the decaying process. Waste paper is a great moisture retainer and when added to our trenches helps maintain moisture in our soil. Although after the summer past I am not sure if this is a good thing or not.
There is no fear of our friendly earthworm cloning our credit details from this paper material as they are more interested in feeding on it!
Late October is a good time to reflect on the season past and to analyse our successes and failures. What did well and what did not? Was our effort to improve the soil fertility well enough?
It is always worth trying something new, such as growing different vegetables, but never lose sight of the basic need which is to feed yourself.
From studying our failures we will learn more, our successes will give us a warm glow of satisfaction but teach us less.
Gardening is an ongoing learning process and there is no substitute for experience. This increase in knowledge and experience can only be gained by asking those more knowledgeable than ourselves. Ask the long-time gardener for their advice you will be surprised how freely this advice will be given.
Go on surprise yourself and very soon you'll be tomorrow's ‘expert’.
More from Terry Walton
More on gardening
- How to start growing vegetables
- The window box allotment
- Allotment articles archive
- Chat about gardening at Saga Zone
How gardening helps your health
My Life On A Hillside Allotment
Terry Walton is a regular contributor to The Jeremy Vine Show on BBC Radio 2 and has written a book called, My Life on a Hillside Allotment, published by Bantam Press. The book is available from Amazon
