Five years on it’s time to try something new. Obviously I’m not going to be giving up either of the plots, so I’ve moved blogging platform instead. It’s something else to play with, looks nicer than Blogger and could be good for the CV – and let’s face it I could do with something good on there!
So to celebrate five years of taking on plot no. 1 I thought I’d look back at the highs and lows in the last five years. When I took on this plot it was a bit over grown:
There's an allotment in there somewhere
It was difficult to find the way in, I got scratched a lot by the brambles and I had no idea where the plot ended. The wife wasn’t sure I should take it on, my parents were less polite: “you must be mad!” The kids, who were just four and a few months old at the time, weren’t allowed on it for fear of loosing them. To be honest it was only the neighbours hacking away at the plot next door that persuaded me to even take on the plot. And if I’d known her singing was that bad, I’d have had second thoughts. Only kidding Vicky!
Five years ago was just before the allotment boom really got going, but by this time I’d already been on an allotment waiting list for a nearby site for some time and wasn’t moving up that list particularly fast. So I rang up, put my name down and ‘A Plot Too Far?’ was born. Well not quite, but that’s a whole different story.
So I hacked my way through it and the first thing I planted was garlic a month or so later. The next summer we have over 50 bulbs of garlic which was a huge success. Although I plant slightly less now.
That's a lot of garlic!
The first year wasn’t great to be honest. Mrs D got septic arthritis in one of her knees, which wasn’t great for many reason and has a huge effect on our lives since then. Not to mentioned her ability to dig. It also rained a lot in the first year. Sheffield flooded badly and I think most of my top soil ended up in the valley below. Not too mention most of the things I was trying to grow. This was a bit of downer, but when I remember looking out the front window seeing RAF rescue helicopters winching people to safety in the distance and two people died in the floods it doesn’t seem important.
A Plot Too Far? 