A herb rockery made with... sinks!

This weekend we used the four sinks we had collected to make a herb rockery.

We had no plan or any idea how it was going to look or even how we wanted it to look. Which was a bit daft really. We started with 3 metal sinks, one ceramic, two bags of flamingo gravel, 10 red bricks and 10 breeze blocks. Oh and a small bag of ready mix cement. We decided it would be positioned at the front of the plot, right behind the small she'd but visible from the main path and right next to out path, for easy access for picking

Mr Allotmum and myself spent a good half hour arranging and re-arranging the sinks into different positions, muttering to eachother about how we had no idea what we were doing. It was rather comical. We'd never built a rockery before, we obviously thought we knew how to but every time one of us thought the layout looked good, it was dismissed as looking a bit rubbish by the other.

Eventually though, we agreed on a layout and set to get it all stable. We dug the ground a little way down to make a stable base for the sinks. As we laid each sink we filled under and around it with loose soil and packed it down. We also used whole and smashed up breeze blocks to wedge under them to stop them from moving around. Oncw all 4 sinks were in position, we edged around the base using some red bricks (which cost 20pence each from the local builders merchants). I planted some flowers in the ground around the sinks and then covered that with flaming stones. They're rather pretty stones of irregular shapes and different colours.

Once that was complete, we filled the sinks with compost and planted mint, thyme, marjoram, parsley, dill, chives and garlic chives, as well as some spinach beet seeds for good measure. I'd started these plants off as seeds some weeks back and they weren't too happy getting parched in the greenhouse.

I'm happy to say that they are doing much better outside!

All in all this project cost us around £20 and it's a nice addition to the plot.

Using shredded paper as garden mulch

Shredded paper around Pak-Choi plants

Now that the allotment season is in full swing, I’m concerned that all my hard work will be undone over-night due to invaders of the slimy variety. Yes, slugs and snails are my number one pet hate at this time of year. Last week I headed to the plot just before darkness fell to undertake a night time raid and stop those garden sods (as my grandfather calls them) in their slimy tracks. Much to my annoyance, they had managed to get around my copper tape force field and my trusty plastic bottle barricades. Those little buggers were happily munching their way through my sprouts and lettuce plants. Enough was enough.

Paper mulch around lettuce plants

Once I’d forcibly evicted those bad boys, I was tempted to douse the whole plot in slug pellets a foot deep. I knew I needed to formulate a kinder and less chemical-ridden plan of action.

I took to google and found many different “tried and tested” ways to keep slugs at bay. From beer traps to pellets, picking them off one by one with tweezers to sprinkling cinnamon everywhere. The list of methods was huge.

One thing that kept popping up was mulching, it's placing a thick layer of organic matter around your plants to keep pests and indeed weeds, at bay. Mulching is usually done with rotten organic matter like compost or horse manure. Now, I don’t have a horse or access to a ready supply of poo. Nor the spare money in my pocket to purchase it - so I had to look closer to home to see what I could use.

Shredded paper and water

I do accounting for the family business and have a never ending pile of paper recycling. As I work from home, this paper is stacked in a box under my desk as I’m not allowed to put it in with my household recycling as it’s considered commercial waste. Disposing of it at home could land me a £1,000 fine. I’m not willing to risk it - especially as every letter or envelope has the business name and address printed on it!

So I looked around online and saw that you can in fact use shredded paper as a mulch for your garden. Winner! Something I have a never ending supply of, that doesn’t stink, and I can collect by the boxfull every few weeks for free.

So out came my trusty shredder. The poor love didn’t know what hit it as I started to shred hundreds of pages of paper. I was always conscious of what I was shredding as it’s final destination will be around the fruit and vegetables we’re planning on eating.

Here's few tips on what you shouldn’t be shredding for garden paper mulch:

• Coloured or glossy paper, like magazines or flyers. This doesn't break down well.

• Anything with ink that ISN’T black (metallic and coloured inks can contain heavy metals which you wouldn't want in your soil)

• Any envelopes with plastic windows - take the windows out first and put in household recycling

• Staples are OK but take care if children will be helping lay the mulch (obviously they won’t break down in the soil)

Sprouts protected by paper mulch

After an hours worth of shredding I had a black bag FULL to bursting with tiny strips of paper (I have a crosscut shredder). I took this bag and a large builders bucket to the allotment. I then emptied the paper into the bucket a bit at a time and added water from the water butts. Now, a bit of advice here, don't do this outside on a windy day - the paper bits will end up EVERYWHERE. I did this part in the greenhouse sheltered from the wind because yes, it was a windy day.

I left the paper and water together for a little while so it could soak up the moisture and then headed out to my raised beds. The first to be mulched were the sprouts and lettuces as the damn slugs had been at them the worst. Just take a few handfuls of wet paper mulch and pat it around the plants. Don't try and spread it about as you'll disturb the soil surface and end up with mud in your paper. You want the mulch to be at least 1 inch deep all around. As you go, press down on the wet paper firmly. You'll feel the water come squelching out and it's very satisfying but it serves a purpose. By pressing and compacting the paper you're creating a thick woven barrier against weeds and slimies. When the paper starts to dry the moisture will go to your plants and the paper will dry as hard as concrete. Honestly, it will be very firm. Plus, if you've got different colour paper in your mulch it will also look quite pretty. I think so anyway.

The old boys at the allotment think I've lost my mind covering my newly planted planters with shredded paper mulch, but they'll see that it's a fabulous weed barrier and also great for keeping slugs and snails AWAY from my new plants. When everything is grown and harvested, the paper can be turned into the soil and will break down. Wonderful.

Planters, planters everywhere!

So we’ve been back up the allotment now that Christmas has passed and out next step is to create some raised beds. We’re using the squarefoot gardening technique so we have decided to make 4 beds that are 8ft by 4ft. I dragged my dad to the local timber yard and bought 24 3.6 metre decking boards along with 4 3metre 2x2 batons. All in all it cost £111 for all the materials to make 4 huge planters.

Each planter will be laid in squares and they're 8 squares long by 4 squares deep. So we have 32 squares in each planter. We'll spread most crops over 4 or even 8 squares depending on the plant and how much space it needs.

While the weather has been bad, the ground has been covered by black plastic sheeting. This has done quite a good job in keeping the weeds at bay. Sadly, there are some rogue potato plants in the ground that just keep coming up. I’m trying so hard to get rid of them without using any nasty chemicals. I guess I’ll have to keep digging them out!

While Mr Dig was cutting the wood I was digging and turning over the soil to even the ground out and make a decent base for the planters.

We put legs on the corners of each planter so we could anchor it into the ground so while I sat on one end, Mr Dig used a sledge hammer to give it a good whack. Luckilly as I'd been hard at work digging the soil, it was reasonably soft which meant he didn't have to smack them too hard!

In just half an hour we built one planter. Sadly that was all we had time for today but we’ll be back up there over the weekend to finish them off. We’re leaving the black plastic down and will put a mulch of bark chippings on top to make low maintenance pathways between the beds.
I’ve got the spring bug and I cannot wait for thing to start growing!

Square foot gardening. What it is and our success with it.

We’re going to be using a method called square foot gardening on our allotment. It was created by gardener Mel Bartholomew in the USA in the 1980's. I've got a copy of Mel's original book and it's a really refreshing read. It's a whole different approach to the typical "empty a pack of seeds in a row and see what happens" approach.

The theory is simple. You divide your growing area into square foot squares and grow a different fruit/vegetable in each one. The amount of plants you can grow in each square depends entirely on the plant and its needs.

The idea is that you prepare a large section of ground and then divide it. As the plants grow and mature you harvest them and then use the same square to grow a different plant. No square stays empty for long and it ensures that the land is in constant use and you’re not inundated with hundreds of the same plant.

It’s an effective way to keep your garden manageable and your crop rotation straightforward. If you'd like to read more about the origins of the method, here's the Wikipedia link.

Square foot grown celery next to a 5yr old sapling

Square foot grown spring onions

L shaped planter

We've used this method in our small courtyard garden at home and it was the success we had from this that has spurred me on to use it on the allotment. It really is a fantastic way to get a garden going. Last year in our little garden we built a 2 metre by 2 metre "L" shaped planter and sectioned it off into squares of around 25cm (which is less than a foot) and ended up with 14 growing squares. In those squares we grew broad beans, runner beans, carrots, radish, pak choi, spring onions and most surprisingly celery. According to veteran gardeners, celery is apparently one of the most difficult to grow. We ended up with 6 very healthy celery plants (3 per square) and there are still two in the planter ready to be pulled!

Now, don't get me wrong, the quantity of produce we grew wouldn't have fed our family for long BUT we really thrived on seeing our little garden bloom and produce some really high quality produce. As an example - from just 8 runner bean plants we had two carrier bags full of beans and they flowered earlier and continued to produce beans much later into the summer than my grandfather's plants. And he planted 100 or so already grown on plants which he got from a garden centre. He was inundated with beans, so much so that we still have bags of them in our freezer!
The quantities we grew were so much more manageable and we didn't have to give anything away because we couldn't eat it fast enough...

We've already measured and drawn up plans for our allotment and an ever growing list of what plants we're planing on putting in. So far we have drawn up plans for four 4x4 foot squares with paths in the middle, four 4x2 rectangles for fruit bushes and two 8x2 rectangles for beans and peas.