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.

The Beginning

Our first mission is to clear the area closest to the greenhouse, an area of approximately 8m by 8m. This is the land that was obviously worked last as it's where multiple rows of potatoes are buried. I dug up a small section of it this morning while showing the kids around and most of the potatoes are totally unviable. Surprisingly there were some that were in good condition. But, as I know very little about potatoes they will sadly be dug up and discarded as I have no idea if they're edible!

Today is an exciting day, we took over our new bumpy, weedy, overgrown allotment plot in the South Wales valleys. I've got the be honest when I say that just looking at all this land and grass gives me the collywobbles. The ground hasn't been worked in 2 years and it shows. It's a mixture of tall grasses, brambles, leftover plants and debris. Underground there are potatoes that hadn't been taken up and roots and masses of bricks and stones.

The plot is 8m wide and by my guess around 25 to 30m long. It's a twisted mixture of soil, paths, gravel and goodness knows what else...It also came with a substantial greenhouse and a shed. Both full of the previous owner's stuff.

Our plan for this plot is to work the ground nearest the greenhouse by building some raised beds and using the square foot gardening technique for growing. It's a method I've used in our small kitchen garden at home with some pretty good results. So, we'll start with what we know and take it from there. We'll be able to get four 4ft by 4ft square beds in a row near the greenhouse and hope to get them in before the spring.

The rest of the land will be covered with black plastic sheeting (once the grass has been cut) to act as weed control while we work on the rest of it. We're also planning to build an area for the kids to use on the right hand side of the plot - next to the hedge, so they are contained while we work (and hopefully stop them running on to the plot next door!)