Back to bed, so to speak ...

Sunburn in March?

Sounds unlikely, doesn't it, but I swear I had red cheeks last night after a long and satisfying afternoon at the allotment. It's an indication of quite how little time I've been spending outside since I started writing my allotment book last autumn, and even more so since I got ill (I am feeling much better, thanks for asking, although I am still occasionally stricken by what's become known, due to its severity and the seemingly endless nature of the spasms, as "the death cough").

Anyway, back to my afternoon on the plot: the first quality time I've spent there in 2006. As anyone who doesn't have a lot of spare time for their plot knows, each new year can feel like going back to square one. I looked around in horror, then tried to get down to something constructive. That turned out to be digging up one of my increasingly triffid-like cardoons before they took over every one of my five poles, and creating a new raised bed*. Lord god, have those things got thick roots.

But that story's for another post. Back to the bed. I have ordered two new raised bed sets from Link-a-Bord, which are made of recycled plastic, but I decided to do a bit of impromptu recycling by making a bed from bits and pieces I found around the plot. Granted, it's not the most beautiful construction ever to grace a plot, but it's an allotment, not Kew, right?

The items used were: two bits of board left over from flooring my bathroom, two strips of brick-effect stone edging left over from a garden project, plastic slats originally used to form a compost bin that I found on my plot when I first took it over, and two separate bits of defunct wooden shelving. It's not quite as deep as I would have liked, but it'll do.

At one end, I planted red sun shallots, interspersed with a catch crop of French breakfast radishes, and at the other, I put in one short row of white beetroot, one of bleu de solaise leeks, one of perpetual spinach, and finally, a row of turnip black sugarsweet from the Heritage Seed library. I was ridiculously excited by the whole afternoon, and came home grinning ear to ear. Even my aching limbs today haven't put me off.

*If you're interested in the pros and cons of raised beds, there's a good piece in the latest edition of Organic Gardening magazine (not online, alas). But let me sum it up for you this way: the pros are better drainage, less (or no) digging, not so far to bend down, soil doesn't get trampled - the cons are  that it takes a little time (and money, unless you do it my way) to set them up, snails and slugs can hide against the walls and launch sneak attacks on your seedlings at night, and if your plot's too dry, it could make the problem worse. Unless you mulch, which of course you should. Have I missed anything, chaps?

Comments

[Stuart]

Impressive use of re-used (rather than recycled) items Jane. Like you say, it's not Kew.

I'm an Aussie so I'm guessing Kew is the equivalent of our Nedlands?

[Gnome]

Forgive me Jane. I have studied the photo at great length. One cannot help but visualise some sort of burial ground complete with a set of fluorescent crosses. Is your raised bed in fact masquerading as somewhere that you are burying something that you dont want raising its head ?

[Jane Perrone]

Hi Gnome

Looking at the pic again I see what you mean! The little crosses are the rather colourful plant labels I was given a while back, and the moodiness of the shot is due to the fact it was taken in the fading light as I prepared to leave for the night. I can assure you that the only thing buried there is seeds and shallots, however! I am hoping it'll look a lot less funereal once things have started sprouting!