Is Summer Finally Here?

11 Jul

When I walk into The Old Garden – Community Gardens these days, I’m struck by just how much it has changed in such a small space of time. Just 2.5 months ago it was an empty field and now, most of the plot holders have made a start with their small patch. The allotments run the full gamut in terms of progress, a few overgrown, some with a garden bed or two. Then there’s the ones that are fully covered with garden beds, sheds and greenhouses, and most notably, the ones that have thriving crops.

The chicken coup is finished and now inhabited by ducks and chickens, that are of great interest to all the kids and dogs that visit the gardens. The day they arrived we were getting out of our car when my daughter heard the cockerel crow, and she exclaimed in excitement “the chickens are here!” Then she (and her brother) hightailed it up the hill to check them out, jumping around and squawking like chickens themselves. Hopefully our newest residents are settling in okay.

We also have 3 x1000l water butts on site now. They were initially filled with water from the adjacent farm, and they’re also set up to collect water from the roof of the hen house. At the outset one of the taps was broken, so the day that they were filled one of them started instantly emptying itself at a rate of around a bucket every 10 minutes. As we were in a short dry-spell I was worried there would be no water left by morning, so went home for the kid’s inflatable pool to collect the leaking water. I then used that water to fill buckets and water tanks around the garden for the next few days, so of course then it started raining…

I’ve had a little break from writing about my plot, but I haven’t had a break from tending to the garden itself. The weather has finally warmed, despite there being a distinct lack in sun for so-called “summer”. I am lucky that my home garden is thriving with huge potato plants, onions, sweet peas, lettuce, strawberries, rocket and an array of flowering annuals. I say that I am lucky, because in contrast, my allotment is somewhat lackluster. The courgettes were yellowing – I think maybe from lack of sun, because now they are only now popping out some new green leaves, and the ones at home have done the same. I have sown a lot of seeds in the last few weeks that did not come up, and surprisingly some seeds I had sown earlier last month finally did start sprouting, so that’s kind of a watch and wait situation.

I have continued to make new garden beds, and I have watched so many YouTube videos on improving soil quality and regenerative farming. My current intention is to continue trying to grow something in the first few garden beds I made, though as they don’t contain a lot of compost it does seem a bit like a losing battle. The more recent beds I’ve made I’m layering with a variety of mulches/amendments in the hope that this stuff will break down to create a better-quality soil for next year. So, the bed I worked on the other day is now layered like this: