A couple of months ago my partner and i took over our new allotment and at the time i was recovering after an operation so was unable to do any heavy lifting or manual labour and was really depressed that i couldn’t get stuck in with the work in hand, but after a slow recovery i was finally allowed to grab the spade and start with my cultivating!

 The plot is around forty feet wide by one hundred feet long so is quite a modest size and there was already small greenhouse on site so i was good to go, the plot was full of weeds and pretty much neglected but to me this was heaven because i knew that we could start it off the way we wanted it and make a mark of our own.

The greenhouse was soon filled to bursting point with endless trays of seedlings and tomato plants and plants kindly given to us by fellow allotmenteers and was amazed how better the plot looked with a few plants dotted here and there.

 We decided to grow quite a varied arrangement of vegetables as one of our new years resolutions was to eat a little healthier and take up more exercise  so our new venture was what you can call “killing two birds with one stone”!  
I am still struggling a little with the heavier digging etc but what we have achieved so far has amazed our fellow plot holders as we have started to turn an unloved and barren piece of land into something that now has order,life and activity around it, we have also just constructed a chicken house where we intend to keep a few free range hens, as i like to know my eggs come from happy healthy hens this will be an added bonus knowing they are from our own pets.

 On our allotment we are growing pretty much the run of the mill kind of vegetables like cabbages, lettuce, radish, peas etc but also a few of the more unusual candidates like pak-choi, sweet corn and even red carrots ( yes you have heard me right – red carrots!),

all of which we have grown ourselves in the humble old greenhouse, to think a packet of lettuce seed cost us 49p and we will have enough plants to last us the rest of the year in fresh produce! its amazing how much money can be saved when you grow your own food and its realistically easy enough too, if your not lucky enough to have your own allotment or even enough space in your own garden for veg why not grow a couple of varieties in some garden pots or even a large sized plant pot? and if you don’t want to set the plants away from seed you can cheat by buying them already growing in cell trays from your local garden centre.

 The fashion of vegetable growing is making a big comeback and with the financial side of things being a little tighter than normal for most people a lot of money can be saved by growing your own fresh produce and it can be a lot more fun too!

We have been working our plot for around two months now and with the rain and sun combinations our plants are thriving, our cabbage plants are progressing well and so too are the “red carrots” i mentioned earlier and the endless rows of potato sets that seemed to take forever to plant are now poking there little green heads above the fresh crisp soil ready to pay us back with hopefully a good crop of fresh home grown spuds.

As i have written in previous articles, i love my garden at home and really enjoy pottering on in my own little world, but now i am lucky enough to have the vegetable plot i have waited long and hard for so it makes a refreshing change to grow something different, and veg doesn’t have to be boring – they produce flowers too and have the added bonus of producing something at the end that can be eaten! ……….. so just imagine how excited i will be when i can start eating the “fruits of my labour”.   

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