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at the allotment day 1 & 2: can we dig it?
By booyaa | April 20, 2008
the story so far
friday night felt like christmas eve, i couldn’t sleep and wanted it to be saturday already.
whilst we made an early start on saturday we still had to get tools, we wanted a pair of spades and forks, a tub trug (a rubber bucket/bag type dooda) and work gloves. what we got was a pair of spades and a tub trug, which we paid far too much for. travis perkins were selling them for twice as much as we could’ve got them from b & q!
we met our plot neighbour, lionel, who was friendly and incredibly helpful. he helped us identify what was weeds and what wasn’t. we do have couch grass and mares tail which are really tough to get rid of.
we spent about three hours there (we had other chores to do) and had dug up (and weeded) a 1/8 of the plot.
after a rest stop at chez boolou, we hit b & q and got gloves, a hand fork, a fork, a soil sieve and stuff to propagate our seeds.
sunday was an incredibly productive, but tiring day. we completed a whole 1/4 of the plot.
i think towards the end of the day i found a technique that allows maximum soil shiftage whilst minimising on the splitage of the weed roots. sadly it didn’t involve the soil sieve, which whilst allowing me to indulge in a little csi cosplay, didn’t yield enough weed free soil in the time allocated. i will try to take some video next time we dig to show you the BOOYAA technique of de-weeding.
prior to the “dig” we also “liberated” a shed from an abandoned plot. again lionel came to the rescue by helping us to dismantle the shed so we could transport it to our own plot. i kept my plan to cart the whole shed to our plot using only his wheelbarrow to myself, as i think he would’ve done himself an injury from the amount of laughter than would’ve arisen from imparting this idea.
the shed is currently in bits under a tarp and will prolly remain that way until we have enough nails, a new lock and a suitable underlay to place the shed on top of. the tarp is also covering the ground we dug up so any weeds that escaped are starved of sunlight.
mrs booyaa has come up with a fab design for the plot, i’ll get it scanned so i can add it to a future blog post.
as part of my own research jobs, i’ve been tasked with working out how to set up a compost bin. ideally we want one that we can continue to add our kitchen waste (fruit and veg scraps) as well cardboard and paper. it looks like the common diy method of compost bin making is to use four shipping pallets and a carpet to keep the heap warm. the allotment shop has some spare pallets so i’ll have to bag a few. i doubt we’ll actual get the bin made next weekend, as we’ll only have sunday as a full day on the allotment and we’ve already planned a big fire to burn our weeds.
facts and figures
our current expenditure is about £89 (including the daylight robbery that occurred at travis perkins).
time spent on allotment: 10 hours
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April 21st, 2008 at 10:56 am
Congrats on getting your plot!
It was about this time last year when I first got mine. I bet it feels as though you are playing catchup right now to start getting things in - I remember it well
To save a bit of money you oughta try shopping around in places like Lidls/Aldis/Pound Stretchers/Etc. They have gardening themes every now and then so you can pick up some great bargains.
Happy allotmenteering!
Kayle
PS. Cant wait to see this new digging technique!
April 22nd, 2008 at 8:36 pm
Yay another allotment.
I nearly missed the excitement in amongst all the twitter updates.
I’m looking forward to following your progress, I got mine 6 months ago, but now is a great time to get started, although you are going to be really busy!