so I have this allotment
May. 21st, 2020 11:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaberett... and it's a weird heckin' shape, and I keep wanting to explain the layout to people, so here we go, I've spent my evening Definitely Productively throwing... this together (approximately to scale, even). Sources: cherry, redcurrant, artichoke, jostaberry & gooseberries, raspberry.
I... honestly have no idea how to do a decent image description of this, but LET'S TRY IT EH.
To start with, in general things outlined in black are built solid infrastructure.
In the top left corner there is a green scribble representing my Egregious Raspberry Collection. It contains at least two cultivars of raspberry in addition to endless sticky weed (goose grass) and nettles, and is entirely out of control. Buried... somewhere... under that lot is a raised bed, outlined in grey, that I intend to reclaim At Some Point. Immediately beneath (i.e. slightly south-east, top of the image is approximately NNW, no I'm not going to fix it or put in a compass it's 11pm and I'm a terrible geologist, you're welcome) is the cherry tree, plus an inherited round picnic table.
Adjacent, along the back of the plot, is THE FRUIT CAGE, which I have now FINISHED all but the final tidying-up of. It's three 8'x8' squares stuck together, a square missing its top-right quadrant, because I'd planned on a large 16'x16' cage and discovered at the point at erection that while I had 16' between the front of the greenhouse and the back edge of my plot, the same... was not true! for the back of the greenhouse! because what even are shapes, why would I measure all possible dimensions, What Do You Take Me For, etc. A was very patient about dismantling and remantling the fruit cage skeleton, though, and the resultant spare parts meant I just Could move the door from the lower left corner (where I initially put it, which in retrospect was Not Smart) to the place it now is (marked by the slightly thicker line.) The fruit cage contains, anticlockwise from top: a large redcurrant; an even larger and more sprawling I'm-pretty-sure-it's-a-jostaberry; and a petite wee red dessert gooseberry (misrepresented here with a stock image of a green gooseberry). In the missing top-right corner of the fruit cage is... More Raspberry Scribble.
Starting again from the left, on the next conceptual row down I have a large (inherited) stand of globe artichokes (interspersed with horseradish, which I have... been ignoring); the lumpy bit of ground where I tripped and sprained my ankle (foot only feeling a little tender still!); a grey dotted outline of a raised mound of soil that is going to be a bed once I can face weeding it and possibly edging it and generally deciding what to put on it; and THE GREENHOUSE, a 6'x10' Elite High Eave I got off eBay and A heroically (once again) helped me dismantle, transport, and install (with guest appearance ofewt). Again the door is indicated by a thick line; the dark square at the far right is the hot bin; off outside the greenhouse the dark circle is my water butt. Not indicated, just above the water butt, is a grape vine about which I'm deeply dubious -- but we'll see how it does this season.
(Currently in the greenhouse: along the northern-that-is-top edge, some disintegrating wooden staging supporting some peas, some cucumbers starting to produce true leaves in modules where I've also sown some squash, five bell peppers of two varieties, seven purple chilli plants producing flowers, and A Million tomatoes of two varieties. Underneath the staging is stored chickenwire, my sun lounger, an enormous box of shredded paper, and various miscellanies. Along the south-that-is-bottom edge I'm installing a shallow raised bed, which currently contains four beefsteak tomato plants and some spring onions that are actually sprouting. The lemon tree is at the far end, in the corner between the hotbin and the water butt, where it gets lots of light and lots of warmth and has increasingly recognisable leaves I am so excited.)
There is then A Bit Of A Wasteland, where I'm going to get around to setting myself up three 4'x4' raised beds to grow... something... in, but those aren't a priority, followed by four (staggered) 13'x4' beds and (in the bottom right corner) one more bonus 4'x4' bed. The two leftmost longbeds are properly raised; I've got all the carpet out from under them, and built them edging out of scaffold boards, and actually started filling them in. They had a green manure growing in them for a while, but leftmost bed now additionally contains some of my mother's onion sets plus a row of rocket (hopefully).
Middle bed has not yet had the carpet excavated from underneath it, so is in grey because it's actually currently two quite messy beds that, um, need the carpet removing before I can rebuild them, but by the time I realised this they had fennel in them, sigh. At the top I've got what I think is a courgette, surrounded by some just-sown beans (we'll see if they come up); in the bottom half is A Number of garlic plants, some of last year's fennel that is stubbornly regrowing and I haven't the heart to pull up when I could eat it instead, plus another two onion sets.
The last long bed is at ground-level, but it also gets the most consistent sun so might at some point be turned over to asparagus, I haven't decided yet. It currently contains two surviving broad beans (nearest the greenhouse), a row of calabrese that I've sown but that hasn't come up yet, a line of peas flanked by lines of salad, another row of calabrese, and a small mound containing two flying-saucer squash plants surrounded by More Beans. (I am not entirely sure how this companion planting lark works.)
The last small bed contains mostly shallots, and was a largely-intact raised bed when I took the plot on. I don't think it has a secret carpet harvest but I am grimly aware that I'm not actually certain of this.
... there is a lot of infrastructure yet to be done not even counting the alterations I want to make to the greenhouse (once the relevant parts are back in stock at the manufacturer grumble grumble grumble) and I am learning a lot, but you know what, this is My Garden and I get to experiment and see what happens and fuck up, and also have therapy sessions sat on the sun lounger underneath the cherry tree.
I'm enjoying it a lot. It's pretty great.
I... honestly have no idea how to do a decent image description of this, but LET'S TRY IT EH.
To start with, in general things outlined in black are built solid infrastructure.
In the top left corner there is a green scribble representing my Egregious Raspberry Collection. It contains at least two cultivars of raspberry in addition to endless sticky weed (goose grass) and nettles, and is entirely out of control. Buried... somewhere... under that lot is a raised bed, outlined in grey, that I intend to reclaim At Some Point. Immediately beneath (i.e. slightly south-east, top of the image is approximately NNW, no I'm not going to fix it or put in a compass it's 11pm and I'm a terrible geologist, you're welcome) is the cherry tree, plus an inherited round picnic table.
Adjacent, along the back of the plot, is THE FRUIT CAGE, which I have now FINISHED all but the final tidying-up of. It's three 8'x8' squares stuck together, a square missing its top-right quadrant, because I'd planned on a large 16'x16' cage and discovered at the point at erection that while I had 16' between the front of the greenhouse and the back edge of my plot, the same... was not true! for the back of the greenhouse! because what even are shapes, why would I measure all possible dimensions, What Do You Take Me For, etc. A was very patient about dismantling and remantling the fruit cage skeleton, though, and the resultant spare parts meant I just Could move the door from the lower left corner (where I initially put it, which in retrospect was Not Smart) to the place it now is (marked by the slightly thicker line.) The fruit cage contains, anticlockwise from top: a large redcurrant; an even larger and more sprawling I'm-pretty-sure-it's-a-jostaberry; and a petite wee red dessert gooseberry (misrepresented here with a stock image of a green gooseberry). In the missing top-right corner of the fruit cage is... More Raspberry Scribble.
Starting again from the left, on the next conceptual row down I have a large (inherited) stand of globe artichokes (interspersed with horseradish, which I have... been ignoring); the lumpy bit of ground where I tripped and sprained my ankle (foot only feeling a little tender still!); a grey dotted outline of a raised mound of soil that is going to be a bed once I can face weeding it and possibly edging it and generally deciding what to put on it; and THE GREENHOUSE, a 6'x10' Elite High Eave I got off eBay and A heroically (once again) helped me dismantle, transport, and install (with guest appearance of
ewt). Again the door is indicated by a thick line; the dark square at the far right is the hot bin; off outside the greenhouse the dark circle is my water butt. Not indicated, just above the water butt, is a grape vine about which I'm deeply dubious -- but we'll see how it does this season.(Currently in the greenhouse: along the northern-that-is-top edge, some disintegrating wooden staging supporting some peas, some cucumbers starting to produce true leaves in modules where I've also sown some squash, five bell peppers of two varieties, seven purple chilli plants producing flowers, and A Million tomatoes of two varieties. Underneath the staging is stored chickenwire, my sun lounger, an enormous box of shredded paper, and various miscellanies. Along the south-that-is-bottom edge I'm installing a shallow raised bed, which currently contains four beefsteak tomato plants and some spring onions that are actually sprouting. The lemon tree is at the far end, in the corner between the hotbin and the water butt, where it gets lots of light and lots of warmth and has increasingly recognisable leaves I am so excited.)
There is then A Bit Of A Wasteland, where I'm going to get around to setting myself up three 4'x4' raised beds to grow... something... in, but those aren't a priority, followed by four (staggered) 13'x4' beds and (in the bottom right corner) one more bonus 4'x4' bed. The two leftmost longbeds are properly raised; I've got all the carpet out from under them, and built them edging out of scaffold boards, and actually started filling them in. They had a green manure growing in them for a while, but leftmost bed now additionally contains some of my mother's onion sets plus a row of rocket (hopefully).
Middle bed has not yet had the carpet excavated from underneath it, so is in grey because it's actually currently two quite messy beds that, um, need the carpet removing before I can rebuild them, but by the time I realised this they had fennel in them, sigh. At the top I've got what I think is a courgette, surrounded by some just-sown beans (we'll see if they come up); in the bottom half is A Number of garlic plants, some of last year's fennel that is stubbornly regrowing and I haven't the heart to pull up when I could eat it instead, plus another two onion sets.
The last long bed is at ground-level, but it also gets the most consistent sun so might at some point be turned over to asparagus, I haven't decided yet. It currently contains two surviving broad beans (nearest the greenhouse), a row of calabrese that I've sown but that hasn't come up yet, a line of peas flanked by lines of salad, another row of calabrese, and a small mound containing two flying-saucer squash plants surrounded by More Beans. (I am not entirely sure how this companion planting lark works.)
The last small bed contains mostly shallots, and was a largely-intact raised bed when I took the plot on. I don't think it has a secret carpet harvest but I am grimly aware that I'm not actually certain of this.
... there is a lot of infrastructure yet to be done not even counting the alterations I want to make to the greenhouse (once the relevant parts are back in stock at the manufacturer grumble grumble grumble) and I am learning a lot, but you know what, this is My Garden and I get to experiment and see what happens and fuck up, and also have therapy sessions sat on the sun lounger underneath the cherry tree.
I'm enjoying it a lot. It's pretty great.
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