And sow, to bed again
By Carole Davies - 14/05/2009
Earlier this month at the allotment that I manage for the Autistic Society, we planted out our young sprout and onion plants. And because the clients that I work with were going to be away for the Easter period it meant that I would be unable to visit the allotment over the holidays.
As an experiment, we used cut down plastic two litre lemonade bottles as individual cloches for each plant in order to both help to conserve water, and to protect the plants from the many rabbits that visit the allotment. It was also quite a neat way of using something that otherwise goes into landfill (our council does not, as yet, recycle plastic).
Arriving at the allotment today, after a period of two weeks, I half expected to find no plants remaining, either having died from lack of water, or because they would have been eaten by the rabbits. But, I am happy to say, not only were all the plants still there, but (protected by their own micro-environment) they were positively thriving and happy.
I can’t swear that my improvised cloches deserved all the credit. It might be that a large portion of the successful strategy was because we used a raised bed system filled with homemade moisture-retentive compost. Maybe it was because the wooden raised beds were more of a deterrent to marauding rabbits than other neighbouring plots. I can’t know for sure; I was simply relieved that the crops the chaps in my group had sown, and grown on and had planted out were OK.
It’s interesting to note that at this particular group of allotments we appear to be the only ones using a ‘bed’ system to grow our crops.
There are several reasons that I choose to do this. We garden organically, mainly because I would not be happy using any chemical products anyway, let alone with my client group.
Also, by using a raised bed it is easy to determine which part of the ground is planted up and which part is OK to walk over. This is a good reason to use raised beds when working with children too. The beds warm up earlier, and are more moisture retentive because of the depth of compost.
When we were first granted our allotment and we visited for the first time we discovered a neglected overgrown plot, not at all like the pictures of allotments in glossy magazines, and using raised beds made it easier to clear smaller areas and plant up, until gradually the whole site began to resemble a patchwork of little raised beds.
Needless to say it has been hard work digging over what was in effect uncultivated field, and trying to grow crops seemed ambitious when we were warned, early on, by the other allotmenteers that the local rabbits ‘eat virtually everything’.
This fact in particular has determined what crops we choose to grow.
A walk around looking at other allotments on the site told me which crops seemed to be of little interest to the rabbits.
Apart from onions and sprouts, we have planted rhubarb - another plant that the rabbits avoid, possibly because of the toxic leaves - and potatoes, which they also seem to ignore. I intend to plant up other members of the onion family - garlic, leeks and beetroot, some aromatic herbs, which I hope the rabbits will avoid because of the strong smell.
One good thing that we did inherit on our wild plot were several very mature blackcurrant and gooseberry bushes. We pruned these quite hard and - judging by the flowers currently developing - we should have a good yield this year.
After a year and a half the allotment is beginning to resemble something like those glossy magazines, and I’m already looking forward to homemade gooseberry pie and blackcurrant jam!