Life up the Allotment
Around a month ago in one in my previous videos I mentioned an idea to make a cooking program where I share recipes and cook produce grown in my allotment. So this video is my little experiment, obviously the cooking series will be a little better filmed. I will set my little oven up outside and have a better script too 
But in the mean time I just wanted to share some cordial recipes using foraged sloe berries and cherry plums.
So I made the decision to sell my little Ghillie Kettle. Don’t get me wrong, I loved it but after attempting to cook some bacon on it I discovered it wasn’t pratical to cook anything on, especially if theres more than one of you. Thats when I came across this neat little cooker on ebay and I instantly fell in love!
I managed to get it at a bargain price and after a little clean and maintenace it looked brand new. It has two hobs on the top, a grill and a little oven which is all run by gas, and the overall size of the cooker is tiny (I think they were originally made for boats and caravans!) I also brought a little table from Ikea for £5.00, covered the top of it with oilcloth and made a little patchwork curtain to hide the gas bottle underneath. It just so happened to be the perfect sized table to fit into my shed beside my vintage kitchen cabinet, and it was also the right height (and the price was great too!)
Once we moved it into the shed I just couldn’t wait to test it out, so we planned to have lunch up the allotment during the week and I wasn’t dissapointed at all… It worked like a dream! I cooked me and my Dad an omelette with cheese, bacon and some swiss chard freshly picked from plot 15C. There is nothing better then harvesting your homegrown crops and then cooking it up straight away, and the omelette was delicious too.
Now my shed is starting to look like a proper little kitchen and I just love how my little cooker looks sitting next to my 1950′s kitchen cabinet. I’ll be making a little shelf to sit above the cooker so my pots and pans can be stored there and the utensils can hang there too. My shed will end up looking like a little home, if only it was big enough for a bed! However, I did come across one big problem, I have no sink and therefore nowhere to wash my messy pans and plates. I have come up with a plan though and that is to create a little washing up area outside my shed consisting of a tall log with a galvanised tub sitting ontop so I can fill the tub with warm water from the kettle and wash my dirty dishes.
I do wonder what the neighbours will think when they see me cooking and washing up, or if I’ll be getting any orders for cups of tea!
It is officially summer time and the harvests are starting to come in thick and fast, as a matter of fact I can’t keep up with all the crops! It doesn’t seem like long ago that I was planting the seeds and now I have peas, broad beans, potatoes and peas coming out my ears. I shouldn’t really be complaining because they are all delicious but it’s a full time job trying to freeze them, make jams, cordials or think of new recipes to try with the gluts. At least the potatoes tend to look after themselves and store rather well in the ground until I am ready to use them, they are the most delicious jersey royals I have ever tasted, I just wish I had planted more!
As for the rest of the allotment it is all starting to look lovely and green. The legume bed is by far the busiest with the broad beans and peas in full swing. The french beans and second double row of peas are growing nicely and I have yet to put in another row of peas for my succession planting. The borlotto beans are climbing rather high up my hazel archway and I just can’t wait until they have reached the top and produce lots of yummy beans to store away for winter. The fruit bed is also showing signs of a small harvest soon with a few very large gooseberries and some blackcurrants too, theres even 4 raspberries growing too! I even managed to squeeze some swiss chard into the fruit cage and over the past couple of days its doubled in size, it must be all this nice weather we are having.
The strawberries are going crazy and so are the tomatoes, I have to check daily and remove side shoots before they get out of hand and the poor basil is being overshadowed! The root bed is left to go it’s own thing, all the potatoes are ready so they are just waiting to be eaten. The only thing that hasn’t grown well in this bed is the carrots, which reminds me that I need to sow some more. Last but not least is the brassica bed which is slowly filling up. Now originally there was going to be one row of red cabbage, one row of purple sprouting broccoli, two rows of flower sprouts and 2 pumpkins in that bed. There has been a slight change in this plan and the broccoli is now moving over to my Dad’s new large plot so I have a spare area of soil where I can grow some cut flowers. I know I keep moaning about it but my plot is so tiny, there isn’t enough room to grow eveything I want to grow so this extra bit of space is most welcomed. Now all I need to do is decide on which flowers to put there while there is still time to grow them. On the other hand the pumpkins and red cabbage are growing great and the flower sprouts will be moving in this week once I get the netting and structure up and running to keep those pesky cabbage whites at bay.
I seriously can not get over how quickly things are growing, everytime I go up the allotment everything seems to be greener and bigger and the crops just keep coming. It makes all that hard work and blood, sweat and tears worth it thats for sure
I love taking photographs, It’s an addiction which can also be a curse (especially when I should be weeding instead of taking photographs!) I do believe however, that everyone needs to take photographs, they don’t have to be brilliant, in focus or even straight, but cameras are there to capture life in all its glory. How else are we going to remember holidays, faces of friends and relatives, pets and those childhood years. You can always delete but you can never go back in time and capture after all!
My allotment is my happy place, a place to escape and simply do what I love. I spend half of my time there and I must say that I enjoy every second of it. It’s not neccessarily what a ‘normal’ 24 year old would be doing during the weekends but I love it, and thats more than enough for me.
I have to admit that I get very distracted with photography (and cups of tea for that matter) I often find myself weeding and at the same time finding a new viewpoint of my allotment that I had never seen before! I like to photograph my favourite things as well as self portraits and I may even dig my macro lens out for some close-ups. Maybe it’s the curse of being a blogger or having a creative Dad, or maybe it’s because I like making scrapbooks so much? I do know however that in years to come, when I’m sitting with the grandchildren I can tell them stories and show them photographs of my little lottie which will hopefully inspire another generation of gardeners.
As you all well know my fence was put up last week and I am so happy with it. It protects my crops from those pesky deer aswell as making it feel like my very own little garden. I am going to be making a bunting to go around the top of the wooden fence posts, 1: to stop the deer leaning over the fence and nibbling my climbing beans, and 2: because it will look pretty! I will be making it out of oilcloth material so that it is weatherproof and therefore should last me a fairly long time. But first of all I just had to officially name my lottie.
I used an old welsh slate tile and simply drilled some holes into it and screwed it securely to my pallet gate. I also used a waterproof chalk pen to write with so that the rain won’t wash it away. I think it looks perfectly rustic and suits my little lottie down to a tee and the best thing about it? It only cost me 50p! Now I’m the only allotment on our site with an official (handmade) plot number sign, it doesnt really need it but I thought that it would look nice, and I do like it when things look nice
So it’s back, the dreaded rain has returned and completely ruined a weekend full of allotment plans! Thats always the way though isn’t it? You plan a lovely weekend full of digging, weeding, planting parsnips and peas, tidying up the fence and getting the trough ready and it decides to rain non stop! I wouldn’t mind a few showers here and there when you can sit in the shed for a few minutes to escape the rain, but it just so happened to be that horrible drizzly rain which never let up for one minute and soaks you completely to the bone.
I did however, manage to put together my entrance including my new upcycled gate which my amazingly talented Dad made. I am so unbelievably chuffed with it, my little plot finally feels like it is mine now that it is completely fenced in (and that also means no more pesky deer or pheasants running around!) We used pallets again and simply cut them down and carefully measured them to fit either side of the gate. I took apart a pallet and used the strips for the gate, I also had to buy some wood which cost me £2.50 for the two strips at the back due to making my gate wider then the pallet strips (silly me!) My Dad made the pallet using glue and nails and his tips include adding a brace bar to help keep the gates shape and make it stronger (always point this up towards the latch), make the gate slightly smaller because the weight of it will pull the post inwards slightly and last but not least measure twice, cut once! It has two tee hinges and a latch on one end so that it swings open perfectly, it really feels like a little garden now
I know I’ve already said this but I am so happy (I may even have scared a man working on his plot when I squealed with happiness!) All I need now is my handmade plot number sign attached to the front and some bunting around the top of the fence and it will look perfect. I just can’t wait until Summer when my hazel archway will be up over my pathway and everythings in bloom, hopefully it’s going to look really lovely
The day for spoiling Mothers has come around yet again (although really we should be telling them we love them everyday of the year!) This year we decided to visit a beautiful garden centre to have a good look around and to treat the Mother to a cream tea in the cafe! As you can guess it was extremely busy, what with it being Mothers day and officially being Spring, the perfect time for gardening.
We had the most delicous cream tea (and the first one of the year!) before doing some shopping in the sunshine. I managed to pick up some Chamomile Lawn and two pretty Saxifraga alpines to plant amongst my stepping stone pathway up my allotment. I also finally found a packet of Borlotto seeds which will be growing over my willow archway and I got my Mum to pick out her favourite sweet pea seeds so they can join the borlotto beans on the archway. My Mum choose ‘Sweet Chariot’ which she told me also used to be my Grandads favourite flower, making them even more special to my heart. After our little trip out we stopped by the allotments on the way home so I could cover my swiss chard up and give my Mum a tour of my plot. All in all a good day, I hope all the other Mummys had a lovely day too!
I have just uploaded another little video onto my Youtube channel, I realised I didn’t give everyone a tour of my shed so here it is. Possibly the most girliest shed in the world!
The next full length video will be completed at the end of March so stay tuned for that
I finally finished it!
Last year I cross stitched a very ‘manly’ sign for my Dads allotment shed as a Fathers day gift. Now I have my own allotment and my own shed I thought I had better make one for myself, and of course it had to be floral!
I am so happy with how it turned out even though the words are a tad close together, but then this was the first time I had ever changed a cross stitch pattern. I am going to frame it and hang it in my lottie shed seeing as I do spend half my time up there!