Sarah Potter Writes

Back in September 2012, Mister and I inherited our allotment. To mark this event, I wrote a haiku and posted this picture.

An old allotment
awaiting transformation.
Next year, fruit and veg.

And this was what it looked like the following Spring, with all the ground dug  and seeds planted.

Followed by a bountiful summer of vegetables and a noticeable reduction in our food bills; although we didn’t have much fruit in the first year, apart from rhubarb. Below, is a picture of a typical weekly harvest in late summer.

September harvest.
Produce packed with goodness:
bounty of the earth.

And for anyone who hasn’t seen the picture of the giant marrow, here it is in all its glory (grown without fertilisers or artificial chemicals of any kind).

So far, on the vegetable front this year, we’ve had spinach, potatoes, globe artichokes, and lettuce. There would have been a greater variety of things but we lost a whole load of seedlings to slugs and snails, with us finally resorting to beer traps. Birds had a go at the seedlings, too, when they’d have been better employed pecking away at gastropods.

Fruit-wise, we’ve had far greater success, with the usual rhubarb and a decent crop of huge, not-to-sour gooseberries, strawberries, and raspberries. In fact, for the last month, I’ve had strawberries or raspberries with my breakfast every morning and they’re so much tastier and sweeter than those sour shop-bought ones. Mister commented that he’d seen a small punnet of strawberries on sale for £3.00. From this, he concluded that we’ve paid for our allotment for the year from what we’ve saved by growing our own fruit.

 

Over the next couple of months, we’re expecting bumper harvests of all sorts of other goodies, so look out for regular allotment updates.