On the allotments
An allotment today offers a stress-free chance for creative activity, enjoying the satisfying challenge of working in the fresh air, placing tiny seeds into the ground and nurturing them before bringing the results to the table. Allotment gardening presents the fantastic opportunity to grow the sort of foods you love to eat. Your allotment can also become a magical place for children, providing a space to get their hands in the soil and encouraging good eating habits from tasting the vegetables they have helped to grow. And you don’t need a big garden to cultivate your own crops. Edible crops can be squeezed into the tiniest of plots. Our guides are aimed at those who have not had an allotment before but hopefully can be enjoyed by everyone, from the more experienced amongst us to those armchair gardeners who are quite content to sit and dream.
Allotment Gardening ... September
September marks a change on the plot as many crops are harvested and eaten or stored away for the winter. There is still plenty to do, with autumn and winter crops to tend to and preparations to make for the colder months ahead.
Autumn-sown broad beans are known to give bumper crops and, being out of sync with the blackfly season, are rarely bothered by them. If you want exceptionally big and beautiful onions, now is the time to start them off. Winter is a great time for growing all sorts of greens ranging from unusual salad leaves to turnip tops.
If you plan to grow salads, spinach, spring cabbage or oriental greens outside through the worst of the winter, it is worth investing in some crop covers. . Just keeping the crops frost free and a few degrees above the ambient temperature can extend the season by several weeks at both ends and prevent the produce from being battered by harsh weather.
While the bulk of sowing is over for this season, there are a few things that can be started now to provide some variety during the winter months and into the spring. One of these is winter spinach, a nutritious and easy to grow crop.
Simply sow direct into the ground in a sunny, sheltered spot or sow into cell trays for planting out when the young plants are well established. Simply pick individual leaves as required.
Crops such as runner beans should still have some tasty harvests to provide. Make sure you get maximum value out of them by continuing to water and feed as necessary.
There is often lots of material to compost at this time of year. If your composting facilities are always stretched to the limit, consider making yourself another compost bin. This needn’t be an expensive project – recycled pallets or timber or even old bulk bags from sand and grit deliveries can make good compost containers
Remove the growing point from outdoor tomatoes to encourage the existing trusses to ripen, since it is unlikely that there will be time for plants to form many more fruits before falling light levels slow growth too much.
Put on some fertilizer and get your overwintering onion sets planted out early in the month. 'Swift' is popular variety that produces a crop six weeks before the spring sown ones. The original Japanese overwintering onion 'Senshyu' is another good bet. Onions obligingly grow to the size allotted to them - within reason. For full sized ones, plant them about 7.5 (3 inches) apart with the growing tip just below the surface.
Join the Saltburn Allotments Association
The fourth Saltburn Craft and Produce Show proved to be an enjoyable event. The quality of the produce and crafts was great and everyone worked really hard. It was good to see so many new names on the prize certificates.
You might have noticed piles of bark chippings and leaf shreddings at the car park near the Hazel Grove containers. If anyone wants any chippings for paths or as a mulch around fruit trees and bushes, please help yourselves; it's free.
Did you know... you don’t have to have an allotment to be a member of Saltburn Allotment Association? Anyone resident in Saltburn is welcome to join. For simply £1 you could enjoy the following benefits:
- 20% seed discount on a wide range of seeds
- discounted composts, fertilisers and weed killers
- a library full of good books about all aspects of gardening
- use of tools for those one off jobs you love to hate
- access to information and advice from experienced gardeners
- opportunities to share and swap seeds and plants
Don’t delay, come down to the allotment containers any Sunday between 10.00 and 11.00/11.30am and join us. The containers are located on Hazel Grove, past the caravan site on the right hand side.
A brief history of allotment gardening
Allotments date back to the early 18th century and the Enclosures Acts. These laws led to the enclosure of common land, used until then by everyone as grazing for animals. The poor, without land, lost a source of food and income, and many starved. With the advent of the industrial revolution, whole communities were uprooted from their traditional agrarian life and moved into towns and cities to work in the new factories. Food was scarce and expensive, as towns grew up faster than the transport needed to provision them.
And so we got allotments. In order for the people who worked in the factories to eat, it became necessary to allot a piece of land (hence the name) on which a family could grow their own vegetables. These allotments developed into a standard size of 10 poles (around 300 sq yards), deemed sufficient to feed a family of four throughout the year.
Allotments came into prominence during the two world wars. During WWII many parks were turned into allotments and administered by local gardening societies. Once again, it was the shortage of food that gave allotments their importance. But from the late fifties and the end of rationing, allotments went into decline.
The new affluence of the sixties and evolving farming techniques meant that food was both plentiful and inexpensive, and that people had the money to pursue new leisure interests. The package holiday industry took off, and so did shopping! Allotments weren't popular, and their lack of use must have been the perfect excuse to turn sites over to the developers. This happened on such a scale that in the last forty years more than half of all allotment sites in Britain have been lost.
This could be a tale of the end of a movement, but peoples' interest in allotments has been rekindled. Debates about organic growing, food scares such as BSE and salmonella, and the lack of variety and taste in shops has prompted people to get out and do it for themselves.
