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 ... December
Nearly Christmas and in fact, Bernard’s just lit a fire, an activity that goes really well with my sitting with my favourite seed catalogues. At the allotment association, we have a good relationship with Kings Seeds so, if there’s anything you would like, let us know via the containers or spf.bs@ntlworld.com and we will add your shopping list to our order if we can.
This month is really about tidying up. If you have a greenhouse or polytunnel, you need to give the inside and out a good clean, including all the staging. Also, wash your pots, seed trays etc. and stack them away neatly. This keeps pests and diseases at bay and allows as much light as possible to reach any plants you are still growing. Obviously if you haven’t already cleared away any tomato, pepper, chilli etc. plants, clear and compost them before you clean.
At Grow and Learn we’ve been clearing and tidying our brassica beds. A good deal of our Brussels sprouts “blew”. That means that the sprouts themselves looked like little flowers rather than nice firm sprouts. The main cause of this is that the plants weren’t firmed in sufficiently when we planted them out. All brassicas need to be firmly planted into already firm soil. Some people walk slowly up and down their brassica bed a couple of times before planting and then firm each individual plant with the heel (hence the term “heeling in” for this task). For cabbages and cauliflowers, if you don’t do this, you don’t get a nice tight head. Any tall brassicas you are leaving over winter, such as sprouts, purple sprouting broccoli etc. would benefit from being tied to stakes. This will help prevent them being blown about in any winter high winds which will result in less root rock and help your sprouts to remain tight over winter. If you still have any carrots or parsnips in the ground, or unusual things such as celeriac, you can leave them and harvest as you need them. On the other hand, if you do this they might get frozen or snowed in and they are more susceptible to attacks from pests. If you lift them, you can store them in crates lined with dry sharp sand or compost. Put a layer of sand/compost in the bottom of the crate, put a layer of the root vegetables in next, then a layer of the sand or compost, then more vegetables, finishing with a layer of your chosen medium. Keep in a dark, dry, frost free garage or shed.
You can still sow seeds this month. It’s traditional to sow onions for eating and for showing on Boxing Day. You need to keep them heated though, at about 15oC on a windowsill or in a propagator. You can also continue to sow salad leaves and, if you fancy something different, you could try sprouting seeds and micro greens. If you have some old seed packets of herbs, greens, salad leaves, radishes, peas, it’s a good way of using them up and getting some high quality restaurant mini vegetables. I’m not sure how to do sprouting seeds as I’ve never tried so, if you find out and give it a go, please let me know. With micro greens you sow the seeds and snip them when the first true leaves appear or very shortly afterwards so, you need lots. You eat them with your salads.
Remember that, for your foodie Christmas presents, the Farmers’ Market will be on 10th December. We will be doing soup again (see the other article on page 32) and will have a stall full of good things, as will other stall holders. If you have any spare vegetables, please bring them to our containers between 10.00 and 11.30am on Sunday, 4th December for us to use to make the soup or, see us on the day and we’ll sell your surpluses to raise money for our skips.
Also, a lot of people around Saltburn have expressed an interest in learning more about bees, keeping them, understanding them, attracting them etc. Because of this we have organised a Bee Aware training course. We had to postpone it recently because a lot of interest didn’t translate into people signing up. We will run it in the New Year and, if you’d like to have more information, contact me and I’ll keep you up to date.
Merry Christmas to everyone, Sue, Saltburn Allotments Association
Saltburn Allotments Association
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.
