The Low Maintenance Allotment

The Low Maintenance Allotment

Fact: The vast majority of successful allotmenteers are not in full-time work. Most allotmenteers who are in full-time work will fail, in most cases sooner rather than later.  They typically start with high hopes, but eventually the project slips away from them, and they find when they next look the allotment has turned into a jungle, and they give it up.

In this article I will suggest some ideas to avoid this happening.

What do I mean by low-maintenance? I mean gardening is such a way as to minimize the time-consuming routine tasks.

Avoid Winter Digging

It is accepted wisdom that to grow vegetables successfully you need to dig it over every winter.  THIS IS NOT TRUE! 

See my earlier post “THE NO DIG ALLOTMENT” for a discussion of the no-dig approach.

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Minimize Weeding by Mulching

Remove perennial weeds as soon as possible. I strongly recommend that you mulch your soil whenever it is empty to prevent annual weeds from germinating.. Ideally the mulch will be compost or manure, but anything – cardboard, black plastic, will prevent weeds from germinating.

I mulch my beds with horse manure, and the number of weeds that germinate is miniscule compared with any unmulched beds. However, if you make your own compost, be sure to remove any seedheads  before adding.

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Minimize Watering

It is a fact that if you water plants regularly, they develop their root systems near the surface, whereas if you don't water regularly, many plants will send roots down deeper looking for water.

For example, it is now the first week of July, and I haven’t watered my greenhouse tomatoes since the first week in June,   yet the tomatoes, in the border soil, are still looking lush and green. This is because there has been so much rain, and the roots of the tomatoes have reached downwards until they have found the moisture they need.

So target your watering to where it is needed. Of course with shallow-rooting plants, like peas and onions, or newly transplanted seedlings, or with particularly thirsty plants, like cucumbers and celery, or during a prolonged dry spell, you do need to water, but not routinely, rather in response to a specific needs.

When planning what to grow,  if you know you are not going to be able to get down and water regularly, don’t grow thirsty plants

Note that the closer spacing achieved when growing in beds often creates a canopy which results in less evaporation, and the high organic matter content of our enriched soil results in  more water being retained. Both of these facts meanless watering is needed.

Incidentally, I have reverted to using watering cans rather then hoses nowadays

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Growing fruit and perennial vegetables is easier than growing annual vegetables.

Berry bushes will keep producing year after year with only the minimum of attention, maybe a bit of pruning in the winter.

Strawberries  are slightly harder, as they need to be moved every 4 or 5 years, but you do still get 4 or 5 years out of 1 planting.

Fruit trees are for ever, but will sterilize a large area of soil underneath. Consider espaliers or cordons or fans. [Check the allotment regulations, sometimes  there are restrictions on how many if any trees you can grow.]

Rhubarb, globe artichokes, asparagus will keep coming year after year with only the minimum of attention.

NB Although you will avoid much routine work, you do need to prepare the soil thoroughly removing every fragment of perennial weed. Once established, couch grass is impossible to remove from an asparagus bed, and bindweed can quickly smother raspberries.

Most herbs also fall into this category and it is worth putting an area aside for them. [Personally, however,  I like to have them near the kitchen door rather than the allotment.]

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Choose crops that are easier to grow

If you choose easier plants, you are more likely to get results with a minimum of effort. Courgettes are a classic example – you plant them out, ignore them, and a few weeks later you have you more courgettes than you can use.  Success with easy crops will feed enthusiasm and a sense of achievement.

Here is my personal list of crops grouped into 3 categories: easy, slightly difficult and difficult. This is of course subjective and will also depend on soil and growing conditions.

Easy

Beetroot,

Broad beans,

French beans (dwarf),

Runner beans (dwarf),

Leaf beet & chard,

Chicory (non-forcing),

Kale,

Leek,

Lettuce,

Courgettes & Marrow,

Onions,

Shallots,

Garlic,

Radish,

Rocket,

Mizuna,etc

Sweetcorn,

Squashes & Pumpkins,

Swede, turnip & Kohl Rabi,

Chilli pepper (under glass),

Raspberries,

Gooseberries,

Blackcurrants,

Red & White currants.

Slightly difficult

Potato (You need to ensure tubers are covered so they don't go green, they are liable to get blight, and need to be rotated to avoid pests & disease),

Carrots (They are difficult to transplant, so are usually grown in situ. Need to guard against slugs when young and carrot fly when older)

Celery (self blanching), [Needs to be grown in a block, needs regular watering and outer layer needs protecting from light.]

Cucumber (outdoor)  [Needs regular watering),

Parsnips (Difficult to transplant, Germination is slow and can be erratic)

French/Runner beans (climbing) (you need to arrange something for them to climb up. Easy if you can have a permanent structure, like an old bedstead, but harder if you have to erect and dismantle wigwams every season), 

Most brassicas (eg brussel sprouts, cabbage, calabrese, sprouting broccoli)(Need transplanting, netting against birds and butterflies, and  rotating to avoid build up of soil pests & disease),

Peas (need supports to climb up. Seeds can be eaten by mice under the ground and shoots eaten by birds),

Strawberries, (Need to move the bed every 4 years. In a wet season need to put straw underneath to avoid damage by mould or slugs)

Tomatoes (outdoor) (outdoor bush tomatoes seem to inevitably get blight)

Difficult

Cauliflower (Harder than other brassicas. Regular watering critical as they must not have any check to growth),

Celery [Trench varieties] (involve masses of work),  

Celeriac (Needs regular watering and deleafing),

Tomatoes (greenhouse), (cordon tomatoes need to be tied up and sideshoots removed regularly),

Cucumber (greenhouse), (need to be tied up and kept humid)

Aubergines and , sweet pepper (needs protection and regular watering and feeding)

Spinach (needs regular watering),

Blueberries (need an acid soil)

Personally I think some crops, eg greenhouse tomatoes and potatoes, are well worth the extra effort. However I have given up on others, such as celery and aubergines, because I inevitably fail.

Some of the plants listed as slightly difficult or difficult are there because of the need for regular watering. Some will not succeed in a dry season if they are not watered daily, worth bearing in mind if you are  unable to get down to your allotment more than once a week. 

Grow plants that you like to eat.  

Of course, only grow plants that you like to eat! There is no point growing globe artichokes if you don't actually like them. Cabbage is easy to grow in the spring for late summer harvesting. But do you want to be eating cabbage in august when there are so many sunshine crops coming?

Grow dwarf rather than climbing beans

You will notice from the lists above that I recommend growing dwarf french and runner beans rather than climbing beans. Climbing beans are fine if you can have a permanent structure, like an old bedstead, somewhere in your allotment which the beans can climb up (French and runner beans rarely get problems due to not rotating your crop). However rather than building wigwams and trellises each year, and dismantling then a t the end of the season, consider growing dwarf varieties. With French beans, I find that I get comparable yields. The yields of runner beans are lower, but still substantial.

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Buy in your seedlings

Although growing your own plants on from seed is not difficult, it requires more attention than simply buying them in.  If you use a seedbed, it needs watering and weeding and thorough preparation, and guarding from birds and slugs. If you propagate under cover, you need to attend to the watering and potting on.

If you buy your seedlings  in from a nursery or garden centre, however, you reduce the number of things that can go wrong, and minimize the time spent of crops before they go into the ground.       

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Grow a single crop on each bed each season.

I like to maximize yields where I can and have a system where I get 6 crops from each bed over 4 years.

However, this approach requires precise timing and planning, If reducing workload is more important than maximizing yields, it is best to grow just a single crop in a bed each year. The only exceptions might be to interplant quick growing crops like radish and lettuce between slow-growing crops like brassicas.

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Avoid pests and diseases

Take whatever easy steps you can to avoid losing your crops to pest & disease. It is disheartening to see the results of all your hard work rot away or vanish into the stomachs of slugs and caterpillars

·      Rotate your crops       Move crops to a different piece of land every year. A rotation that works for me is: potatoes >alliums> legumes>brassicas>other. But at very least move potatoes and brassicas each year.

·      Grow resistant varieties: eg blight resistant potatoes, bolt-resistant beetroot, club-root resistant cabbages.

·      Use barriers eg netting against birds, mesh against carrot fly

·      Practise good garden hygiene - avoid spreading disease from one area to another on hands and boots

·      Minimize slug damage  Plant out veg only when they are a decent size, and use some protection, eg beer traps  or organic slug pellets

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Remember to harvest!!

Don’t let your efforts go to waste because you forget to come down and harvest your produce

Summary: Some Principles for the Low-Maintenance Allotment

1.         Avoid winter digging by following the no-dig method. Design your allotment to have fixed beds and paths. The beds should be 1.5-2m wide, depending on the length of your arms, and up to 5m long. The paths should be around 50cm, or the width of your kneeler.

2.         Minimize weeding by covering bare soil over winter with a mulch of compost or manure. And at other times, as soon as the soil is vacant, cover with black plastic or cardboard.

3.         Minimize watering by only watering when specifically required, with shallow-rooting plants, transplanted seedlings, thirsty plants, and in prolonged dry periods, rather than watering routinely.

4.         Buy in your seedlings rather than growing your own.

5.         Grow just one crop on each bed each year.

6.         Allocate as much space as possible to low-maintenance fruit and perennials. Don’t forget herbs.

7.         Choose easy annual vegetables, and maybe just one or 2 from the slightly difficult list.

8.         Grow dwarf instead of clibing beans

9.         Take simple steps to minimize pests & disease: rotate your crops, use disease-resistant varieties,  net vulnerable crops,  take steps to minimize slug damage, and practice good garden hygiene to avoid spreading disease.

10.      Remember to Harvest!!