The self-sufficient Allotment 

[This article is still incomplete and will be finished off as soon as I can find the time. However I wanted to get the basics up here for those p[people who attended my Buddahfilds workshops in min-July 2016,{and indeed 2015} and to whom I promised  this article.]

1.              What do we mean by Self-Sufficiency on an allotment scale?

Exclude:        

a)             cereals (eg oats, wheat)

b)            Fresh tender crops out of season (eg fresh tomatoes, aubergines,

Include – everything normally grown or raised on an allotment

2.         Limitations of allotment

We must work within the limitations of an allotment:

a.     Limited space  A full-sized allotment is10 poles in size!! This is 250 sq m, or the  approximate size of a doubles tennis court. However nowadays first-time allotmenteers are usually offered a smaller plot

b.     Limited Power          Most allotments don’t have electricity

c.      Limited water           Some allotments don’t have mains water

d.     Restrictive regulations:                 

Some allotments don’t allow sheds,

Some councils require immediate cultivation of 60%

Some don’t allow livestock

Some limit or exclude fruit trees

3.         Ideas for allotment planning;

If possible measure up and mark out where you want things before you start.  You will need:

(i)        Some beds for annual vegetables

            (ii)       Some beds for perennial vegetables

(iii)      An area for some soft fruit bushes: preferable a fruit cage.

 (iv)     Some beds for other soft fruit (strawberries, raspberries)

            (v)       A seedbed & nursery bed

            (vi)      A Greenhouse

            (v)       Some Compost bins

            (vi)      Somewhere for tool storage

            (vii)     An area for livestock

            (viii)    Some fruit trees

So you may want to have, say, 16 beds for annual vegetables, grouped in 4 lots of 4, to aid your rotation. You can separate these by some beds for perennials, such as asparagus, rhubarb and globe artichokes, and also some beds for soft fruit that is not suitable for a cage, such as strawberries and raspberries.  You can have a fruit cage for eg gooseberries and blackcurrants in one corner, and an area for hens and/or rabbits in the other. Maybe you can squeeze in a beehive.  You need somewhere for your compost bins. You can save space by dispensing with a shed and using a garden cupboard. And find room for a greenhouse. You can grow tree fruit along borders as fans or espaliers or cordons, or even along paths as step-overs. The important thing is to design your allotment so as not to waste any space.  Self-sufficiency on an allotment is a tall order, and needs thorough planning. 

                                    

4.         Designing your allotment

Design your allotment on the fixed-bed system.

Grow in Beds not Rows. Your beds should be 4’6” – 5’ wide, depending on your reach, and 12’-18’ long. (Any longer and you will be tempted to cut across).Your paths should be wide enough for you to kneel on while facing along the path.  It might be worth deciding on your kneeler first, then making the paths that width.

Why Fixed Beds? 

a)             Walking on paths not soil, avoids compaction

b)            You need less manure – you manure only the beds, not the paths in between as happens when growing in rows

c)             You  need less water – you water only the beds. Also many plants create a canopy which retains water

d)            You can plant your veg closer together in the beds because you don't need to leave space to walk between them, thus increasing productivity

5.         Follow the No-Dig Method

(For a full discussion on the no-dig method, see my post “The No-Dig Allotment”}

Summary of advantages to the no-dig method:

            (i)        No Dig preserves soil structure

            (ii)       No dig gives earlier crops

(iii)      No dig results in fewer weeds

(iv)      No dig results in slightly fewer pests

(v)       No dig results in approximately equal harvests

(vi)      There are better things to do in winter!

Limitations of the no-dig method on an allotment:

Occasionally however you have to dig;

a)    How else do you extract an 18” parsnip?

b)   Lifting old brassica stalks

c)    Wherever you grow raspberries there will be unwanted runners growing nearby. These can be easily pulled up but will return. If you want to prevent new runners, you need to go down and remove the root. Personally I just keep pulling them up by hand.

d)   Sometimes you need to extract stubborn weeds.

e)    If you don’t dig over your bed after harvesting potatoes, you risk finding a forest of rogues growing through the following year’s crops. This is especially an issue in lighter soils.

6.   Feeding the self-sufficient Allotment

The traditional approach is to feed individual plants. However a better approach is to feed the soil.

In principle add a layer of manure or compost to each bed every year, usually in winter, when a bed is empty.  I don't add any other fertilizer.

I do modify this approach very slightly.  Potatoes benefit from as much manure as you can give them whereas alliums are said to like soil which was manured for a previous crop. So I give a double dose of manure to spuds, and don’t manure for the alliums that follow them.

To Lime or Not to Lime

            Traditionally, gardeners lime the soil before growing brassicas. I prefer to lime every time I have harvested the potatoes. I am not absolutely sure that liming is necessary when using compost & manure rather than artificial fertilizers, but I do it anyway to be on the safe side.

As lime and soil do not do well together, as the lime locks up nutrients in the manure, I don’t manure when I have limed.

Sourcing compost/manure

So how do you get enough organic matter to put this layer on your beds every year?

(i)        Keep 3 compost bins at allotment. All weeds (minus seedheads) and debris from harvests go onto the compost bin.  You need one you are making, one you are using, and one  that is stewing.  You can speed up the conversion on compost by sorting ingredients, and turning regularly, but you still get the same amount in the end. I prefer to simply throw stuff on as it comes and use it when it is ready naturally, which is a year or less.

(ii)       Keep Hens! If you have hens you can throw everything that you need to compost at the feet of the hens first. They with peck at it and eat it and tread on it and pee & poo on it and it will very quickly become brown powder. The level will rise over the months, so, every few months, when a compost bin is empty, you dig it out and put it all into the compost bin.

(Incidentally, if hens are kept on the same soil for a long period of time, there is a risk of a build-up of pests and disease. However this way, the hens are living on a constantly renewed surface so this is less of a problem.)

In winter, when less greenstuff is available from the allotment, it is worth collecting bags of autumn leaves. These can of course be left to make leaf mould, which is a good soil conditioner but low in nutrients. Or you can throw a bag or 2 a week at the feet of your hens, and they will scratch and peck away as they do, and convert it into something which is far richer in nutrients. 

Where I live I found suburban streets with rows of horse-chestnut trees where the residents bagged up the leaves ready for the council to take away.  So I arrived before the council and collected the bags instead.

            (iii)      Keep compost bins  at home for kitchen waste.

            (iv)      Collect Neighbours’ Green Waste  Increase the amount of home compost  you can create by getting green waste from your neighbours. They are often pleased to avoid having to pay for a brown bin for their lawn mowings. I find lawn mowings, scrunched up newspaper , kitchen waste, with urine as an activator, works well.

(v)       Import manure In the countryside there are often farmers who are happy for you to bag up and remove cow manure. For a small charge they may well deliver it for you. In cities there are riding stables  where horse manure is an unwanted by-product that they are only too happy to get rid of.  Again they will often bag it up for you to collect, - I recommend a trailer or pick-up though – my wife puts her foot down at the thought of bags of fresh manure in the car!

I buy my manure a long time ahead so that it is well-rotted in the bags when I need to use it.

(vi)      Council Soil Conditioner     Some councils will make available the soil conditioner from the green waste collected in brown bins. In Norfolk I used to be able to collect as much as I wanted from the recycling depot on production of an allotment contract. Some councils will deliver soil conditioner for collection on a prearranged date in a local park, You can find out if, where and when this occurs from you local allotment association.

            (vii)     Buy from garden centre (But only as a last resort!)

7.         How to maximize productivity

To approach self-sufficiency you need to avoid, as far as possible, having empty unproductive soil. So try to arrange as far as possible for something to go in whenever something comes out. 

I have 16 beds for annual vegetables, grouped in 4 lots of 4. I manage to get 6 crops from each or these 16 beds over a four-year period.

I follow a system which works for me, with my family’s requirements and my soil. I will outline it here as a suggestion. But please design your own rotation to suit your requirement.

Break 1: The Potato Break.

The soil will be manured heavily for the potatoes. I like to get the manure on as soon as possible the autumn before and, once it has been rained on a bit, cover the beds with black plastic (the only exception to this is the soil where parsnips have been growing). Over the winter the worms enjoy the slightly warmer conditions and I find that by the time `I remove the plastic in the spring, they have already pulled some of the manure into the soil.

It is usually recommended that seeds for earlies are chitted, which means being stood in a light-frost-free place to allow small shoots to form, but I like toi chit all of my potatoes.

To maximize yield (and with the exception of 1^st earlies) I grow 12” apart in 3 rows 18”-24” along my beds. There is not enough room to earth up when grown like this, so I put the tubers in a few inches deep using a bulb planter and grow them on the flat. This is probably why I need to dig to hunt down the rogues afterwards.  If you want to avoid this, then use just 2 rows along the beds and earth-up as usual, but the yield will of course be lower.

I get more green potatoes this way, but put them aside for use as next year’s seed potatoes. I find I can get away with using my own saved seed potatoes twice before I need to buy anew

Bed 1  First Earlies I usually have one bed for first earlies.  These will be harvested young and small so can be grown 12” apart in all directions if you have enough seeds.

Bed 2 2^nd Earlies  These are my favourites. I love the taste of Charlotte It has a wonderful flavour and bulks up early, so even when the blight strikes, as it did in late June this year, there is already a sizeable crop under the ground when you have to cut the haulms down.

Bed 3 Early Maincrop  My favourite of these is Kifli. Although it has not been available for the last couple of years, the seed merchant keeps it on their catalogue, listed permanently as out-of-stock  It has a wonderful new potato flavour while also being largely resistant to blight. maincrop.  Currently I use Lady Christi (1^st early), Charlotte (2^nd early

Bed 4 Maincrop       Sarpo Axona (my insurance policy). This is from the Sarvasi breeding probramme (as is Kifli) and is totally blight resistant, so can stand and grow through blight. It has an  unexceptional flavour, but work well as a masher and roaster and at least you have them when everone else’s crops have died! They are slow to get going though, so do need to be chitted like earlies. However this does have the advantage that they are slow to sprout in storage in the spring.

After harvesting the potatoes I dig the soil over to hunt down rogues, and lime the soil. I do not manure after the potatoes.

Break 2:   Alliums

This includes onions, leeks, garlic and shallots.  As soon as the alliums are lifted the beds can be covered with a layer of manure/compost, if you have some ready. Alternatively the soil can be fed after harvesting the alliums, just before the tender legumes,

Bed 1  Leeks The first to go in are the leeks. These are sown in late winter/early spring in rows in a seedbed. They need to be planted out by late July.  Even if the first-early potato bed is not empty, it is time to get the potatoes out of the ground and the soil prepared for the leeks.

Bed 2 Onion Sets (Autumn)           By late October you can put your autumn onion sets in where the second early potatoes were.  I like to grow 3 sorts, one yellow variety which mature very quickly, for use the following May, another yellow variety which stores reasonably well, and one red variety.  You can plant them 4” apart in rows across the bed with about 9” between the rows – enough to get an onion hoe between if needed.

Bed 3 Garlic & Shallots                 

Garlic Garlic too can be planted in the autumn shortly after the onions, as soon as any early maincrop potatoes have been lifted.  I like to give at least half a bed to garlic.  I like to give some space for elephant garlic, which gives huge, mild cloves suitable for roasting.

Shallots          These fill the rest of the garlic bed, and can be put out in the autumn or the spring.  I put aside several of the larger bulbs each harvest for re-use the following year.

Bed 4  Onion Sets (Spring)                        I put these out in late February/early March depending on the weather. Same spacing as for the autumn ones. These will follow the maincrop potatoes, which are harvested too late in the year for anything to follow the same season.

Break 3 Tender Legumes & overwintering salads

This includes French beans and runner beans.  These crops are not frost-hardy so cannot be put out until all risk of frost has passed, usually late May. 

As soon as the tender legumes are finished, manure the soil, if you didn’t after the alliums, and cover the beds(I use black plastic) to prevent weeds from growing and to protect the nutrients in the soil.

Bed 1 Runner Beans             As soon as the last of the leeks are eaten in spring, I manure the soil and build a structure over my bed for runner beans. I build in the shape of a ridge tent from poles which reach almost to the path on either side.  In the last week in May seedlings which have been started indoors can be planted out just inside and underneath the poles.  I have had large yields by spacing my poles about 10” apart and having 3 seeds in a pot which I plant out without separating.

I grow eating beans on one side of the wigwam and beans for drying on the other. I know it is not usual to grow runner beans for storage, but there is a variety, “Czar”, which gives large white seeds of good flavour that can be used as butter beans. These can be sown directly in late May, as can the eating runners if you are not in a hurry.

The unused space underneath the wigwam can be used to grow some squashes, which are happy to clamber around in dappled shade under neath. They need to be kept inside though -  give them a severe talking to if they venture outside the wigwam.

Bed 2 Climbing French Beans      By mid-June, once the autumn-planted onion sets have reached full-size, they should be lifted to vacate the bed for French beans.  They can be dried off under cover somewhere else – indoors in a sunny room, or on your greenhouse path, or against a fence with glass leaned over.

Ideally the beans will have been started off under cover a couple of weeks earlier so that you have viable plants to put out in the same way as the runners.

For maximum yield, construct another wigwam in the same way as for runners, and grow your French beans up the poles.  If you get them in by mid-late June they will have plenty of time to produce a large crop.  I like to grow some borlotti beans for drying up one side of the wigwam, and a pencil pod up the other.

Again squashes can be planted underneath.

Alternatively you can grow dwarf French beans 4” apart in rows 12” apart across your beds. The yield is comparable (as opposed to runner beans, where the dwarf varieties do not produce anywhere like as many) but they are harder to harvest. And you don’t get the squashes.

Bed 3  Dwarf French Beans   As soon as the garlic and shallots are ready they should be harvested and dwarf French beans sown in their stead.  I use 10^th July as my cut-off date for sowing dwarf beans in order that there is enough time to get a decent crop. This is too late for climbers, however.

Bed 4 Overwintering salads

I usually start these off in a seedbed in early August and plant them out  once the spring-sown onions are lifted later on. However you can sow them direct if you harvest your maincrop onions early. 

I grow hardy lettuce, like “Valdor”, which I leave over winter and transplant once they start growing again in spring. Even if they get cut down by the frost, they will usually grow again. I also grow rocket and mizuna. I also sow the chards: spinach chard, perpetual spinach, rainbow chard, here – I find they fill a gap nicely when there is not much else in the spring.

Over-wintering spring onions can go here, or you can use any tiny shallots instead to produce leaf onion in the spring.

Break 4: Hardy Legumes  and Early Brassicas

NB       With all legumes, don't forget  to keep some back at harvest time for next year’s seed.

Bed 1: Broad Beans I like to sow 2 varieties at different times to extend the season. This bed will follow on from the runner beans. After these finish, take down the canes and tidy up the bed. If you have had squashes clambering underneath, leave them to ripen until the 1^st frost is forecast.

Cover half with black plastic and sow overwintering broad beans in the other half in early November.  Then sow the other half of the bed in early March with a spring variety of broad bean.

These beans will be the first crop to ripen in the spring, and are very welcome. As the first variety comes to an end, the spring-sown ones will start producing.  When these are over the beans can be cut down close to ground level ready for the brussel sprouts that are to follow.

Bed 2: Peas (Maincrop)       These will follow on from one of the French Bean beds.

I have tried growing 1^st earlies and 2^nd earlies, and they are great for an early treat,  but the really big yields come from climbing maincrop varieties. To grow these, erect another wigwam, but this time with  fewer canes, and tie some pea netting to the structure.  Cover the soil inside with plastic or cardboard, because it is hard to get at any weeds once you have the netting in place.  Put your peas in an inch or 2 apart just underneath the bottom of the netting.

Now pea seeds under the ground are vulnerable to being eaten by mice, who love the swollen seeds. The old trick of swilling the seed in paraffin doesn’t work at our allotments – mice learn at their grandmother’s knee to ignore the smell. Once the runners have survived the mice, then when the small shoots are emerging, the birds like to have a nibble. The traditional remedy is to tie cotton on pegs between the seeds, or to lay bracken over the emerging seeds. 

To avoid both of these problems I like to start my peas off indoors. I soak the seeds then grow on in a bean sprouter, and when they start growing a tail, I plant them out in potting compost. A piece of old guttering is meant to be good. Then when they have grown a couple of inches, and are no longer of interest to mice or birds, they can be planted out.

There are several varieties of climbing peas nowadays, but Alderman is a reliable old favourite.

By July the peas will be harvested and the soil can be cleaned up for the cabbages to follow.

Bed 3 Peas  (early, mangetout and marrowfat)           

Early Peas     These can be grown either up wigwams or up hazel sticks, choose your preference and varieties accordingly.

First early peas, like Feltham First and Meteor, are round-seeded and largely self-supporting.. They can be sown in late February/early march and will mature quickly, but don’t have the flavour of the later wrinkled-seeded varieties.

Second earlies like Kelvedon Wonder and Hurst Green Shaft need to wait a couple of weeks, and need supporting with netting or hazel sticks. ((I have found the more robust raspberry canes cut down in the winter work as well, providing they are not a prickly variety.) But they do taste better.

Mangetout     these can be sown the same time as the maincrop peas.  There are dwarf varieties for growing up wigwam, or dwarf varieties for growing up sticks. They need  harvesting regularly.

Marrowfat. These are the peas for drying and serving as mushy peas.

Bed 4  Early Brassicas.

Here we are bending the rules of crop rotation a bit by having 2 brassica crops one after the other. This is only to be tried if you don’t have problems with pests or disease specific to brassices, eg cabbage root fly or club root.

In this category are summer cabbage, cauliflower, and calabrese

I like to start these off early in the warmth, and when the overwintering salads have been eaten or planted out to the salad bed, and the seedlings are large enough I plant them out.        I harden them off at first by draping a fleece over for a few days.

In my household, we only eat one or 2 of  these early brassicas fresh, as there is an abundance of tasty and interesting veg around at that time. However they do freeze well, and are welcome in the winter.

Break 5          Overwintering Brassicas.

These plants will have been started off in March either indoors or in a seedbed. And then, when a few inches tall, transplanted into a nursery bed about 6” apart. Here they will have been growing happily through the spring and early summer, under their netting. But by early august they will be lacking elbow room and need to be planted out. Fortunately brassicas seem to enjoy being transplanted (except maybe cauliflowers, or at least I have more problems with them than the others). Each transplant allows them to be put in deeper, up to the first set of leaves.  The soil can be firmed down round the transplant, as is recommended in the old books, because when you need to lift the old stalks at the end of the season you will find it impossible without a fork, and so the trod soil is loosened again.

Brassicas will need netting against birds.

I like to mulch around the transplants with manure or compost after some rain, rather than mulching before transplanting, but I doubt it makes  much difference.

Bed 1  Brussel Sprouts      I like to get these in first, following on from the broad beans, as they need to get a move on in order to be ready for Xmas.  By March these will have been eaten or frozen and the bed prepared for the roots to follow.

Bed 2 Cabbage and Cauliflower    I favour cabbage over cauliflower because I find them easier to grow, but maybe that is because I have very sandy soil.  These can follow the maincrop peas

Bed 3 Kale     I like to grow several varieties of kale – the traditional curly leaved green varieties, Russian Red, which looks great and is lovely in winter salads, and the Cavolo di Nero, the  dark green Tuscan kale.  Kale is one of the most problem-free brassicas, which is why I choose it as my rule-bending crop to follow the early brassica crops.

Bed 4  Sprouting Broccoli This is invaluable in late spring when there is little else around. I try to extend the season by growing an early white variety as well as a later green variety.

Break 6: Mixed and Roots 

This is where I grow everything else that doesn’t fit easily anywhere else.

Bed 1  Roots In this bed I grow my carrots, parsnips and beetroot.

I don’t usually mulch this bed, because carrots and parsnips are usually sown in situ, and so you need to be able to create the legendary “fine tilth” to sow the seeds into. If you do mulch this bed, make sure it is with some weed-free compost of a fine, maybe powdery, texture. 

However I intend to try starting the carrots and parsnips off indoors in the cardboard tubes that are at the centre of toilet rolls. This mainly because of the problems I have had with germination, and with slugs. These tubes function as bio-degradable pots and can be put straight into the ground when the seedlings are large enough. Particular care will need to be taken with watering however as the cardboard will hinder water from reaching the seedlings from the soil until it starts to disintegrate.

Beetroot have much larger seeds and can be sown directly into compost. However I like to start some off in modules early March under cover and plant them out late April when the weather is warmer.

Carrots need protecting from carrotfly. One way is to keep them permanently covered with a mesh. However I have had success by keeping a watering can by my side when I harvest. As soon as I lift carrots I water both the harvest and the soil around where they have come from, to keep the scent down.

Bed 2: Salads and guests

Once the cabbages and cauliflowers have been used, the bed can be manured for salads.

Saladings       The overwintering lettuce sown in August will start showing in March and can be transplanted to this bed. Also any spring-sown lettuces to follow. I quite like to grow a variety of non-hearting loose-leaf lettuce, because they are so slow to bolt. I find that if I have 10 plants, say, and take a lower leaf or 2 from each plant every couple of days, it takes the plant much longer to build up the reserves it needs to throw up a seed stalk and bolt. Thus a higher yield from each plant.  Whereas hearting lettuce seem sometimes to be bolting almost before you have noticed thay are ready to eat.

Chicories       I grow hearting chicory in this bed –sown in the 1^st week of June, either direct or transplanted – rude roots don’t matter if you are only eating the leaves. Sugar Loaf is a variety I use successfully.

I also sometimes grow forcing chicory, which needs to be sown a bit earlier, in May, and grows steadily until harvest in the autumn. It can then be stored horizontally in sand until winter when I force several at a time in my largest pot, covered with binbags to keep out the light, in the cupboard under the stairs. The little chicons are great in salads or braised, far less bitter than those from the greengrocers that have been exposed to light.

Celery This bed is where to grow celery if you want to – self-blanching in a block..

Cucumbers   I grow outdoor cucumbers here, both the warty snozcumbers and the more attractive burpless tasty green.  They do need watering regularly but I find easier than trying to share a greenhouse with tomatoes.

Courgettes     These can either be grown here or at one end of the squashes bed.

Bed 3   Sweetcorn    Once the last of the kale is finished and the stalks lifted, some manure can be spread ready for the sweetcorn. These will have been started off under cover and planted out in the last week of May about 18”-24” apart  in all directions

Bed 4  Squashes  Once the last of the  broccoli is finished and the stalks lifted, some manure can be spread ready for the squashes.  I generally start these off indoors and plant these our 8 to a bed, in 2 rows of 4. However on those occasions when my seedlings fail for some reason, I have found the by just putting seeds directly in the ground there is still time to get a good crop.

I have found that butternuts, which is the squash everyone wants, take a long time to mature and are often a disappointing size by harvest time. However a couple of round varieties with a superb flabour are “Sunshine” and “Ishuki kuri” which bulk up more quickly.

The rest of this article is still being written, sorry

To come:

-       variations on my personal rotation

I have been experimenting with growing first earlies in bags in the greenhouse until the space is needed for summer crops, after which I put them in a sheltered spot just behind the greenhouse. This frees up a bed which I use for sweetcorn (another fairly acid-loving crop)

-        greenhouse

-       soft fruit

-       propagation

-       storage of surpluses

-       avoiding pests and diseases.

-       Anything else I think of