When I first took over my allotment last november I had a half plot rectangle of couch grass and mares tail. It took a lot of motivation to be out there early december/jan putting up my boxes and filling them with manure – I wasn’t even sure it’d work though there had been plenty of people trying it and disappearing shortly after.
We dug over two small beds which have all in all not been particularly productive. We’ve also had three manure beds doing, well, pretty much nothing (except a buckets worth of potatoes). The 50/50 manure/earth bed has had more success with 24 strong sweetcorn plants each providing a cob of sizeable proportions.
My girlfriend on the other hand has been kept in salad for the entirety of the summer – which has been fairly annoying as I rarely saw any. Only at one point did I break down during the summer months telling my girlfriend what do with the courgette she was cooking. Yes, any idiot can grow them, as long as you can outsmart the slugs.
Successes:
Sweetcorn, Strawberries, potatos (a sort of success, though not as good as it could have been), courgettes, mini-cucumbers, beans, mange tout, chard, lettuce, mint, rhubarb, cabbage, leeks.
Failures:
Potatoes, onions (all mini), asparagus (didn’t see it at all), cucumbers (slugged to death), melons (slugs), carrots (carrot fly), butternut squash, basil (boy did we kill that repeatedly), chillies, peppers, ohdeargodthisissodepressing…
So, roll on 2008 and eight and see how we do then.