Went along to the local stables at the weekend to collect some manure. They charge 50p per bag or for £1 you can take all you want. so we took my work car and filled it with 21 large sacks of well rotted horse manure.
It was just enough to tip onto the top of my empty allotment beds – hopefully the worms will pull it down into the soil and turn it all in so that by the time spring comes around we have well recovered beds – all ready for a good crop of summer veg.

I still have another collection to make this year I think – It’s looking like I will soon need to pull out and eat the brussel sprouts, cabbages and brocolli. We’ll see. If we keep getting this good weather down here we’ll have nothing left in the winter.

Anyway – as the summer veg has been removed from the majority of the beds now it is time to start planning any changes to the layout of the plot. Time to lay out the paths a bit better and make sure that the central path goes right to the back of the plot now – having a few full width beds this year was quite annoying.

anyway – here is a little picture of the plot with the newly manured beds on the left. still a few beans going on the right.

I finally had a bit of time and inclination to complete the shed. I filled the hole in the front of the roof – with rusty steel slats that I found thrown away outside an exhibition hall. I have also removed the polycarbonate window that was on the side of the shed and replaced that with more rusty strips – to make it so that the whole shady side is clad in the same thing.
I’m quite happy with the final result – its quite odd looking and i will probably make a few more amendments – but it is at least waterproof now and has a lockable door.
I am going to start removing items soon though as i have heard that the autumn and early winter is a bad time for break-ins.

Made a triangular brassica cover over the weekend. I had a few frames already made up – so just needed to join them together at a right angle with a few end rails and some blocks at the top.
Hopefully this will prevent the butterflies from laying their eggs on them this year. If the brassicas get too big I may have to make a squarer one – but at this stage this will be fine.
I have no idea how long I should be keeping the netting on – is it all the time – or are caterpillars only laying eggs during certain months.?

Pathways are taking shape. – We’ve layed the weed control fabric – edged the paths with timber and layed woodchip onto them.
Its making the area seem quite tidy now – just need to transplant out some of the veg that are currently on my windowsill.

Made a short visit to the allotment at the weekend. Planted my courgettes and a row of sunflowers at the front of the plot (alongside the track).
Gave them a good watering in but it has been soo hot here for weeks. My girlfriend went over for a short visit yesterday to water everything and put some small stick in next to the sunflowers to give them some support (and stop them getting trodden on).

And today (Tuesday) I got a lift over to the plot from work with lots of timber frames that were being thrown away. These are going to make perfect raised beds (not raised by a great height but great for defining the individual beds).
So – Now I just have to wait till the weekend so that I can get out there and work out where the beds are going and what is going to go into them.

Really looking forward to the weekend now. I may even get a bit more done on the shed.

Paid a 2 hour visit to the allotment after work yesterday. I think am getting a bit addicted. I worked up quite a sweat dragging some long straight-ish logs down from the nearby hills to edge my central path. The problem though is that once I get them down to the allotment they suddenly seem a lot less straight . I may have to abandon the idea of using logs and revert to woodchip or slabs instead – rectangular raised beds will not sit well against the wobbly logs.

I also had a bit of a tidy up – there were bits of timber offcuts everywhere that needed to go.

The weekend will be spent actually getting some beds marked out with string – and maybe planted. I have lots of timber raised bed frames at work but no way of transporting the 2.5m long pieces to the allotment unless I hire a van – which I am reluctant to pay for at the moment.

Popped up to the allotment after work today and barrowed a few loads of woodchip into the new pathway that I have layed out.
I’ve dug over the ground here and rolled out a layer of weed suppressing membrane held down by large logs that I have dragged to the allotment from the surrounding south down hills – which have recently been thinned out (leaving lots of logs and whole trees laying on the woodland floor).

Made a good start on the man sized shed over the weekend.
Its laying on its front at the moment while i fix the panelling onto the back. then i’ll flip it up the right way.
I am a little worried that it may look quite tall because I have made the walls 2m high to suit my 6’3″ head in. but the pitched roof then takes it another 400mm higher. If it looks too high when lifted up I may change the roof to a simple gentle slope from front to back.

I have chosen to site it on a platform of paving slabs and have run these further forward so that the shed has a bit of a patio area.

Also planning to put a couple of polycarbonate windows in.

April 13th – Finished cladding the back wall of the shed – and lifted it upright. It was slightly wobbly – but I’ll add some more bracing at the weekend hopefully.

Once the sides and front are all clad properly it should feel a bit more stable too.

Got some timber bits today that may go some way towards making a shed structure.

I saw on freegle (my local version of freecycle) that someone was having some work done on their garden and had taken lots of old fencing down. This was all being thrown in a skip unless anyone wanted it – so I went along this morning (luckily I had the day off of work) and there was quite a lot of fencing posts which were still fairly chunky and robust, lots of fairly good quality gravel boarding which should be fine to clad my future shed (if not – it will make excellent side panels for a compost heap), and lots of fairly crumbly old trellis.

I have used the one intact bit of the trellis in my own garden as we had recently bought a Honeysuckle that needed support – and I have taken lots of the gravel boarding down to the allotment for use at the weekend (today was really not an outdoors day).

I have also recently found a couple of old sash windows – that I will probably strip the paint off of. I think a homemade shed is fine – but the parts should all probably be the same material (not a white window with a green door in a new pine structure with old weatherboard). That’s the plan anyway.

I’d like to strip the paint off of any old bits that I find in skips. Also – I know the allotment society frown upon home-made sheds made out of old doors etc.

Mine will not just be made out of old doors – but it will be made out of old, found and donated parts as I cannot afford a new £300 shed from a DIY store – I do not want one of these either. I’d much rather make my own and enjoy learning something as I do it. Not sure my girlfriend would agree though.

The gardener that I met this morning (Pete the Pond his name was) told me he is always taking timber and paving slabs to the dump – so I gave him my number and am looking forward to a delivery of old paving slabs soon. I could probably do with another 30 or so slabs to replace the path that my neighbouring allotment holder has borrowed to re-create some sort of gravestone art installation.

So – get looking on freecycle if you need to stretch your budget for such things. Gumtree and Friday ad are 2 other places where free stuff can be found.

Home-made shed updates (including pictures) will follow soon – once we get some pleasant weekend weather.

Here is the mini shed referred to in the previous post.