I thought it was time I FINALLY put together some photos of our first year at our allotment (which is named Careu Pippott) on my blog. We share our allotment with a lovely family we are friends with and together we have a little scrapbook which we stick photos and comments in every few months, to capture memories of our times together there. It made collecting photos for this post quite easy actually, as they were already in a folder organised for the scrapbook.
Winter
We got our allotment back in February this year, when it was icy and snowy and the idea of spending any time outside was not terribly appealing. Our first job was a cosy, indoorsy one. We got ourselves (two Mums and four children) in my kitchen and painted our sign and lots of wooden spoons we'd acquired to be labels.
We have very much gone for a bright and colourful theme to our allotment. Multi-coloured spoons, labelled with words on one side and illustrations of the veg we planned to grow on the other. Gotta love coloured Sharpies. We varnished them too, but although the base colour is still in good condition ten months later, all the words and illustrations have faded or washed out.
The gate had a colourful makeover too. I sanded it down before I got my collection of wall paint out for some decorating fun...
... one spotty, rather Mr-Tumble-esque gate!
Soon the entrance to our particular patch of weeds and grass was much more welcoming and distinctive!
Our very first trips to Careu Pippott, in the frigid February air, were not the rip-roaring successes we'd imagined. Yes, the children did some excited running around and some good wholesome mud play...
... but they did a fair bit of cold, miserable wailing too!
We found the best way to cheer them up was hot chocolate and snacks...
... and being sent to the car to relax in the warm!
They were happy to get involved with the sowing though. (Notice the sad state of the mouldering hobbit hole in the background? That was a disaster. I later sanded it down and re-painted it lime green. It looks fabulous now!)
Watering is another favourite task of my little people.
As well as harvesting the crops left by the previous allotmenteer. We acquired, for free, a lovely crop of leeks! We made some leek and potato soup and used the leeks in other meals instead of onions. (We also acquired various lengths of netting, a wheelbarrow with no tyre and lots of bamboo canes.)
Spring
During the early spring, most crops were being tenderly cared for in Charlotte's little greenhouse in her back garden, or in pots on my patio, until they were big enough to move out to the allotment. We particularly loved watching some broad beans (which we hadn't bought, actually, Master R located loads of broad beans lying about in the allotment, so we simply planted those!) growing inside a CD case. A great idea I saw on Pinterest. It was amazing to watch how quickly the roots and then shoots developed!
After a few weeks, the beans, as well as sunflowers and pumpkins were planted up in the amazing soil at Careu Pippott. The small people loved playing with the loooong bamboo canes which we used to build our bean growing teepees. A stick, I have recently read, is the most popular children's toy.
Ice Boy (Master R's superhero alter-ego) was getting very nifty with the watering can by this stage. After a drowning-one-onion-for-a-solid-minute incident I taught him that counting to five while he watered each plant ensured that they got enough water without sailing away in a river of his own making!
Some seeds, of course, were planted directly into the soil of the raised beds. The beds were there when we arrived, one with a bunch of leeks in, several with the odd forgotten carrot. Mostly though, they were falling apart and filled with weeds. We spent many a visit digging over the soil, pulling out the weeds and reinforcing the rather dilapidated wood.
The first time we sowed seeds (carrots, these were) we did it very professionally. Wooden board, length of string. I'm afraid these wonderful habits have fallen by the wayside (weightside?) these days. Trying to balance a toddler and oneself on a board is a bit tricky!! Also, I'm not sure where the board has ended up.
We had to wait several weeks before tiny carrot seedlings were poking their heads above the soil. During that time, weeds were creeping in everywhere, which I daren't weed in case they were carrots!
The children were fascinated by the mini-beasts we found while digging and exploring.
And on this surprisingly sunny March afternoon, Master R and Miss O travelled to the moon on their wheelbarrow rocket again and again while I tried to rid the soon-to-be-potato-patch of huge weeds.
It's quite a big patch, so it took a not inconsiderable time! It was gradually cleared over several digging sessions. And check out how HUGE our allotment is! My little red car is parked beside the front fence. It's vast!
Once the patch was cleared and our four types of potatoes had chitted well on our windowsills at home, it was time for more neat lines of string and some beautifully sculpted peaks and troughs.
Fabulous hat, Miss O!
Miss O is sometimes in a really diggy mood. On this day (again, in March, again very warm), she chatted constantly to Mummy Rachel while she helped to dig the strawberry patch. There were some strawberry plants already here, and we brought and planted out all the strawberries that have lived on our patio in pots for the past few years.
Sunshiney bliss. Milky cuddles for the smallest girl, time to relax in the sunshine for the biggest!
I love this photo so much. It's printed out and displayed with lots of other photos on our landing wall. They had such fun squeezing in the over-turned water butt!
Ice Boy likes making rainbows with the fine mist of water. By this point we'd got onions and carrots planted, and salad leaves and rocket in the bed nearest Master R. We were starting to eat some salad leaves, which was very exciting. The rocket shot up to flower far too fast as usual, becoming bitter and inedible disappointingly fast. We left the flowers for quite a while though because they're so attractive to insects.
Occasionally we'd find another carrot left from the previous year. Yum yum yum!
And we certainly found plenty of these!
Allotment yoga is another activity that keeps the small people entertained! Cabbages to the right of her, onions and carrots to her left.
In spring we also started another wonderful allotment project. Creating our very own miniature wildlife pond to house the frogspawn Charlotte had acquired from a nearby pond in our village. This year we've watched the whole life cycle of our little Careu Pippott tadpoles/froglets/frogs with fascination. And a fair bit of curious poking too! We were impressed by how quickly other pond critters found our little buried trug and made it their home. It's a real eco-system now! Water snails, water spiders, larvae, frogs and various other minibeasts have taken up residence.
We kept popping into the allotment on our way in and our of the village to check on the frogspawn and I was literally leaping with excitement the first time I spotted tadpoles wriggling around.
Within days there were loads! Tadpoles, tadpoles everywhere!
We had another colourful project on the go too, which Charlotte had seen somewhere. It involved saving and painting lots of tins, then drilling holes in them.
Master R learnt to tie knots on this day and he was so proud! We sat in the red tent in the garden and tied colourful ribbons to all our colourful tins.
Then, with the addition of some string and bamboo canes we had a colourful bird scarer of our own recycled creation!
Another item to be given the Careu Pippott treatment was the fantastic picnic bench we bought second hand.
Master R helped with the harder to reach planks.
Ta-da!!!!
The perfect spot for a spontaneous Sunday afternoon family get together!
Summer
Summer was a busy time at the allotment. We didn't get there as much as I'd hoped due to sickness and not very summery weather, which meant when we did we relished it more, but had more weeding to do. Allotmenteering, I have found out, is 90% weeding.
Our tadpoles, we were thrilled to discover, were developing into little froglets!
There was mud to dig...
... a compost heap to fortify...
... and wheelbarrow trips to be had!
And of course there were snack times to savour too!
Some days were lovely and sunny. Other days the rain chased us back to the car to shelter until it was over.
My poor car has suffered quite a lot as a result of this whole allotmenteering business! Since having children, it always has been covered in food crumbs. But now they're mixed with soil, bits of weed and grass and general welly filth!
The children created such exciting games as fill-your-galoshes-with-as-much-mud-as-possible!
Always pottering around busily doing important kid stuff with the loose parts lying about the allotment and their imaginations. The very best kind of play.
Barefoot in the dirt, playing between giant sunflowers, pumpkins and beans.
We learnt that some wild rabbits had tunnelled into our carefully rabbit-fenced allotment in order to munch our brocolli. By sitting on TOP of the netting. Eating and pooing on our poor brassicas simultaneously. They caused so much damage that the poor broccoli didn't produce any good sized heads. Next years we'll have to use a sturdier protection.
We loved watching the wildflowers growing all over the paths of the allotment. During the summer, Careu Pippott is actually a wildflower meadow with added vegetables, and that's the way I like it. We're helping the wildlife as well as ourselves! Not necessarily helping our allotment neighbours though...
The soil at the allotment is so good. It looks like proper Monty Don soil. Brown, full of worms and nutrients and hardly a stone to be seen. Compared to the "soil" in our garden, it is simply astonishing. And clearly full of good stuff for making plants grow BIG!
Like, really, REALLY big. Our sunflowers were at least 8 feet tall!
And the mini-beasts. Our children have learnt so much about mini-beasts.
Mostly they've learnt to care for them tenderly. This is a cinnabar moth caterpillar. We had LOADS of them this year. We had to look them up in our book to find out what they grow into.
This beautiful caterpillar grows into a figure of eight moth.
And then it was berry time!! Miss O does not like to eat berries yet. But she does like to be involved, so she always has to help pick and be given one to "eat" (hold for ages, maybe put in her mouth and roll around unenthusiastically for a while, then spit out).
Master R, on the other hand, ADORES berries. He didn't start liking strawberries until he was two and we had them growing in the garden. The alure of juicy red berries growing on bushes just waiting to be picked and gobbled convinced him that they were delicious.
And until this year, he wasn't at all keen on raspberries...
... of course, now he adores them! One day I handed him a flower pot to help me to collect raspberries. I did well filling mine. He put one mouldy one in his pot. The rest were safely stowed in his belly!
Our tomato seedlings grew big enough to be planted out. Master R and I looked at the brilliant root systems and talked about how roots draw in water and nutrients for the plant.
In the summer sun, which occasionally shone through the oppressive clouds, the pumpkins were ripening. They ripened a bit too early this year, actually. Need to plant them later in the year next year, so they're ripe just in time for Hallowe'en.
Our rhubarb chard was growing vigorous and colourful. It's still going now, actually! I think it'll keep coming, hopefully right through to next spring.
By mid-summer, our first early potatoes were ready. I LOVE harvesting potatoes. It's magical, digging down and finding golden treasures which developed in secret under the soil.
I've got lots of photos like this. Piles of bounty ready to come home and be gobbled down.
In fact, some days it was quite a mission getting everything back into my little car. Full in the front!
Full in the back! (Yes, the children are in the wrong car seats. I think it is scientifically impossible for children under the age of 7 to follow the instruction "get into your car seats". I've not yet known it to work.)
Autumn
And before we knew it, Autumn had arrived. Master R started school, and allotment trips were either activities just for myself and Miss O, or to be conducted swiftly after school or at the weekend. The after school allotment visit is brilliant. What a great way to shake off all the restrictions of school life and enjoy the few hours of free time before dinner and bedtime routine. Time to play in the mud, or to climb the compost heap and sing in strange tongues!
Having an after-school snack in the fresh air is just BETTER. And tidier. Who cares about crumbs outside?! Not us!
And where else can you try out a thistle brush?
Tomato blight struck this year, so we harvested all the green tomatoes to be turned into soup so I could clear up the diseased plants. In actual fact though, I burnt the tomato soup, so it was pretty disgusting. And peeling this many tomatoes is really not entertaining. I tried the whole par-boiling trick. Didn't work!
We had to harvest some sunflower seeds before the allotment mice ate them all. We could tell from the clues that mice had been climbing up the 10 feet sunflower stalks to eat the seeds, while sitting on the enormous heads! Crafty! (NB: After carefully collecting dozens of seeds in the cup, we enjoyed repeatedly knocking it onto the floor so we had to pick the seeds out from the long grass and weeds. Fun with a capital F.)
We also popped along to the blackberry hedges at the neighbouring wood to pick ourselves some berries. With a stick. Obviously.
Miss O was A: annoyed that her hands were covered in juice and B: begging me to carry her. I was carrying two pots of berries and was therefore incapable of helping.
Just this weekend we were back at the allotment with a list of jobs to do. Dig up the now blackening sunflowers. Their root systems were bigger than my head, so it took a lot of heaving by Master R to tip the plants over.
We've got broad beans over-wintering now. Only I planted them a bit too early, and they were blossoming in the late Autumn sunshine. So I've cut them back down and hope they'll survive the winter.
We had weeding to do once more, and some seeds to plant. Pak choi, more spinach and some salad leaves which may or may not start growing this late on.
There's always something to do at the allotment. Usually a whole list, and always more weeding than we can reasonably keep on top of. But we LOVE it. Even when Miss O gets bored and wails for half the visit. Even when Master R sulks because weeding is "boring" and he wants to go home. Even when accidental poos have to be buried in corners and I get sprayed with the hose and we all get a bit grumpy with one another.
It's never time wasted. We're outside, we're in a semi-wild (probably more wild than cultivated to be honest!) space and we're engaging with nature. We're making memories and learning about the astonishingly rich and varied world we are part of. We're growing food and we're growing wild children.
It is good.