I’m not very good at new year’s resolutions, so I’m just saying that in 2022, I simply intended to try more. More time at the allotment, more different crops, more learning. That’s about all you can do.
In the winter, I don’t yet know what to do with the allotment. It’s obviously mostly maintenance – tidying things up and preparing for the coming growing season.
I didn’t actually go to the plot at all in January and then in February we had a series of severe storms, the worst of which was Eunice. It was the tail end of Storm Franklin that had an impact on our allotment, though thankfully we didn’t get the worst of it. There were deaths, flooding and evacuations in other parts of the country.
Finally on a still miserable-looking Saturday, I went up to the plot partly out of guilt as I hadn’t been there in weeks, and partly curiosity to see how it had coped. As I arrived I could see that there had been a bit of damage – a few people had lost their sheds.
Our plot at first looked untouched, apart from the drainpipe on our shed which had been detached and the fact that next door’s little Wendy-house had been deposited on our patch.
I didn’t stay long as it was still quite windy and I figured I could do without catching a flying greenhouse.
There wasn’t much I could do at the plot but I could start some preparation. I decided that I was going to try growing a lot more things from seed. Almost none of my original shop-bought seedlings came to fruition last year and as a retired person, I have to try to minimise costs, so I went with seeds. By the time I had started in the previous year, it was too late to start sowing seeds, but now I can try them and see how they go.
Therefore after a slow start, the 2022 season began.
To the roots of it 