Allotment Plan 2008

Click on the picture to enlarge if needed

January's rainy weather gave me the ideal opportunity to finally plan where everything is to go this year. As you can see the more permanent features are in glorious technicolour and I then fit in the rest of the year's crops around these. As I produce a plan each year, I can make sure I keep a good crop rotation through the beds by referring back through the years. However, I don't necessarily stick to these plans, but it keeps me going in the right direction and I do update the plan as I go along.

The division into 4 main beds you can see was how the plot looked when I took it on in 2004. I then decided to sub divide these further into beds approximately 10 feet wide by 4 feet long - it makes the onerous tasks of digging/weeding etc seem much smaller when you're just doing a couple of small beds or so at a time! It also means that I don't walk on the crops when I weed or hoe them. There's a mulch path between each bed - mulched because I've used old compost bags as a weed suppresant and the mulch stops the bags from blowing away and me from slipping on them! Producing the plan has also given me a scarily long list of jobs to be done for the rest of January through February*, starting with manuring all the beds you can see highlighted in yellow on the plan. I hope the weather doesn't thwart my to do list!

* Not completed as usual