Allotment Interlude

In between the Easter weekend's epic compost odyssey (more soon, not quite finished yet) and drinking beer in a deckchair (one of two found in a skip), I was summoned to 'our' allotment to do some digging and plant some potatoes.

Allotments are great - most of the materials used are reclaimed (our greenhouse is made from old window frames and pallets), the lack of fossil energy on site means everything is muscle powered and all the water is collected from the rain. And, of course, with food being one of the biggest parts of our ecological/carbon footprints, this is one way to make a real difference.

And it's not just me who thinks so - according to the Guardian, there's a 100,000 strong waiting list, um, waiting for one of the 300,000 plots to become available. This is keeping us on our toes - we've been given a quiet word once or twice over the last couple of years about keeping on top of it. This is partly due to our laissez faire approach to tidiness (we like to think of it as "wildlife-friendliness") and, anyway, our fruit trees and bushes will produce food every year with very little intervention. I've got a big book on no-dig gardening to read to see if we can turn this into a win-win. We've also enlisted some help, but this is frowned upon in case it turns into a surreptitious way of passing the plot on to a mate bypassing the waiting list.

We'll just have to keep those spades and forks working!