Why Oh Why Oh Why? And Other Things.

 24th March 2022, Why Oh Why Oh Why? And Other Things.

Do you see the large puddle between the wooden wall and the greenhouse? Well this is about 2 hours after the kind workmen who had moved the water stand pipe the day before had fixed a rather large leak from just by the terrace/bench seat. The new pipe ran under the bench seat and then began its way down the allotment to the new location. After we left yesterday or during the night, the pipe (left uncovered till today just to see there was no problem with the joints) had been disconnected! Water everywhere as you can see…

 

Look carefully to the left of the wheelbarrow (2nd picture) - waterlogged here… and in the 3rd picture below you can see the water was a lot higher than this, but has now drained away.

Unfortunately, allotments being public places, there is always an element of vandalism. I know in other allotments there is less than what we have here, and in other places more… We have just got used to the fact that people do stuff like this. Anyway, it was patched up and we move on.

In the 4th picture we have now added some spare black guttering to avoid accidents when digging and to protect the water pipe.

Now is time to dig over the remaining area, and then bury the pipes and level off the ground so we can get on with building / growing. Holding everything down from the terrace is a white stake driven into the ground.

Because of the way everything has been constructed, the water doesn’t hang around long. So onwards and upwards. There is some new wood chip available, the scent of this one is amazing, so we are gathering it up and putting it on top of the two wood chip paths we created before. More will be needed for the path in front of the polytunnel in due course.

As you can see the two paths are looking good but we can’t finish them completely yet as the rear of the polytunnel needs to be built and the front of the polytunnel area needs to be completed too… still plenty of work to be done!

Much better at the front of the plot without the water pipe… and now a grape hyacinth planted so at least we'll have some colour up front.

The concrete slab has now been added by the compost heaps and when we get some good grass from elsewhere this will make a nice entrance at this point.

Fabulous to have the water pipe halfway down the plot. We can now water all areas of the plot without dragging the hose across the plants.

The spare wood is going down now. We have to break apart quite a few pallets to retrieve the wood to build a raised potato bed (the next project). We really do not have enough space for potatoes but we want to grow some, and they need to go in the ground about now… so pallets have to be taken apart and that takes a while too! (Remember we are going to be growing the potatoes upwards...?)

In the next picture (below) are the pallets we have identified (or some of them) for the potato bed… behind those pallets are a number of long pieces of wood which we have salvaged from the plot that got burnt… these were some of the remains which escaped the fire. The bottom section by the wood surround is where the potatoes are going to be placed.

Once again at the front of the plot, by the road. The blue water pipe was visible here, and so we have now buried it and this is where we intended to put a small fish/frog pond. It is a tiny space, but with a solar water feature we will be able to have a water effect next to the seating area, which will be nice.

As you can see from the second picture there by the seat we will have a plant on the decking and a small piece of trellis which will then go around the pond to the other trellis… and grass will be laid here too on the path.

We will be landscaping this properly in due course. This year the ideas go into the layout and next year these finishing jobs will be implemented.

We will be looking for ways to disguise the water pipe half way down the plot. For now we are using a pallet, but we’ll come up with something a little more attractive we hope. The amount of rescued plants from the adjacent (burnt down) plot is growing. We need to get this plot finished off soon. Then this whole area in front of the polytunnel can be completed.