Victory Garden - Backs To The Land

One of the many plans I have for this year is to get cracking on turning my slightly neglected allotment in Walthamstow into and food producing 'Victory Garden'!

{Source - Source}

Last year was a bit disappointing for both crops and for my enthusiasm. With the rotten weather and my partner in crime becoming pregnant early on in the year (she now has an adorable little baby boy) our grand plans of growing simply potatoes and onions whilst we set to digging and clearing the rest of the plot fell by the by and with addition of a garden at home for me to look after, I struggled to keep on top of everything and so our poor little 'Lotty' got a little neglected and more than a little overgrown.

Fortunately the bad weather meant that the story was much the same with our neighbouring plot holders (boy do weeds love wet weather) so we avoided the obligatory 'tut-tut' letter telling us to shape up or ship out (they are quite rigorous on our site and we got the aforementioned letter in our first year, even when our plot looked amazing compared to what we had started with, see below).

Our achievements in 2011

and in 2012 it looked like this!

Depressing!!!
There are about 5 rows of potatoes under there somewhere!

Regardless of the threat of a letter I will be honest and say by the end of last year I was considering giving it up, my friend has obviously more important things to worry about (three little ones under five, does not leave you with much free time) so it was going to mean another year going it alone, battling to keep on top of the weeds and make progress with the digging, I really was not sure I could summon up the enthusiasm.

That was until a few weeks ago, I had popped over to see just how bad it had become and was hit with a huge pang of guilt. So I started there and then to pull up some of the weeds, the more I pulled out, the more I realised just how much I enjoyed it, the more ground I cleared the more resolute I became that 'NO' I was not going to give up so easily, this massive plot and its bazillion weeds was not going to beat me.

After a morning of weeding and a considerable amount of digging, I found not only the soil but my enthusiasm buried  beneath the weeds.

How could I give up I had waited and wanted an allotment (well any green space after living with only a balcony for 8 years) for such a long time and there was plenty of other people who would bite my hand off in an instant for the opportunity. So after much deliberation I decided that the best course of action would be to go back to my original dream of turning my patch of weeds into my very own Victory Garden. I am going to 'Dig for Victory' and the war I am hoping to win is against the weeds (oh and that darn letter from the association).

So where to begin?

Well, I will need a planting plan and there is no better plan to work from than that issued in 1945 by the Ministry Of Agriculture  'Grow for Winter as well as Summer' which promises 'Vegetables for you and your family for every week of the year ' sounds good to me! It requires a plot divided 3 separate sections so that you can rotate your crops each year to maintain the nutrition in the soil.

'Dig Well and Crop Wisely'
{source}

The plan suggests a plot of 30ft x 90ft divided into 3, 30ft x 30ft squares. Now I haven't measured my plot yet but I am pretty sure its nowhere near 30ft wide (it's definitely 90ft long though) so I will have to scale the plan down to fit which will mean one row rather than two in certain areas, but that's no problem.

Along with the planting plan, I will also be following the Ministry of Agriculture Monthly Allotment & Garden Guides also produced in 1945, which promise to keep me on track with all that I need to do in the coming months!

"In this new series of monthly "Guides" we are out to help you to get better results from your vegetable plot and your fruit garden. Every month we shall try to do three things : first, we shall remind you of the things that ought to have been done, but may not have been possible because of the weather or for some other reason ; secondly, we shall deal with gardening operations for the month; thirdly, we shall look ahead a month or two and remind you of what you need to do in readiness." {Source}

 I will also be referring to the multitude of books new and old I have on the subject of veg growing, so all in all I should have every aspect covered (I am quite intrigued to see if any of the modern advice differs greatly from that of the wartime publications).



I am a firm believer that you can never have too many books!

So all of this will mean a monthly post charting my progress or lack of. I am happy to admit there are bound to be times when I will loose enthusiasm, but hopefully, it won't be for long and the insensitive of shaming myself online should be enough to keep me on track!

 Right, I'm off. I've got my flask of tea at the ready, I just need to grab my wellies and my bus pass and then I'll be heading on over to the allotment. It's time to measure up and to crack on with some serious digging!

Wendy x