| Plot 17 – The Earthly Comforts Garden Season Two – Planning Plot 17 January – April 2023 The Allotment Plotters Directory |
| Don’t Take Afence But … Part One |
| A garden is a grand teacher. It teaches patience and careful watchfulness; it teaches industry and thrift; above all it teaches entire trust. Gertrude Jekyll |
| The gallery displays various plot areas and their respective fencing, which l will go into more detail about in the next few episodes as the work is completed. In short, however – Netting is required in two places – behind the raspberry strip and along the main fence line, where you can see green mesh already. That particular fence line is relatively weak and needs strengthening as well. A back gate is needed, which will be completed by staking a pallet into the location. The paling fence is required in two locations – in front of the allotment facing the grass pathway and along the hedge line. Stock fencing has been erected around the orchard area where the polytunnel is to be sited but still needs work carried out this Sunday in the form of round fence poles. Once complete, Suze is set to weave willow and raspberry canes and fill the inner section with collected twigs. This will make for an effective wind barrier and a decorative fence line. A mixed-height stake line of short garden stakes will be worked on today by myself, and this is to be the middle line between the edge of the compost working space and where the blueberries are to be planted. More wire or soft stock line fencing has already been realigned to the wiring at the end of the compost run. The gallery above will only make sense once you see the improvements l will cover in the next few episodes. |
| We have a lot of different projects on the go concerning Plot 17. Yesterday, for instance, l ordered four 200-litre water butts for the rainwater harvesting project we need to have ready for the allotment. The Butchery garden clients – our friends have said they will help wherever possible. James, the property developer, is also a gifted wood crafter, and he has said he will build and erect a roofed and guttered station shelter for me which will be placed over the water butts and feed rainwater into them. Having a purpose build shelter will aid the allotment. The four main butts will hold 800 litres, but we also have six additional barrels for water, with maybe another 600 litres capacity. They’ll not be attached to the harvester, but we can easily cart the surplus water around. We will always be on the lookout for other water butts and upright compost Daleks, which are valuable for extra storage. Although piped water is available on the allotment, we wish to use something other than tap water but rainwater which is much better for the vegetables. One other project which started this week, and indeed Suze was working with last Monday and as well as l will be working with today, is the fencing project. We have four areas requiring dedicated fencing – only a few repairs – but replacement, shoring up, and strengthening in the main. There are four types of fencing required as well for different areas. The gallery displays three such regions and the back gate but does not display the hedge fencing as there is or instead was quite a bit of clutter there, making photography awkward. These four are paling [picket fence], staking [quarter stakes], wiring [stock and wire fencing] and netting [wind protection]. In all, the fencing of the allotment is okay, but because we wish to have a polytunnel in place – we need to shore up all of our existing fencing now. None of the fencings has received any renewal since Mike and his wife had the allotment ten years ago. We do have another protection method for the polytunnel, which is to build an external framework to allow for additional wind protection. The tunnel has cost us £1000, which is a lot of money, and whilst we deliberately opted for a dearer one because of increased wind protection, we don’t want to lose it in high winds. So we will protect it as much as we can. |
| I hope you have enjoyed this post, thanks for reading and I’ll see you next time. Till then, have yourselves a terrific day! The Autistic Composter |
| Earthly Comfort Designs available on my Redbubble Store. Collections – Earthen Wurmin, Inspired By Nature and The Autistic Composter Please Pop Along and Check Them Out. |
Earthly Comforts 
I didn’t understand everything you are doing but I can tell you are quite busy and hard at work!
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Hey Christine, oh yes fifty shades of busy is our new middle name 🙂
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You and Suze are amazing!
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You are very kind Grace 🙂
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Great planning and execution Rory. All the best
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Thanks Sadje 🙂
Poem received with thanks and set for publishing tomorrow morning 🙂
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Thanks my friend
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Pleasure 🙂
Thank you also.
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🌹
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