Old Style Book - Allotment Tips/Advice Needed

Regardless of whatever has been grown in the allotment/veggie patch previously, get in a crop of spuds every couple of years/first off. Breaks the soil up beautifully with no hard work & a years worth of tatties at the end of it:beer:

Other than that, my only advice is to save seeds where ever possible from each crop for next season.....a few family members have been having an annual pumpkin competition for about 6 years now & the seeds from one particular stallion are prized above alomst everything else, once with a single seed comprising an entire christmas present to someone:D

I am not sure if I am allowed to refer to another forum, but there is a Yahoo group called kitchengardens, which I belong to, and you will find masses of tips there. The subject of first time allotment growing is well covered in the archives, as it is a popular topic.

I have had an allotment since my first son was 6 months old - now 15! I am not self sufficient, but keep us pretty well supplied with fruit, veg and flowers. I would recommend planning carefully, grwoing only what your family likes and will eat. No point having dozens of cabbages or a couple of rows of parsnips if they hate them!
Buy a cheap notebook or diary, and keep notes on sowing dates, varieties, crops etc. this will grow into your own tailor made reference book for your own plot.

All the best,

Serena.

I don't have an allotment, but do grow veggies in my garden, so whether this qualifies me i don't know. But i think one of the best things you can do is to try and produce your own compost.
I have a worm farm for mine, i did splash out for it, but they can be made easily from stackable plastic boxes, diy instructions can be found on the internet, or use a regular compost heap.
I feed them on all the uncooked fruit, veg & salad scraps. No garlic & onions as this stops them breeding. Limit citrus so not too acidic.
You can give them contents of hoover, egg shells, teabags, coffe grounds, limited grass & plant cuttings, bread, cake, limited cheese, and loads more. I shred our confidential waste and put that it as food and bedding.
I collect the liquid fertiliser regularly and store it in pop bottles. When its time to start feeding plants again, dilute this with water, my toms last year were fab!!
The worms have nearly filled the current layer they're in, so i'll be taking that off ready to start potting some seeds very soon, and putting them into the next layer.
So, i've got rich compost, liquid fertiliser, fab veggies, lovely flowers, less rubbish and it doesn't cost me anything.
One other thing, OH uses a few of the worms as bait when he goes fishing, so he's saving too!

I've had an allotment for 6 years now. It was very overgrown with nettles, couch grass, creeping buttercup, bindweed, docks and dandelions when I got it in the autumn. I strimmed it and dug out a small bed for planting garlic in at once. Because garlic sprouts quickly it is very encouraging.

Whenever I could (working full time then), I popped up and dug a little more. I was very patient with the roots of the perennial weeds mentioned, pulling them carefully out of each spadeful and putting them into a strong binbag to rot down - so it was slow but thorough work (and very satisfying to make use of these vicious weeds). Every time the weeds rose relentlessly in the large areas I had not got to yet, I strimmed them back again. That meant that the plot always looked tidy and under control and no-one could complain, as they could see that I was gradually extending the area under cultivation.

I have watched lots of people taking on overgrown neighbouring plots, and they break their backs digging without weeding at the same time - in between their exhausting efforts they need to rest for a few weeks, and the perennial weeds sprout at once and take over again. So I believe that little and often must be the answer, plus a strimmer.

I read an article (RHS "Garden"?) in which a man who commuted to work daily stopped off at his allotment early every morning for a very organised 30 minute stint before carrying on to his office. He would plan each minute carefully, maybe planting out 20 lettuce plants, trimming 5 metres of grass edges and digging two rows, for instance. Apparently he kept the whole allotment productive and smart on these daily half hours.

To those thinking of raspberries I cannot recommend too highly the autumn ones, such as "Autumn Bliss". They fruit profusely from summer to late autumn, and need no other care than cutting down to the ground every winter, the easiest pruning method in the world.

When deciding what crops to grow (especially if growing primarily to save money) i would go with two catagories

1. Things you use lots of, like potaoes, onions or carrots

2. Things that are expensive to buy, like rasberries, redcurrents or rocket

growing things that are cheap and easy to buy is still rewarding but not really in a financial sense!