I’m now the proud owner of an allotment. Technically a tenant. Whatever, it’s mine.
It’s a lot of clearing and weeding and preparing at the moment but I am enjoying the process. I’m enjoying planning, collecting together ideas, buying loads of seeds…generally deciding what my garden is about. And it’s about this: food, connection, labour. Typically for me, I can’t just do a thing, I have to have a philosophy too. I can never just be casual.
This is no different. I am reading up about permaculture, polyculture, the magic of composting. I have built a small polyculture garden before and it was great but now I am ready to scale it up: to look at what I learned in the last garden and to expand upon it.
First lessons: Don’t sow too much too early (be patient); only grow what you know you want to eat (a couple of experimental crops is fun and hurts nobody); know where things will be going once they’re ready to be planted out and have those spaces ready.
I plan to focus much more on creating systems this time: succession planting, collecting seed, systems for collecting and creating compost, making teas from nettles, comfrey, etc., ways of building soil health. And somehow I am hoping that all translates into a beautiful, lush, abundant garden. Wish me luck.