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Allotment
gardening is a wonderful leisure activity which gives great
rewards with a wee bit of excercise.
John has aquired an allotment garden on Dundee's City Road
Allotment site to grow and experiment with a wide range of
fruit, flowers and vegetables. The site is also full of interesting
corners worthy of a painting.
In his first year he managed to get bumper crops with a wealth
of fruit and flowers even although he had a late start. Follow my weekly gardening diary on my The Scottish Artist and his Garden blog.
John
rented an allotment at City Road Allotment Gardens in Dundee
with a view to experiment with growing Saskatoons, a new fruit
crop in UK. You can see his progress on his Saskatoon
page.
John
started clearing rubbish, brambles, old fence lines, rubble,
rocks and a lot of broken glass in March, then put in new
paths surfaced in bark chips. Cultivations in March
and April included digging in ample bags of Discovery garden
compost which Dundee city council make from the towns
gardening waste. It comes ready to use and is quite cheap.
It is perfect for organic gardening, breaks up clay soils
and adds humus to sandy soils helping to retain moisture in
our dry summers.
Another
very popular method of increasing the humus content of the
soil is to grow mustard at the end of summer for any areas
cleared of crops, eg broad beans, onions, peas, summer cabbage,
and sweet corn then crush down the plants at flowering then
dig in.
It certainly helped John's crops of vegetables, fruit and
flowers to grow in abundance.
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