When we first took on the allotment, we had no idea what was going to be on it. There’s never any guarantee you’ll have a shed, water butts, prepared beds, or anything other than a patch of dirt. You’ve got no idea the condition of the soil, and no idea the kind of weather the space gets. So it’s important to take stock of what you have as soon as possible.
In our case, we were really fortunate. The previous tenant had done a lot of work on the space before abandoning it, so we came to a plot that already had a shed, a toolshed, water butts and compost heaps set up. But we still had to take stock of those things to check the condition.
The first thing to notice is that the shed has a fairly pronounced lean. It tilts to the South (to the right in the above photo) and also to the West. As a result, the door is askew and doesn’t seal shut. The previous tenant seems to have heaped up soil and pallets to form a foundation for the shed, but didn’t get it properly flat before building. Next, we had to check the condition of some things around this.
Because the shed is raised, there’s a little portable step up to the door, which wobbles. There were some stone slabs in front of and around this on the soil which, when we repositioned them, gave the step some stability. More pallets hold one of the water butts, a run-off container, and a wheelie bin which - it turned out - was being used to store excess water when the butts overfilled. Another water butt was at the front of the shed. Fortunately both butts had guttering pipes running to them already, but the butts had been full for a long time and heavy rain meant the soil around the entrance to the shed, and the space in front of it, is a bit of a quagmire.
The large compost heap behind the shed (left side of the above photo) was the next thing to check. Built from wooden pallets, the sides of it were clearly rotting and not in great condition. So much so, that I was able to get the front pallet off by just pulling on it - the wood crumbled away.
Inside the heap, was not the well-rotted, healthy compost there should have been. I suspect that the previous tenant shoveled a lot of unwanted soil into the heap at some point, given that it has the same thick, sticky clay texture as the rest of the plot. He also, apparently, started using it as a trash heap at some point. A short period of digging revealed some less-than-inspiring finds.
It wasn’t all bad news, though. The small toolshed was in fine condition, as was the green plastic compost bin. The shed was dry inside and free of leaks, and actually turned out to have some useful tools, equipment, little junky items we could use and handy toolboxes and containers!
But we knew immediately that we had some work we needed to do. First on the list had to be tidying the plots and preparing the land for Spring, as we needed to show we would keep to the lease and we also needed the beds to be in good condition ASAP. But once that’s taken care of, priorities had to be:
Dig out the compost heap. In addition to being full of clay soil and trash, and having rotten sides, it’s also positioned so that it never receives any direct sun at all. This contributed to the rotting of the wood, which never warmed enough to dry out, and meant there was less heat and energy to encourage good, healthy break-down of vegetative matter. Compost needs to get hot to kill off any nasties in it, which this clearly can’t do. In addition, the heap extends back almost to the wall at the rear, and it’s clear there’s a lot of space going to waste there.
Move the water butts. The constant splosh of overflowing water on the pallets has caused them to start to weaken, and I’m not keen on being present if/when the pallets rot through and the full water butts fall to the ground. The same splosh of water is also creating a bit of a quagmire around the entrance to the shed, making the space unsafe. From a practical perspective, the butts are also in the full-sun position where they will evaporate more quickly. There’s space between the shed and the rear wall that, with some properly installed run-off butts to prevent overflow, could be used for this.
We also needed to take proper measurements of the space. The soil at the allotment is so sticky and soft that you sink in to the ankle walking over bare soil, and come out with an inch of it coating the sole of your boot. The beds were huge and unwieldy even without this issue, and not an efficient use of the space. In fact, taking measurements we found the plot is laid out something like this:
Paths get wider or narrower across their length, sometimes too narrow at one end for a wheelbarrow to safely pass, sometimes so wide there’s a foot of wasted space on each side of you. On top of that, we suspect the small bed next to the toolshed was once as long as the one above it, as the soil around the shed is bare, muddy and soft.
A complete rethink of the beds layout was in order.