#AllotmentLife

It's hard to conceive of Winter in the height of Summer. As the earth bakes hard under an unforgiving sun, cold and frosty days - only 6 months ago - couldn't be further away. But try to imagine for a minute those short, hurried afternoons, where numb fingers and runny noses are only a prelude to cosy nights! Because this is a story that starts in the depths of Winter. 

For Christmas, we got the best present two boys could have wished for. It wasn't the sort of present that could fit on the sleigh or down the chimney. It was an email, letting us know that (after some wrangling) we'd got our festive mitts on an allotment, a patch of ground we could call our own.

So it was that, in the dying hours of 2017, we ventured with anxious anticipation into one of Manchester's hoods of questionable reputation to see what awaited us. Colin (who we've since learned is a champion pea grower and authority not to be reckoned with) showed us our plot. A whopping 17 metre-long strip of Manchester's finest earth for £38. 

'Per month?' we asked.

'Per year!' he said, as we wondered how we'd got away with such daylight robbery.

On New Year's Day, most people probably don't surface until midday with heavy heads. Not us. With green fingers and bright eyes we went straight to our new allotment to try and understand what we had. Or rather, what we'd inherited. The diagnosis wasn't good. A series of ropey raised beds with no more soil in than the ground around them, full of couch grass and bindweed, only punctuated by the remnants of the previous tenant's old brassicas. Most of the allotment mustn't have been worked in 18 months - and part had clearly not been touched for years.

So we cut, tugged, and dug. The more we dug, the more we found. Everywhere we put a spade, we would hit a brick, so we surfaced them all - some glazed in shiny brown, bottle green, or cream, like a Victorian public house; some deep red, showing the words 'Accrington' or 'Burslem'. In fact, we gathered so many bricks that we had enough to edge our new flower border and build a barbeque.

We also found carpet. Carpet was once heralded as the gardener's friend - a weed suppressant and a mulch of sorts. Well, no more. Carpet might once have suppressed those weeds, but they had long since grown up through it - and through the next layer, and the next layer, and the next. What we unearthed was a mangy and inextricable mat of half-degraded carpet-and-weeds - five layers of it. When I finally reached a layer of plastic, I lifted it to find a kitchen knife, and am still surprised I didn't discover the previous tenant's wife.

In January, February and March, we braved it all. One weekend we were wallowing in mud trying to level an area for a greenhouse. The next we were barrowing tons of gravel in the gentle sun to form a greenhouse base and sitting area. The next we were building the greenhouse in the rapidly vanishing daylight - and fitting panes of glass in the dark. The next we were building new raised beds between snow storms, camping out in the greenhouse to drink lukewarm tea and eat French Fancies (we know how to roll). 

Eventually we planted things, too. Pansies as a stopgap. Fruit bushes came next - rhubarb, raspberry, and blackcurrant. All at once our annual herbaceous borders were full and detail was added to the canvas. At the same time, the flat was full-to-brimming with vegetable and flower seedlings, which we gradually hardened off via the greenhouse, and planted out. Here's a little something to show how it developed (you'll have to excuse the music).

We began counting the firsts: the first sweet peas, first crop of mangetout, first lettuce, first courgette, first potatoes.

Looking back, seeing the allotment come to life must be one of the most rewarding experiences I've ever had. It's not just the fact that we reclaimed it from nature, or that it's truly beautiful - our little bit of peace and tranquility in the city. It's the fact that we did it ourselves - every inch - and with that comes great pride.

I think this only hit me the day before we went on holiday. I went to water and check on things but was anxious ('How is the allotment going to manage without us?'). As I stood at the front of the allotment watching the bees hum around the fresh blooms and came to terms with the fact that we were leaving it to its fate for a fortnight, I felt pride at what we'd achieved, at turning this scrubby patch of North Manchester into our garden.

It's been a fantastic journey and we've learned a lot so far - about the soil, about plants and design, not to mention personal resilience! - but I'm sure we've still a way to go.

I'm going to try to blog more regularly (next up: 150 recipes for courgette and other ways to skin a cat), so watch this space!