7 April 2006
The Allotment Factor.
(with apologies to Gordon Burns and television’s toughest quiz)
Planning and maintaining an allotment is a tough challenge, testing contestants’ plot holders’ physical and intellectual capabilities to the limit. Have you got what it takes to succeed? In order to calculate your individual allotment factor, you will be tested in the following trials:
Mental Agility - You will need to think quickly in order to tackle questions such as, “As part of a system of crop rotation, what should be planted in a bed given that it contained potatoes two years ago, has been recently manured, faces north easterly and is often used as a path by both local foxes and your fellow allotmenteers?”
Response - A test of your ability to complete various complex tasks in sequence and under trying conditions. Typical challenges include pricking out, potting on, hardening off and planting out, all in ridiculous weather.
Observation - This is often a spot the difference test, for example, “How many onions have been pulled out by the wood pigeons since you last visited the plot?” or, “What the devil’s happened to my spade, I know I left it here yesterday?”
Physical Ability - There’s no death slide, but there’s plenty of mud and back-breaking hard labour that will push you to the very limit of your endurance. Or you could hire a rotovator.
Intelligence - The test that many allotment holders lose sleep over. How exactly do you calculate the optimum number of raised beds and arrange them in a workable, yet attractive fashion, while leaving adequate room for wheelbarrow sized paths? Not for the faint of heart.
General Knowledge - This is a quick-fire round testing your knowledge of plants, propogation, soil condition, meteorology, diplomacy, wildlife, recycling and so much more.
My allotment factor when tested in all these areas? About -5. But I’m getting better all the time.
Filed under: Hard labour, Review & plan — Clare @ 12:20 pm
My main activity at the moment is standing looking at a picture like yours of my beds and the pile of seed packets and trying to figure out how I have so many beds but not enough room to fit everything in when it needs to go in!
You need a prediction game as well, ie will it snow 2 days after you put in your potatoes as the ground finally dried out after 2 weeks solid rain, and how many water butts will you require to get you through the summer?
(07.04.06 @ 12:38 pm)
Ah yes - forecasting and divination. I’d score badly on that too, given that I’m always way too optimistic that we’ve already had the last frost.
(07.04.06 @ 12:45 pm)
How about a memory round? I’ve just found my plan - only to find that although I’ve only planted potatoes, shallots and garlic so far - the shallots are in a different place on the plan, and it doesn’t even mention garlic!
(08.04.06 @ 5:57 pm)
I have found that if you assume a role ie in my case allotment supervisor and aquire an assistant of sorts ie an allotment employee then all I have to do is delegate and as the allotment is is my name I get all the credit!!! Ah! but ’tis my job to grow seeds into seedlings and then when the harvest is done (wishful thinking), my next role is to fill the freezer. Theres something about a freezer full to brimming with rhubarb and runner beans that fills the heart with joy, especially when we are in april and the rhubarb had begun to grow again and the freezer is still full to brimming with the damned stuff!!! I am going to the greenhouse - I may be some time.
(09.04.06 @ 10:54 am)
we are just starting our vegblog so had a great time looking at others.
I love the idea of the allotment factor. our plot[in the garden] seems both too big to keep weed free, and yet too small for all the seeds to fit in!
(23.04.06 @ 11:52 pm)