By Anne Akers
Do you know that one litre of water weighs one kilogramme? So that makes carrying a 10L
watering can full of water in each hand a 20kilo deadlift. Do that ten times or so on the
obstacle course of my allotment path and I’d call it a blooming good workout!
It was absolutely no surprise at all that Yorkshire Water introduced a hosepipe ban earlier in the summer.
The huge waterbutt which had collected rainwater from the shed roof at the
allotment had long since run dry.
Our Gatescroft site in Calverley is fortunate to have water taps, so all of us were making use of those, with hosepipes the preferred watering method before the ban.
And while the restrictions announced by Yorkshire Water do not apply to allotments, as a committee and individuals we took the view that we’d recommend plotholders use cans instead of hosepipes to save as much water as possible.
After chuntering about the standing water in my heavy-clay soil earlier in the year, when
nothing could be planted, I found myself watering most days as the soil turned to dust. My
goodness, that was hard work.
And yes, I could have just carried one can at a time, but two gave me balance and saved me half the trips to the tap. On the plus side, the weeds didn’t thrive in the hot sun, so the targeted watering at the base of the many annuals saw them thrive.
The warm weather also encouraged earlier growth of nearly all the crops. All the broad
beans and most of the peas were done by early July and I was surprised to be unearthing
sizeable Charlotte potatoes mid-month, they are usually weeks later.
It was a bonus to have these so early, there is absolutely nothing to compare with potatoes freshly dug, then boiled in the pot and served with a grind of salt, freshly-picked mint and a little too much butter, but, hey, I’d been carrying 20 kilos, up and down the plot, not to mention the filling up and pouring out, I deserved it.
One crop I left quite late to transplant was squash. In the past, I’ve planted them out too
soon only to have the sneaky wind break the tender main stem.
This year most of them had buds or flowers before I took them down to the plot. I also constructed mini windbreaks around each plant and gave them a little straw bed to keep emerging fruits off the soil where they might rot if it ever rained again.
I’ve planted three types, Crown Prince, a traditional- shaped grey-skinned fruit with orange flash and Butternut, for me the King of Squash with a fabulous flavour, especially when made into soup with chilli and coconut milk.
Bush Baby is a squash I haven’t grown before, it’s supposed to be a bit like Crown Prince, but smaller. Let’s see!
So even if it rains prolifically, the reservoirs are so empty that all of us on the site thing the
hose pipe ban will stay for the rest of the summer and autumn. That means in my case that the watering can work-out will stay.
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