Happiness is… an allotment

Shannon Keary from Devon loves allotmenteering so much she has upgraded from a small plot to a larger 10x18m allotment and is in the process of expanding the range of things she is growing, including cut flowers, a bigger picnic area, a mud kitchen and a wildlife area

- Shannon Keary

How do you grow one particular named crop?

My sweet peas are my proudest achievement as they made up my beautiful pea teepee. I started the sweet peas off at home in March. First, they were laid on a damp kitchen towel and popped into a plastic bag to germinate; this worked so well and 100% of the seeds germinated. Then they were popped into toilet roll tubes to initially grow and transplanted out around May (with the tubes still in place – this helped to stop the slugs too) to their final position. Once they started flowering I cut them regularly and gave the flowers away to keep them flowering for as long as possible. Some of the sweet peas were also started off at home in toilet roll tubes filled with compost – these were the earliest. They also were transplanted around May time. I also sowed a variety of sweet pea directly into the teepee bed, which means I was harvesting from June until early September. Once all of the plants had finished producing and dried out, I harvested more than 2000 sweet pea seeds which have been sent to friends all over the UK and enough to grow a bigger teepee next year!

Do you ever grow in containers?

Most of my allotment is made up of raised beds, but I also grew carrots in old Sainsbury’s bags for life (with a coco peat/compost filling) and grew perfectly straight rainbow carrots and parsnips. I also grew potatoes in black dustbins and they grew really well with compost and some granular feed mixed in. I’ll definitely be using both again.