7 reasons why you shouldn't bother with raised beds on the allotment

My first raised bed - looked great and easy to net

If you've just got an allotment you might be weighing up whether to dig the whole thing over like a ploughed field or start with cultivating manageable chunks and using raised beds.

There are some great reasons for raised beds - they're quick to dig over, easier to net plus they're great if you need extra drainage. A raised bed covered in winter will probably get warmer quicker in the spring, giving you a head start with the growing season.

However, I recently went to Switzerland and saw how they managed their vegetable gardens - not raised beds, just well cultivated, big patches of earth, with vegetables and fruit divided up by different flowers including echinacea, rudbeckia and sunflowers.

Swiss vegetable garden in - neat a no need for raised beds

Compact, easy to maintain and pretty.

Having been a fan of raised beds since I got an allotment four years ago it made me rethink how I go about planning the plot in autumn ready for the next year. Here are some of the downsides I've discovered using raised beds.

1. They're expensive - yep, you may be a cost cutting pro cruising the local neighbourhood for skips filled with unwanted pallets in which to make your raised beds with, but I'm betting you're not. Purchasing wood for raised beds isn't cheap. When you're getting started it's a needless expense, wastes time too - save the cash and spend it on a shed. Now that you will need.

2. They're a pain to maintain - A plot full of neat raised beds looks lovely doesn't it? Until summer comes and the weeds and grass go mad and you're strimming round half a dozen 4-8 ft beds every weekend, when you could be doing something else, like planting seeds. You need to be a mathematical genius, too to ensure all your raised beds are neatly lined up. There's nothing worse than seeing a raised bed a foot higher at one end then the other,

3. They dry out really quickly - Like a giant window box they dry out faster than a large patch of cultivated earth. If you live 15 minutes walk from your plot like me, you'll want to cut down on the amount of watering you'll have to do.

4. They rot after a while - Even with some adequate protection a raised bed will start to deteriorate after a few years and you'll have to replace them.

5. Some veg is just better off planted straight in the ground - I had two 4x4 ft raised beds and planted potatoes tubers in them - big mistake. Have you ever tried harvesting potatoes from a raised bed using a fork? It's impossible to get into the corners without damaging the bed, or in this case, the potatoes.

Potatoes in a raised bed - really bad idea as it happens

6. You can't get that much in them - I can't count the amount of onion sets I've wasted because I'd filled up my raised bed and ran out of space. And take this year for example - I planted runners beans and marigolds in a 4x8 ft bed in the hope the latter would keep the blackfly at bay. However the marigolds were competing with the beans for space and winning.

7. They waste space - Turns out that most of my plot is pathways surrounding raised beds - there's a lot of unused soil which could be cultivated. Or used by someone else.

Lots of raised beds - lots of wasted space too

Still want raised beds? Go for it, but try doing a patch without them and comparing the results.

Now let's finish off on some swiss sunflowers... just because.

Sunflowers in switzerland - why not?

The giant pumpkin #1

I had big plans this year. I have always wanted to grow a Dill's Atlantic Giant Pumpkin. I love everything about pumpkins, from their lurid traffic cone colour to their partnership with my favourite festival, Halloween. When it comes to holiday rituals carving pumpkins is up there with decorating the Christmas tree. Turning the lights off and watching each glow or twinkle is the seasonal thrill of autumn and winter respectively.

I even like pumpkin pie (made with a can of Libby's not a pumpkin - and certainly not a giant pumpkin) and I really, really like pumpkin and chocolate chip loaf from Baked's New Frontiers in Baking and occasionally throw some chunks of pumpkin into an apple crumble from an early Nigella recipe.  So growing a giant pumpkin (however tasteless and therefore useless in the kitchen) is really a fan's monument to his favourite vegetable.

But big, has got off to a slow start this year thanks to the weather. I planted the seeds on a windowsill indoors in March (about three) with no problems germinating. Then I planted one plant out in early May, but a slug with an atlantic-sized appetite ate it. So a second one was planted in its place. This time said slug would have encountered a strange alien terrain of blue rubble - a £6 ring-fence of organic slug pellets - enjoy! But from then on things have been slow to get going.

Only now is the vine making a sprint forward and a golf ball size fruit has appeared (above). I've read the fruit needs to be pollinated before the end of July, so it 'sets' and grows large enough before the end of the season. Apparently there needs to be at least 100 leaves on the vine in which to support its rapid growth, but hey, who's counting -- not me?

I'm told I have to pollinate the female flower (attached to the golf ball fruit) with a little bit of magic dust/pollen from a male flower (here's a video tutorial). But I can't work out whether this pumpkin (rumpy) pumpy has already occurred naturally. I'll keep an eye on it and report back with another post.

In praise of purple on the plot

I like purple a lot and there's a surprising amount on the allotment at the moment - so I thought I'd share some of it.

1. Chocolate Mint - I haven't found a satisfactory use for it in the kitchen but it smells exactly as it should - mint combined with chocolate. It's the lovely dark purple stem that makes it a hit with me.
2. Bright Lights Radishes - You know the chard of the same name? Well these are the radishes (two purple ones - they also come in yellow, white and red). I'm just waiting for Bright Lights pumpkins now.
3. Empress of India Nasturtium - the flowers are a scarlet Mae West might paint on her lips, the leaves however (above) a dark green with an equally deep purple trim.
4. Boltardy Beetroot - just thinnings to give a bit of colour to a bog standard Kermit green salad.
5. Mexican Tree Spinach - check this Otter Farm blog post for some super pictures of the monster plant. It just keeps reseeding itself on my plot, year after year. The middle leaves are such a bold fuchsia they look like they've been spray painted.
6. Bonnie Dundee - first early potato. If you scrub off the dull outer skin you discover a burgundy-purple that shines.

Colour on the allotment

Yesterday I complained about the amount of rain and slugs torturing the allotment. It's been a grey summer, I moaned: Autumn Bliss raspberries are surrounded by a moat of brackish water; multicoloured tomatoes including Purple Calabash and Golden Sunshine look seasick in eau de nil. But there are spots of colour which I thought I'd present here as an antidote and also because I've revamped the look of this blog too. So, a hummus of broad beans (above left) is taken from a recipe by Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall (with the addition of a handful of lonely peas - the entirety of this year's harvest) and served with slices of Bright Lights radishes (above left and below right). A salad of nasturtiums contained varieties including Empress of India and Gleaming Gold. I will definitely be growing more varieties of these next year, their names including Tip Top Gold, Apricot Trifle, Milkmaid and Ice Creamsicle are enough to raise a smile - my favourite is Jewel Cherry Rose (at the bottom of this blog in a fabulous Barbie pink).

And then there were the Allgold raspberries (above) and the tiniest amount of loganberries that promised much but mostly withered on the vine into tiny, dark droplets. But it's only looking at the photos of this miserable year so far, from lupins (below) to the nasturtiums, that I realise how much colour there has actually been. And there's still more to come from purple Vitellote and Pink Fir Apple potatoes to the dahlias given to me by a prize winning grower... for free! Incidentally the new colourful banner for this blog is a bunch of giant knitted veg - I didn't knit them myself but snapped them last year in Paris. But if the potatoes get blight and the slugs get the dahlias I will be getting my knitting needles out and giving it a go.

Summer - the season of the slug

This summer's been a piece of work, hasn't it? Today I decided to man up and stick on a waterproof rather then stay stuck in doors and headed to the allotment to survey my patch of heaven. Three canvas bags at the ready to harvest something... anything.

I sowed a lot of optimism earlier this year primarily in the shape of squashes (Crown Prince, Portimarron, Uchiki Kuri). All destined for autumn horticultural show glory now all gone, spirited away overnight. Honestly it's rain streaking down my face, not tears.

2012 has been a never ending arm wrestle between man and slug - backwards and forwards, swaying this way then that - slug pellets and a little sunshine, beer traps and bands of copper just nudging things in our favour, then a deluge washing the advantage away.

From May the rain has been relentless. As unforgiving on the fruit and vegetables as it is on my mid 30s hairline. Darlisette strawberries rotting in situ, Allgold raspberries (below) becoming just a little too sodden to hold their shapes when picked, broad beans keeling over, heritage potato foliage buckling under the pressure and turning brown and the peas just not really feeling motivated enough to put on a show.   

The Dill's Atlantic Giant pumpkin (below) has, however, finally decided to get on with it. Stunned into inaction at first by a lack of sun it's been like a shopper waiting out a downpour in a store. Only now it's decided to yank up its hood up and make a dash for it as things show no signs of getting better. It'll never reach show standard but I won't tell it that.

Other successes? There were a handful of gooseberries the colour of a good red wine, multi-coloured radishes in rude health, some nasturtiums looking jolly and determined to enjoy things like Brits in a Wimbledon queue and Golden Nugget sweetcorn (below) on the verge of glory but it could just as easily choke at a critical moment.

So what to do? The gooseberries are destined for a small bottle of flavoured vodka (thanks to @cotsmallholder on Twitter for the recipe inspiration), assorted nasturtium flowers and leaves will work their magic in a salad along with some thinnings of purple basil seedlings and slices of Bright Lights radishes. Broad bean survivors will become a deep green hummus and the golden raspberries are just scoffed as nature intended. Little spots of colour brightening up the grey cloud of summer.

Christmas misery and New Year cheer

Early January is possibly my least favourite time of year, with decorations still up in shops, along the high street and a giant tree still twinkling obliviously at Fenchurch Street train station. With Christmas finished it no longer promises excitement like it did at the beginning of December. Instead it makes me feel depressed. Take it down quickly, please.

Even worse is the sight of a forest of frazzled pines, upended on kerbs waiting to be carted off to the trash. Stripped of their decorations and sapped of vitality from a month long imprisonment in overly heated suburban homes, some still sport the odd tuft of ragged lamenta - oh the shame.

Our own Christmas tree (above) is down. We set to it with a pair of secateurs yesterday and bagged it up and took it to the allotment. I wasn't sure what I was going to do with it at first, but I wasn't going to throw it into the bin. I'm determined it will have a more dignified end than it fellow festive friends. I plan to strip it of its needles and shred the bark as best I can and scatter it around the blueberry bushes, which makes the soil more acidic, which they like... apparently.

I'm looking forward to this little ritual which I shall carry out this weekend, weather permitting. Somehow it'll offset the yeti-sized footprint that is my January misery.

Speaking of recycling, or upcycling (because, I am turning a dead tree into blueberries, you know) I still have lots Brussels sprouts on the allotment and need recipes quick. Any ideas and tried and tested favourites greatly received - but no chestnuts though and no pancetta and definitely no sherry - Christmas is over, ok?

Allotment philosophy and Mexican spinach

There are a lot of allotments that look the same on our site so I'm always interested in those that stand out.

One neighbour tells me he's practising Wu Wei, on his patch which, he explains, is loosely the art of doing nothing in order to make things happen - action without action. I'm dubious at first. A lot of people seem to be practising Wu Wei on the allotment, they just haven't been around for months so I can't ask how it's working out from them.

His plot looks a mess but, he explains, the rotation has been planned for years, which couldn't be more different from mine. On my plot seeds go in as soon as a new patch is cultivated: no spread sheets, just going on memory. Not a great method.

Over on the Wu Wei patch a single Munchen Bier radish has been allowed to grow into a four foot bush. It's growing pods which, according to the plot holder, can be eaten as a snack. A sack of goat manure has been left to rot for a couple of years, sitting in exactly the same place where it'll (eventually) enrich the soil. It doesn't look pretty but it saves dragging it around.

Chives with purple pom pom flowers have reseeded themselves as has the fennel, with plumes like bronze ostrich feathers. The no-dig bed, which hasn't been dug for four years, is deep and still pretty soft given the dry weather... soft like stale breadcrumbs.

Recently a few people have been furiously grinding the soil on their plots with mini-rotovators, sand-blasting small patches of dried out earth for minutes on end until it's a fine tilth before slowly moving onto the next square. It's effective but hard work - the Wu method is the opposite of this.

Taosim isn't for every gardener but as it happens I've been practising Wu Wei on my plot without even realising it. Who'd have thought? I bought a sachet of Mexican Tree Spinach from the Chelsea Flower Show last year and planted a neatly regimented row in a 4ft x 8ft raised bed far too late in the season. Only three seeds really took off. I left them to get on with it. This year they've reseeded themselves - a fetching carpet of green shoots, spray-painted fluro-pink in the centre.

Leaving things to their own devices can sometimes work far better than forcing them. I'm not quite ready for an actionless allotment just yet so I think I'll do nothing about it... and then see what happens.

Slugs and radishes - a tragic tale

Something's been eating the radishes and broad beans. Lace-like holes have appeared in leaves and the Pink Slipper radishes look like they've been gnawed by a mouse.

On closer inspection I have discovered the culprit. Having a party inside a radish were two Lilliputian-sized slugs. Tiny, tiny things buzz-sawing through the flesh so the radishes resembled discarded apples cores.

Like a parent arriving back unexpectedly early to discover a rave in their home, I broke the whole thing up. The consequences were serious, very serious, nay fatal.

The slugs partied hard... and paid the price. I'll leave it there, but let this post be a warning to any other delinquent slugs who think they can try it on with me.

Flower power on the allotment

Earlier this week I possessed all the optimism of Tracey Stubbs from Birds of Feather.

Spent an entire day sending emails (of the freelance writer kind) and willing various people to reply - even sent an email to myself to prove my account was still working - it was. It seems the only person emailing me... was me.

There was still a blanket of fog around this part of Essex. About midday I was beginning to think I was dead and this was in fact heaven. The afterlife = a 60s tower block in Southend.

Anyway the only way to lift the gloom was to pour a drink, stick on the Archers podcast and start planting in doors. Elizabeth Pargeter needing resuscitation and Kenton and Jolene (shudder) aside it was very therapeutic.

This year on the allotment I'm keen to grow more flowers. Last year I managed Nasturtiums and some very low growing Sunflowers, which only just managed to make it up off the ground before the slugs devoured them.

This time I'm taking no chances with Sunflowers and am growing Mongolian Giant - which grow up to 14ft high. Try climb that, you slimy gits.

I also planted some Dahlias in seed trays, and chose another whopper, Giant Hybrids Mixed, because I'm with Liberace on the 'more is more' theory and think there is no better use of hot pink than on a fat Dahlia bloom in the middle of a green allotment.

Lupins were next - Band of Nobles Mixed - just because there is something pleasingly 50s about Lupins - I don't know why. I expect them to be grown in a garden in St Mary Mead. And like the dahlias, with their poker shapes in deep purple and egg yolk, they have a razzle-dazzle 'em quality which contrasts nicely with the upturned skip aesthetic of the allotment.

I took tips from Garden Organic at Ryton, as featured in the Allotment Keepers Handbook, and sowed some Tagetes Golden Gem. I also have some Californian Poppies, subtitled 'Easy For Children to Grow' so even I should be able to manage it.

I have yet to source Scarlet Flax or Red Orache but there's got to be something 'slaughterous red, luscious and fantastic'. (It's a line from Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca which I discovered thanks to Tim Richardson on the Telegraph gardening page.)

So the seeds are sown and covered in clingfilm ready to sprout. And when they do hopefully the fog will have lifted and I'll be an more optimistic frame of mind - how can I fail to be?

Potato days and allotment greed

I really didn't need any more potatoes. I've got first earlies, second earlies and maincrop covered, thanks. Then I went to the Garden Museum in London last weekend which just happened to be having a potato day. And, well, it was free to get in, rather than its usual £6, and I thought why not buy just a few tubers... what harm can it do?

And that was probably the point when the potato mist descended and I treated the whole exercise like someone who left Christmas shopping until Christmas Eve and was filled with a desire to buy up EVERYTHING. My inner-allotment monster ran riot.

I bought intriguingly knobbly, fat-fingered tubers of Anya and Pink Fir Apple with the latter described as 'the historic potato' in Christopher Stocks' excellent Forgotten Fruits.

I finally tracked down the much-prized, tri-coloured Mr Little's Yeltholm Gypsy, regularly talked up on the Observer's allotment blog and most recently by Alys Fowler. And at the recommendation of the sellers, Pennard Plants, I added another blue-skinned variety, Bleu D'Auvergne, because I asked for something unusual - as if the slug-shaped Pink Fir and the red, purple and cream Mr LYG weren't unique enough.

I also cursed my tardiness when Vitelotte (purple skin and flesh) had all sold out... an hour and half after the potato day opened. They are clearly the potato equivalent of Heston's Hidden Orange Christmas Pudding and I was left to ponder the fun I could have had serving them up to guests.

So now I have 62 tubers, of nine different varieties, chitting in the spare bedroom which will be crammed onto a double-sized starter plot already stretched to capacity. If we're spared the blight, we'll be guaranteed a bumper crop and yet there's only two of us to feed - how many multicoloured potatoes can two men eat?

There's supposed to be a simplicity to allotments, which I haven't learned to practice yet. More is more doesn't quite fit in a place where neighbours regularly build their own sheds or go skipping for pallets and find other useful junk to make border beds and benches. And yet my soon to be delivered seed order contains two different varieties of beetroot, numerous carrots and radishes and three different varieties of pumpkin including Dill's Atlantic Giant. I mean, a giant pumpkin is an amusing novelty but how do you get an amusing novelty home from the allotment and what do you do with it when you get it there?

As fun as potato shopping is I'm going to lock up the allotment monster and when it comes to future seed orders learn to realise when enough is enough. On the plus side there will be a lot friends getting potatoes as gifts this year. It's the simple things, right?

Three go foraging (for nettles)

I used to be a Scout. Not only that, a veritable Rachel Berry of Scouting who represented his troop at the 18th World Scout Jamboree.

Oh yeah, I could build a bivouac, chop wood and cook a three-course banquet on an open fire for a patrol of six. I could even lash together a set of pioneering rods to make a camp dresser.

Fifteen years later, now a seasoned commuter, I've regressed.

I've become a seriously hesitant cook. When a recipe calls for simmering, I have to get a second opinion to verify exactly what 'simmering' is. I'm not exactly a pioneering allotment owner either. Any veg I don't quite understand I leave to rot on the plot rather than eat (see the Bright Lights Chard entry). I haven't put up a proper shed yet because I'm not sure I'd know how or where to start.

I thought it was high time I reconnected with the outdoor life of my youth and simultaneously re-grew a spine in the kitchen. In short, it was time to go foraging for my own supper (or some of it, at least).

That's exactly what I did last weekend. My partner (Mr XMTP) and sister, were my companions on a rain-sodden, mud-slide of a trip to Hadleigh Country Park to forage for nettles. The end game – nettle soup with smoked fish from The River Cottage Fish Book.

Armed with scissors, CSI latex gloves and a picnic (ha, how naive!) we only needed half a plastic bag of nettles. An easy entry for first time foragers. Or so we thought.

Sister XMTP started by collecting something that looked like nettles but wasn't (I don't know what it was... where is Guy Grieve when you need him?). Wellies got stuck in the mud. The rain whipped down from every conceivable angle, and nettles, so infuriatingly and painfully abundant, at every other other time of year were in short supply. (We were, perhaps a little enthusiastically early... it's not even spring yet). But when we finally discovered a rare patch, a beautiful kelly green in the dun coloured undergrowth, we snipped at leaves so gingerly it was if we were cutting thread for petit point embroidery.

Two hours later at the Salvation Army café, damp and tucking into the picnic, we had half a carrier bag of green gold. It would have been easier to have foraged for a bag of spinach down the high street but that wasn't the point. Food should take time, not just in its preparation in the kitchen or growing vegetables on the allotment but sometimes sourcing it too. Slow food can sometimes mean getting stuck in the mud in pursuit of dinner. And while foraged nettles might not taste any different than a bag of shop-bought spinach, it will always be more memorable, and that's what meals should be.

It might not look it, but the soup tasted good... and I had a warm glow, which wasn't just a stinging cold face, as we made it back to the cosy flat (I think it might have been pride). And even if nettles aren't destined to be a regular feature on the dinner table, it feels like the beginning of a more adventurous spirit. Baden-Powell, I'm sure, would be pleased. I am.