Giving up!

The wonderful thing about all this sadness is that you
and Gerry are such good gardening friends, and can share
his plot next year. Hope the raised bed woodwork can be
installed on his plot. They are definitely warmer.

Anyone who has too many lettuces should make Lettuce
Soup, its lovely in the freezer through the winter.
Always sprinkle with a little freshly ground nutmeg. One
year I froze 42 margarine tubs of it.

Sad to end not being able to keep up the allotment, BUT your hard work has left it in good stead for someone else to take on, there are queues of people waiting for allotments so there is someone out there getting very very excited about being able to get their hands on Plot 12A.

Hope your friend is soon back on his feet and you are both laughing together at your gardening efforts in his plot and enjoying each others company once more. All the best hope you do not miss the allotment too much. I am sure other things will keep you amused for hours on end, especially the kids. lol :O)

I thought my problems with the websites had come to an end but apparently that's not the case as I replied, quite lengthily, to you both but when I tried post the comments I lost everything as I'd been logged out again! GRRRRRR!

That was one of the problems I'd been having all summer & part of the reason I've not posted on GoY as much as I was used to!

The problems with my keyboard seem to have been resolved & I can write as usual & the text appears on the page as soon as I write - which wasn't happening before! Also the speed of connection & viewing seemed to have been resolved as well! :-)) I wish I knew what had caused the problems with the internet since about May this year. I can't take the credit for having resolved them as I don't know what caused them nor how they've been resolved!

Sorry to hear that but I appreciate its alot of work but you've done well with it so you can be proud of that

You've done the right thing Balcony, its hard enough keeping on top of things with one plot and it would have really hassled you trying to cope as well as looking after Getty's plot whist he's not able to.
Hope he is back with you next springtime in good health, you must have missed his company..
I sometimes get chucked off halfway through, drives me mad to have to start all over again, luckily it doesn't happen with my blogs, I'd really be spitting feathers at that, lol....

What a shame you're giving it up, but we can only do what we can do, and a time comes when we have to move on.
I hope you'll still show us photos of your balcony :)

It sounds a very sensible decision under the circumstances. I was always terrifically impressed by how you managed to keep it all going! Its good to know you'll still be gardening though, if on a slightly reduced scale! Hope Gerry has a speedy recovery.

Thank you all for your comments :-)) It is a shame to give it up but, as I said in the introduction to this blog, "I couldn’t spend nearly as much time as I needed to on it" now, without the pressure of having to look after Gerry's at the same time as mine, I will be better able to help Gerry & not feel the pressure of having too little time to get anything done!

I shall continue to post blogs - no worries! I may even, possibly, have a little more time once again - especially as with autumn here & the winter on its way I will be spending less time out of the flat!

I'm copying this before I post it so as not to lose anything if I'm logged out when I go to post it!

Our hero at the switchboard told me recently, that I have
to go to the drop down menu at the top of the page and
log out through that. Then the blogs I have commented on,
and others have also done so, come up next time.
Maybe this is where you are going wrong and its not
your computer.

Well done Balcony. It's hard to give up things we love, but you clearly made the right decision, especially now that Gerry is recuperating. I hope that eventually you will have more time to do what you want. Growing veg is never very economic s it? You get a better product and fresher, but definitely not cheaper! And it always seems like such a battle with nature...carrot fly, blight, drought and flood, caterpillars, pigeons, viruses and all that stuff. I'm going to have a small veg area of raised beds, but an allotment.....no, I think I'll stick to my greenhouse and a few bits and bobs. :)) as Mum says...you've passed it on in great nick for the next enthusiast!

sorry to hear, but as it's not cost-effective, it's probably for the best. Only prob is that if circumstances change later, it's a heck of a job to get an allotment again - most places have long waiting lists.

if you don't eat much veg there's not much point, you'd only have to give away the porodcue or throw it away as it spoiled.

Thanks Diane for that but the problem was occurring on all the forums I have to log into to comment - not just GoY. Nothing to do with my computer although there may have been some problem I'm unaware of that can cause this sort of thing to happen. Whatever it was the same way it cropped up months ago it seems to have solved itself! Thankfully!

I installed a new Operating System (OS) from Linux. With that I got back my internet connectivity & was posting again. But as I haven't mastered the new OS yet I found I had to do somethings through Windows, (I hadn't uninstalled it, the Linux OS ran in a different partition), as long as I didn't need to go on the Internet!

Now I'm back to using Windows as before May this year when my problems seemed to start.

Karen, you are right that growing one's own veg isn't economical! I already knew that before I started. It was a shame to have to give up the plot after 3 years of hard graft on it but what can you do? Other things have greater priority over our limited time.

Other than blight I can't say I've had much trouble with other pests & diseases. Perhaps the weather has played a greater role in any problems I've had rather than anything else.

Fran, my friend Gerry has told me I can grow what I like on his plots. Even a half allotment has been a bit much for me to use fully especially as neither my wife nor I are fond of most vegetables! For example neither of us can stand anything from the Brassica family of veg! So I don't grow Cabbage, Brussels Sprouts or Cauliflower. I grow a few Carrots but don't have many as my wife doesn't like them & a few are more than enough for me. Lettuces grow very well but it's VERY difficult to try & maintain a steady flow. This year I sowed them three time in the spring at 2 week intervals but still entered up with a glut! The first sowing grew very slowly because of the cold weather & the 2nd sowing caught up with it before the 1st was coming to an end, the same happened with the third sowing, it overlapped the 2nd far too soon & I had to give some away & throw others away that started to bolt before we could use them!

I love Beetroot & it has done very well for me this year, none has bolted & I've has only a few weeks when I had none to cook! In August I sowed some more & next week they will be the last crop to be harvested as the plot returns to the hands of the Town Council from Wednesday.