A cold hour on the allotment

New things are always fun and thus, even though there was not really anything useful to do, I walked down the road and spend an hour on the allotment. I was also curious to know how long it would take by foot; our first visit was by car.

Walking normal speed it is just a bit more than 15 minutes, which I consider very reasonable. I was afraid it would take more then 30 minutes, but walking there's a short-cut which is not available to cars. When going alone, I will probably take my bike most of the time. With the kids, it would be nice to be able to go by foot instead of having to take the car. If it takes me 15 minutes, we'll be able to be there in half an hour when we take them which is still fine, would it have been a lot longer it would probable have forced us to take the car to go, which would be a pity.

I spend my time there by sweeping the snow of the stone path and rummaging around a bit. We are lucky that the previous owner left us quite a few tools. There is a rather complete set that can be used while working on the knees. Not quite what I had in mind, but probably handy once the plot has been sorted out, vegetables are growing and weeds just need to be kept in check.

There is also what is needed in normal tools that can be used standing upright, but 3 or 4 of those have their shafts broken. Either they have been accumulating over the years, and been replaced by tools that have been taken away, or the earth must be a bit harder to work with than I hoped. It is certainly hard to say now, everything is frozen solid.

I've got a plot!!

Yesterday was the big day, allotment wise. We visited the organization that takes care of the local community gardens here in Zürich, and went with them to a rather large site with allotments. They must at least have a couple of hundred there! There were just two available to choose from though.

All plots are roughly 200 square meters (600 sq. feet), so size wasn't an issue in the choice; they are also virtually all facing the same direction, no difficult decisions to make there either. The main point is the shed that's present on the allotment. Apparently we do rent the plot from the organization or the city (I didn't get quite which of the two it is in the end); the shed however, is property of the allotment holder and needs to be bought by the next person. The community garden organization (familiengartenverein) decides upon a price, the seller doesn't have a lot of say and the buyer gets to say 'yes' or 'no'.

The first plot we got shown had a very fancy shed that looked nice and solid and has without doubt been made with a lot of love. The second plot has a standard shed which is at least 15 years old and not too solid anymore. An added advantage of the first plot was that there's a lot of fruit bushes and trees already growing, which means that in that respect the first seasons will be a bit more productive.

Here is an areal of the allotment we choose. We didn't quite get to see it like this since there is currently about 20 cm of snow covering it. Previous owner apparently spend a lot of time on the plot, but got severe heart problems during last summer and had to give up the plot. There's a small 'tomato house' at the bottom end (in green). It is covered on top and on three sides .... which seems a bit weird to me; for sure they'll suffer less from wind, but I guess they need to be watered every other day. Fortunately it is one of the few allotments which actually has running water.

There was a bed with strawberry plants, somewhere under the snow. There are blackberry plants, raspberries, redcurrants and grapes. I also noticed one apple tree, there are others on neighboring allotments, so that should work out as well. There are some more trees and bushes, but the persons showing us around didn't know what they were, or details got lost in translation.

The necessary papers will get signed soon, and then once the snow melts and the temperatures rise (probably those two will be somewhat associated) I know what to do with my spare time.

Garlic will to into the ground in February here ... definitely will have to do some preparation work for that! I'll keep you up to date.