My name is Helena Johnson. I live in Coventry, England. I’m a retired nurse, aromatherapist and interpreter (Czech<>English). My latest passion is my allotment, which I treat like a new full-time job. And this is my allotment diary.

I started working on my allotment about 6 years ago, as I was nearing my retirement. Many people think, in my opinion quite wrongly, that having an allotment is easy, you just go there and dig a bit here and there – wrong! In order to have a decent plot without many weeds you have to prepare the ground. I am quite an organised person and I like to work methodically; the finished job should be just so and I approached the work on my plot like that.

I started with a half-plot but very soon realised that the veg I wanted to grow would not fit there. Fortunately the other half became available very soon so I just continued digging and getting it all ready. I knew the basics of veg growing, having helped my granddad in the past and also having grown some veg in our back garden – all on a small scale though. This was serious.

To cut a long story short, my new full plot was entered into the Coventry allotment association competition as a newcomer (female) and I won! Nothing better than some success, I was greatly encouraged and suddenly we had a continuous supply of fresh vegetables. And I didn’t stop at one plot. A half became available so I decided to build a poly tunnel and move all my soft fruit bushes there and build a fruit cage. All this also solved the problem of what to give me as birthday and Christmas presents – anything for the allotment or vouchers to garden centre/hand creams/gloves etc.

I like to treat my gardening as a full time job and try to keep the weekends free, bus as every gardener will know we have to be flexible and go with the weather. As a retired person I can ignore the days of the week and have a weekend in the middle of the week if I wish.

I like to grow something new every year and if it doesn’t perform well or I don’t like it I won’t grow it again. This year was the third time I grew a Tromboncino courgette, because it is a great variety to grow. The longest one was 110 cm and tasted superb, never mind the size.

There are some photos of my allotment below.

I’ll be sending my first post shortly, so… watch this space!

Christmas Day, 2014