How to avoid Rickets

Is the weather just as gorgeous where you are at the moment? This time last year it was bucketing down with rain but this year, this year I've already got tan lines! Admittedly this has caught me out and I can't find my sunscreen so I'm having to play melanoma roulette until I get some more. But isn't the sunshine great?

The last few weeks have mostly been spent generally doing the weeding and covering with black plastic in readiness for the transplant of seedlings from the plastic-house. There's still more to be done but a fair bit's covered now. I also managed to inveigle The Husband to come along and do more strimming and a spot of digging - plus I thought he was living too much of a troglodytic teenage boy lifestyle, stuck within four walls, staring at a computer screen, and was getting deprived of Vitamin D. So he needed to get out into the sunshine before he developed rickets.

Here, then, is proof that The Husband does occasionally go out of the house in the hours of daylight. Actually he's doing a totally fabulous job of strimming and now the allotment looks properly loved and cared for.

Other stuff I've done this week is to construct a bamboo wigwam with hairy string in between and around the poles for my sweet peas to grow up. I've not grown these from seed but bought some trays of wee seedlings to grow on and then plant out, all in the same colour, dark purple. They were quite pot-bound by the time I planted them out, ripping them apart to spread them around evenly, so we'll see if they survive such brutal treatment. I've never grown them before so it's all an experiment really.

The sweet pea wigwam is in the fruit area of the allotment (is there a proper name for that? I mean, everyone knows what an 'orchard' is, but is there an equivalent name for where you grow your fruit bushes and plants?)

We've now got 45 strawberry plants in the allotment (and about another 20 in a couple of tubs at home), and they've started flowering already which is great, because that's where the berries come from! Yay!

Also the gooseberries are doing beautifully - there are two yellow types (which seem to be growing upright) and one red kind (which is more sort of horizontal). There are three blackcurrant bushes which are also happy. I pruned them hard in March and plunged the offcuts into a couple of pots and they've all taken which means there will be an extra 8 plants next year!

Gooseberries




















Blackcurrants





























So there we are then. Next post I'll have an update of what's going on in the plastic-house.

Spuds Are Go!

The weather's perked up again and time is relentlessly moving on, flowers are bursting open and birds are shouting from every decent vantage point. If you're not a gardener or veg grower you may not be aware but March and April are quite possibly the busiest months of the year.

I've been popping down to the allotment 2 or 3 times a week for a couple of hours at a time mainly just to do weeding and clear the ground in preparation for The Seedlings That Are To Come. I'm going with the same system I used last year which is to sow seeds in little pots and keep them cosseted and fussed over in the plastic-house at the end of my garden. When they're big enough they'll get transferred to their final places in the allotment. This method ensures I know what is vegetable seedling and what is weed.

What I am doing slightly differently this year is using the inner cardboard tube from finished loo rolls as much as possible rather than little plastic pots. This has involved me demanding increased ejection of bodily waste so that I get enough tubes for my purposes. The Husband is being remarkably tolerant of my cries of "poo more frequently!" since, as he retorts, the only possible retort to that is, "well, feed me more then", he retorted. And he's never been one to turn down an extra helping of tuck. As he says, he's just one man, trying to do his bit for the planet.

My first early spuds have been quietly chitting away in the downstairs loo (that's 'chitting' not...no, never mind). Gardening lore states that your spuds should go into the ground at Easter but it truly hadn't dawned on me until I read it on the allotments forum I frequent that Easter is a moveable feast so last year the spuds went into the ground at the endish of April because that's when Easter was last year. This year it falls on the weekend from 10 to 13 April which is the weekend after next, so, really, spuds should go in any time now.

As this is the single hardest job on the allotment, I asked The Husband if he would come along and help me dig two long trenches across the width of the plot for sticking the spuds into. If I'd done this myself it would have probably taken a good couple of hours spread over two days to do it but, with his help, we dug the trenches and bunged in the spuds in half the time! Yay!

So that was all that got done today but, fear not, things are coming along apace in the plastic-house. Regard the leeks and sprouts seedlings in their new loo roll homes.

And as I'm typing this I'm also watching live footage of the ridiculous protests in London against the G20 summit. I truly can't abide these people - while there may be a small kernel of folks for whom a protest like this is meaningful and who want to make a statement about climate change or Palestine or CND or whatever, for all the others it's just an excuse for causing trouble. And now they're starting fires outside the Bank of England - well, that's going to do wonders for their carbon footprints isn't it? I can't help wondering how many of the so-called Climate Change protestors actually walked to the venue, and how many took a car or a bus or a train or even a plane. When I see these tossers on the box I really can't help being reminded of Rik Mayall's portrayal of 'radical student' Richey Rich in the Young Ones - middle class kids trying to be 'hard 'n' street 'n' cool'. I really don't think smashing the windows of a branch of the Royal Bank of Scotland while being egged on by the paparazzi is really going to help many polar bears now, is it? At least I'm trying to grow my own food - what are they doing? /rant mode off/

Just call me 'Ripley', okay?

The weather this week has, so far, been just lovely - sunny and quite warm too, up to 17 degrees centigrade/62 degrees fahrenheit so on Sunday The Husband and I headed off to the plopment to christen the strimmer!!

To be honest I was a little afeared at first - it has an outboard motor-type thing on the end of it and I really didn't want to look foolish and like a weedy girl by failing to get it started, so persuaded The Husband that, being all manly 'n' that, he should have a go first. It took some pulling to get the thing going but once it did - vroom, vroom! And also loud! I felt a bit bad about the noise especially as the site was teeming with folks, some of them brand new this year, all of whom had decided to bring their kids along. It may be my natural paranoia but I could swear some of them gave us the stink-eye but to hell with them - they'll soon learn that the site secretary is extremely strict about grass being kept cut, so edges and pathways have to be Brazilianed to within a inch (or preferably less) of their lives and short of getting a petrol driven (or worse, bicep-driven) lawnmower, or garden shears that will make you want to stab out your eyes after about five minutes, the only way to comply with this diktat is to get a petrol strimmer.

The petrol tank wasn't really big enough for this first use as there was a LOT of grass to get through, especially at the top end which is currently uncultivated, but at least we got to have a go. The Husband did around the shed and the compost bins and then persuaded me to use it. I was a bit reluctant at first but, once on, the resemblance between me and Sigourney Weaver in Aliens was absolutely unmistakeable - watch out, alien weeds, I'm a-comin' for ya. Cut grass was flying about and I was off! At least until the petrol ran out, but I'll Be Back...

Here are some pics then:

Hi Ho, Hi Ho, it's off to the plopment we go.....

Yesterday (Saturday 21 Feb), the weather was gorgeous. 12 degrees, Blue sky, tons of sunshine (enough, I reckon, to give a touch of sunburn - no kidding!), dry, so I decided that it was about time I did some more plot clearance as it's getting perilously close to sowing time. Mind you, having said that, I tend to keep my seedlings safe and toasty in the plastic-house in my garden at home until they're large enough to transfer to the plopment so I do have a bit of lee-way.

The site was pretty busy, about a quarter of the plots had someone working on them, all clearing and raking and generally enjoying the sunshine.

I decided it was high time the stumps of the red cabbages and all the Brussel Sprouts should come out, as well as the totally useless Winter Spinach that we hadn't eaten any of and which were now just withered stalks (won't bother with that again). So stuff was dug up and discarded and weeding done along the way. Weeding is, this year, so much easier than last year - seemingly at the minute it's just forget-me-not, some other stuff I don't recognise but which has shallow roots and some rogue couch grass. The soil is loose and not much more than damp so removal is really easy. I do, though, have virgin ground at the top end of the plot that needs digging over and that'll be hard work but I'll get round to it eventually.

I decided to leave in the Purple Sprouting Broccoli as it's still being cropped, and the Savoy Cabbages, although terribly wee, are still trying their hardest so they can remain. Also the Kale still looks good. But everything else has come out, including the cabbage plants that the pigeons got to and some overwintering red cabbage seedlings that haven't grown at all.

The cleared spaces were then scattered with Growmore and raked flattish. So that was that.

I'd taken my camera with me but decided that I wasn't going to take boring old standard photos of what the plants looked like. So I wandered around and got interesting and arty instead. I'm not going to tell you what any of these are - some are obvious, some you'll have to guess (don't forget - clicky for biggy):

Is winter over yet?

I'm looking out my jewellery workshop window and seeing a beautiful day - blue sky, sunshine, a slight haze on the horizon, hardly any clouds - but the ground is still frozen. Seems the cold weather is not yet over. The snow took over a week to melt completely although I can still see a small pile between the bins on the pavement over the road. This means that it's still too cold to do decent work at the allotment today.

However I did manage to get some seed potatoes yesterday from Secrett's Garden Centre in Milford. I've decided to grow spuds again this year and have chosen Maris Peer as Second Earlies and Desirees as Maincrop. I've made a list month-by-month of what I can start sowing and things really kick off next month, March. I've also scanned in the plot plan for this coming season as you can see. The entire plot has still not been totally dug over and there's uncultivated land at the top of the plot which currently has fruit on it. I may fill in the gaps at the top with more french beans, and I'll probably grow lettuce in the gaps between the rows. I've decided to grow more herbs at home (where they're closer to the kitchen) rather than at the plopment.

The plan's mostly self-explanatory but the three oddly-shaped circles (I couldn't get them even) labelled 'BB' are blueberry bushes. At the bottom, along from the shed there are unlabelled shapes. These are; circle nearest the shed = dalek compost bin; square = horse poo corrall; circle on the far right = weed pile. Don't forget you can click on all the pictures to make them bigger:

Blimey - they weren't kidding!

Snow storms from Russia were predicted - and snow storms from Russia is what happened! I am so pleased I did go to the allotment a couple of days ago, because (as you can see from the pictures - which are of my garden, incidentally) everything is under at least a foot of snow and there's apparently more on the way this afternoon!

Needless to say everything in this country's ground to a halt - trains and flights cancelled, roads untreated. But it is very pretty, nonetheless! This is the largest snowfall the south of England has had since 1991 (which I remember).



The Husband ventured out to the nearest cornershop to pick up milk and bread (no chance of doing a big shop in Sainsburys today) and said there was a real fun atmosphere out on the streets - kids building snowmen and having snowball fights, being pulled around on toboggans. The cats are thoroughly bemused (the snow's deeper than they are and they won't venture out) - we're trying to reintroduce them to a litter tray but they're seriously unimpressed with everything.


















I managed to get out to clear the snow from the bird feeders - as you can see, they were waiting for me.

Anyway, I'm off to put the kettle on, so keep warm everyone and don't forget to check on your elderly neighbours.

The Comedy Vegetable Parade!!!

I've been meaning to get down to the plopment for the last few days but always managed to talk myself out of it, knowwhaddimean? Anyway, decided I wanted to have red cabbage and apple as a side dish for Sunday lunch which meant that, quite reasonably, I had to go the allotment to pick some! Plus (rather excitingly - and alarmingly - but excitingly) snow is predicted across the UK within the next few days so if I wanted to start clearing some of the plot before spring, I pretty much had to go NOW.

So now that our Saturday and Sunday mornings are no longer in thrall to the tyranny of the weekend papers, I decided to head off down the road - and I'm jolly glad I did. Even as I write this, as the afternoon is sliding into early evening, it's still beautiful out there - blue skies with that hazy pink at the horizon.

I decided that it was time the leggy carrots and parsnips gave up their comfy beds as the space is going to be needed for something else, so out they came.

Honest to God - will you just LOOK at these freaks of nature? Far too many legs and carrot fly tunnels. The parsnips have a woody core as well. Oh well, I decided the parsnips can go into the dalek bin to make next year's compost but the carrots can be washed and then be fed to some grateful horses that I know.

I now know why they grew so many limbs. Turns out it's not such a good idea to grow them each in an individual pot then transplant the seedlings into their final place when they're big enough. For some reason they just don't like it and start sprouting new arms and legs like crazy. What I should have done was just plant the seeds where they were going to grow and then thin them out accordingly. This I will do in the coming growing season and see if it works. If it doesn't then I'm not going to bother again, especially as carrots are so cheap in the shops. I realise, for an allotmenteer, that this is almost heresy but I'm nothing if not realistic. Of course, having said all this, the taste of homegrown carrots is really quite astonishing so it is worth pursuing. Parsnips, though, hmmm. Not sure. We don't eat anything like as many of them as we do carrots, but perhaps I'll give them one more go...

One thing I did finally manage to get round to recently was drawing the plan for next season - I can't seem to insert a word document here so, sorry, no picture of it. But there's rotation!! And I'm putting this year's brassicas where last year's sweetcorn was so well-rotted horse manure was applied. This is the first time I've added the manure that I collected last spring and summer from the stables where I ride, and what lovely stuff it's turned into. I hope it does the trick.

While I was forking about in the poo corral I heard a rustling in the bushes at the other side of the site from me. I stopped to see what it was and saw the most beautiful fox having a sit down and a yawn in the sun. It was about 30-40 feet away from me and didn't seem all that bothered! It moved into some thicker undergrowth to one side and curled up for a sleep. I continued with what I was doing, then decided I would do my best to take a photo. I got as close as I could but didn't want to startle it. My new camera has a really good zoom but I don't have a tripod so please forgive me the dodgy focusing but at least I got a reasonable picture of it's ear and half-opened eyes! You can click on all the pictures to make them bigger.


I only hope that the new Chicken Palace, which is coming along well and now has proper netting (if that's the right word) to keep the predators like lovely Mr/Ms Fox out. I don't know when the little dinosaurs are arriving as I'm not taking part in the project, but I'm looking forward to their arrival all the same.






As these cold winter evenings give such beautiful night skies, I thought I'd finish with a picture that I took last night. I think that's a planet hanging underneath the moon, but can't be sure. Perhaps it's Venus which is usually the brightest planet in the night sky... anyway, enjoy.