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):

More of the same, really....

Well, it kinda shames me to say it but, for today's posting, you may as well read the last one on 6 January. It's far too cold and wet to get out to do serious allotmenteering (at least as far as I'm concerned it is). So The Husband and I just popped down there today to check that everything was in one piece and hanging on in there.

First thing I noticed was the berludy pigeons have been ransacking my purple sprouting broccoli big seedlings/ small plantlets that have been overwintering. Now, I suppose I really do only have myself to blame but, for some unknown reason, perhaps I thought the flying rats might just overlook my bountiful juicy brassicas during the coldest, hungriest depths of winter and leave them alone. 'Well, duh...' I hear you all scorn in unison. So, yes, they've been hammered but, to be honest, I'm not really that bothered. I planted these new seedlings before I'd started harvesting the previous crop of PSB and, you know what, I wasn't exactly bowled over by it. I mean, it's nice enough, sure, but I think I really do prefer the big, old-fashioned single-headed green Calabrese (the stuff labelled 'Broccoli' in the supermarkets). The pigeons are welcome to it. Actually, I'll just dig the lot up when I come to clear the plot of the remaining crops in the next few weeks. And at least know that I won't bother with PSB again. Another lesson learned.

What else? All the onions and garlic are fine and look much the same as they did earlier in the month. The Chard has now gone over so will come out of the ground. The broad beans are about an inch high and a couple of inches wide so it looks like they may come good this spring. There are still squid-like carrots and parsnips in the ground which I will excavate and see if anything can be used. The long plastic cloche (it looks like a miniature polytunnel) covering my winter salad leaves had blown over again leaving the plants exposed but they seemed to be fine. The leeks don't look to have grown any bigger, so I think it's time to stop waiting for them to actually do something and start eating them. The red cabbage is looking distinctly sad. All the outer leaves appear to have vanished (probably down some pigeon's gullet) and the burgundy globes of the tightly packed inner leaves definitely look as if they've been hit by frost. I've decided that I'll harvest them this week, salvage what I can of them and turn them into Red Cabbage Ragout (about the only thing you can make with red cabbage - it's yummy and has onions, cinnamon and cooking apples in it too). They look pretty small in the picture, next to the (also pigeon pecked) brussel sprouts and, in all honesty, they are a bit but never mind, although they were small, they did actually grow and I grew them from seed so I'm pretty chuffed all round.

The fruit garden is exactly as it was on 6 January, so we just have to wait until spring really hits us before seeing any changes there I expect.

So, this week I need to actively start thinking about what I'm going to grow this year and where I'm going to put it, rotation-wise. L8rs....

Welcome to 2009

I'm trusting we all survived the excesses of Christmas and the New Year and emerged the other side in one piece. As mentioned in my last post of 2008, I can confirm that I did get a Stihl FS38 petrol driven strimmer - it's orange, noisy and very, VERY manly. Trouble is it's just too damn cold out there at the moment to go and use it. I dare say it's powerful enough to cut frozen grass but I'm happy to wait until my feet don't turn into blocks of ice just in order to give the plopment a bit of a haircut.

I tend to get stir crazy if I have to stay indoors for a few days at a time, so decided that today the weather was bright enough (and the green bin in the kitchen needed emptying) for a trip to see how the site was doing. I also wanted to pick the last few meagre brussels sprouts and purple sprouting broccoli.

I also got a BRAND NEW CAMERA!!!! YAY!!!! So this was an also opportunity to play with the settings - The Husband took most of the pictures. D'you like my new hair? Nah, only kidding, it was so cold that I was wearing my Russian (fake) fur hat and even had the Deputy Dawg ear flaps down which left my head toasty warm but somewhat deaf.

Everything's doing fine down there although it's so cold that the water troughs have frozen completely - poor the Water Boatmen that live in there.

Anyway the onions and garlic seem to be thriving. If you recall, in Autumn last year I planted 200 onion sets of both overwintering Japanese and Red varieties, and probably about 50 Garlic cloves. The close up picture shows a few red onions (and even some frost on the ground, just as proof of the general coldness of the day).

The Savoy Cabbages are all coming along but weren't big enough to eat for Christmas Day lunch and, frankly, still aren't big enough to eat even now.

The fruit bushes and canes still just look like sticks stuck in the ground so we don't know yet how they're doing although all three Blueberry bushes have new buds. The cherry tree also seems to be surviving as do the many strawberry plants that went in at the end of last year.

We were only there for about 20 minutes or so before running home to the joys of central heating and a hot cup of tea!

So what have I learned?

I expect this will probably be my last post for 2008 as I really don't intend visiting the plopment much more this winter, once every 1-2 weeks is likely, so there won't be anything truly scintillating to tell you until next year, so I'll use this post as a roundup of what I've achieved this year and what I intend to do differently next year.

So, to start, the weather today is absolutely gorgeous - crystal clear heartbreakingly blue skies overhead, the slight smell of woodsmoke, cold enough to see your breath but not freezingly so - and what did we decide to do? That's right, along with most of the population of southern England, we went christmas shopping in Guildford. We were expecting it to be hell-on-wheels but, you know what, it wasn't. Can't really put my finger on why exactly. We decided to get into town early, as close to 9am as possible, even then expecting to see queues of cars trying to get into Sainsbury's car park but we more or less swooped in AND managed to park in The Husband's favourite area of the car park easily. We then gaily threw the diet to the wind and started off with coffee and warm chocolate croissants, enabling me to leave The Husband with a newspaper while I pottered around some nearby shops. 'This is all going far too easily' I thought, 'something's bound to go awry' but, today, Our Shopping Game Was Strong. Ninja warriors had nothing on us this morning - we were in and out of Marks & Spencer, TopShop, House of Fraser, Game and (less excitingly) Sainsburys as fast as a fat kid going for the last sandwich at a birthday party. We were done and home in under 2.5 hours. The rest can all be done online. Hooray!!!

Rather excitingly, I picked up my christmas present that my parents-in-law are going to give me yesterday. You might think that it would be pink, possibly fluffy, most definitely sparkly and you would be wrong. Girl's done got herself a Stihl FS38 Brushcutter! And, look, I even just found a picture of a girly using one (although that's not to say it isn't a desperately manly piece of kit - in case you've got one and you're a bloke and you feel I've just slurred your inherent butchness and manliness...) I think the picture's just to show that it's light and so simple to use that even (*snort*) a woman could do it! Still it made a VERY exciting sound when we fired it up at the store and I suspect I'll have to wrench it out of The Husband's hands if I want to use it myself - he had that definite gleam of "ooh, toy!" in his eye. It's a petrol-driven 2-stroke strimmer that I need to keep the edges and paths of the plopment under control. A cordless electric one just doesn't have enough oomph to be able to deal with allotment strimming so even though it's an expensive item, I had to have one. Thanks in advance, Desmond and Minnie.

So I went down to the plopment today, then, just to check that everything was still where I left it and to take some final pictures for the 2008 blog.

About 2 weeks ago (and I forgot to take pictures), my fruit tree and bushes arrived so The Husband and I spent a couple of hours planting them while the ground was still warm. There was:

1 x	Raspberry Autumn Bliss - 5 Canes
1 x	Cherry Maynard - 2 Year Bush BARE ROOT
1 x	Blueberry Patriot - 1 Litre Container
1 x	Raspberry Glen Prosen - 5 Canes
1 x	Strawberry Aromel Runners (10 plants)

3 x Blackcurrants Wellington XXX
2 x Gooseberry Langley Grange

I also moved the Raspberries that I'd planted out back in May this year as they were now in the wrong place, so I put them with the others.

First, then, I put all the Raspberries and Blackcurrants in two rows. They may be too close together but I'll have to deal with that next year. The Husband has said he'd construct some posts and wire next spring to tie the new growth to.

The cherry tree is a new self fertile dwarf dessert sweet cherry which should not reach any taller than 2 metres in height and requires no pruning. Strictly speaking it's a patio plant and is probably intended to be kept in a pot, but I'm not allowed to grow 'proper' trees at the site so dwarf varieties are the way to go. Picking is in early July so we'll see (a) if it works and (b) if I can get to the cherries before the birds.

The strawberries have now all gone in and don't really look like much in the ground so I've not bothered taking a picture of them. The three different varieties of blueberry are now planted in a row so fingers crossed they'll also work. The gooseberry bushes arrived a little late to plant in the allotment due to the recent very cold weather so I've put them in a large pot in a sunny sheltered place on my patio and they can stay there until next March.

As for everything else, my overwintering onions are doing fabulously - looks like there should be a good crop to come up before I put in the next lot in spring.

All the brassicas are thriving still, the sprouts and purple sprouting broccoli are still producing and the Savoy Cabbages are doing their thang - hopefully we'll have one (plus sprouts) for Christmas Dinner.

I'm also still harvesting Chard and I just love the effect of the sunlight shining through the Ruby Red Chard leaves.

Oh, and I've forgotten to tell you that the allotment site will be having communal chickens for the first time! The site secretary announced in the summer that the site was going to become part of the Community Chicken Project depending on how many people were willing to get involved. The Husband and I seriously thought about it for a very long time - I would so love to keep chickens - but doing anything by committee, with rotas for this and that, never works out. I mean, whose responsibility is it to take the chucks to the vet if/when they become ill? What happens if someone forgets to put them to bed at night and the foxes (and we have a lot of foxes) get them? What happens when they come to the end of their laying life? Does anyone get to eat them? There are just far too many potential problems with far too many people involved so, rather sadly, we decided joining in wasn't an option for us. I'd much rather have my own chickens with no-one else being involved. However this hasn't stopped me being rather excited by their eventual arrival and, to this end, a rather magnificent Chicken Palace is currently being constructed on site! I don't know how many hens are going to be installed but their run and henhouse is taking up the whole of a vacant half plot - you can see how big it's going to be in the picture - the framing will obviously eventually be covered with fox-proof wire/netting/whatever.

So - what have I learned?

Growing vegetables is not that difficult but there are different levels of work needed at different times of the year. Obviously I started the plot this year in February and it was just totally grassed over. Clearing the ground of the ordinary grass, the couch grass, the mare's tail and all the other weeds took a huge amount of hard, dirty, heavy work but I always knew that I would really only have to do this once; after that it's just maintenance, weeding and adding/digging in compost/manure as and when necessary. The first year is hard and more expensive than you can imagine unless you have the time to shop around and get second hand stuff like sheds and greenhouses and manure corrals, etc. I just wanted to get on with it but, as with the clearance, I knew I was only going to fork out ('fork out'! Geddit? Oh, please yourself....) once for all this stuff. The shed has been absolutely vital, not just for somewhere to put tools, etc., but also somewhere to shelter from the rain and to dry out onions too.

What vegetables worked this year?

All the brassicas were a revelation and so easy to grow - they'll definitely be coming back. The lettuce was very successful but I must do more successional sowing. 20 or so Cobra French Bean plants gave me a yield of over 40lbs that I ended up giving away. The Rainbow Chard has been an eye-opener. Potatoes have been very successful as have the onions and the sweetcorn. Broad beans, despite getting blackfly, grew well and The Husband loves them anyway. Basil and Coriander grew like weeds and I'll try drying them next time. Telegraph variety of cucumbers loved the outdoors weather this summer (although they're mostly a greenhouse type) and were juicy and crunchy. These I will all grow again next year.

What was less successful?

Tomatoes were hopeless - all succumbed to blight. Carrots, although extremely flavourful, grew so many extra limbs that preparation took forever. They also got hit by Carrot Fly. However I will try again next year with them as the flavour was so good, but they only get ONE MORE CHANCE. Parsnips had woody centres and, again, resembled octopuses. Sweet red peppers didn't do as well as I had hoped and probably need a greenhouse to be successful. These I will probably (bar the carrots) not grow again next year.

What would I do differently?

Not that much, in hindsight. Obviously there'll be some crop rotation next year and I think I'll grow the climbing French Beans up 3 or 4 teepees of canes dotted around the place rather than in a long line - the winds wreaked havoc with them this year. I'd very much like to save up my pennies next year and get a 6'x8' greenhouse and perhaps try again with the tomatoes in there, plus chillis and red peppers, but we'll have to see. That can always wait again for another time.
Whether I do potatoes again is a question I've not decided yet. Yes, they were very tasty and easy to grow but they do take up quite a lot of room. However, since S gave up the top half of the plopment and I took it over, space isn't quite so much of an issue. Dunno, I'll have to decide later. Also quite how the new fruit area will turn out is another unknown factor. But you'll have to come back next year to read what happens there!

Well, then, many thanks to those who've vicariously travelled with me along this path of discovery - here's to next year!

Happy Winter Solstice and New Year to you all!!!

Pictures, as promised

Further to yesterday's post, and as it is SUCH a beautiful day today, I dragged The Husband away from his comfy chair to come and take some photos at the plopment, so here they be (you can click on each picture to make it larger - and I apologise for the fact that I can't work out how to reduce the gap on the page between each section of pic & text...):


This is the existing brassica bed to which I've just added a few more red cabbage, spring cabbage and a dozen sprouting broccoli seedlings. They've been in a couple of days now and the pigeons haven't discovered them yet, so I'm hopeful that I won't need to put up netting.









This is the carrot bed. There are about 100 carrots in there. With a bit of luck I might actually get some that are proper carrot shaped rather than something that would amuse Esther Rantzen...












This is how the Dwarf Curly Kale is currently looking - lush and green, I think you'll agree!

















These are my Brussel Sprouts - I really am quite inordinately proud of just how well my brassicas have done, never having grown any of them before. Perhaps they just really like the soil and the conditions are right for them....









This is how the herb bed is looking. As I said in yesterday's posting, the Coriander and French Sorrel have both gone beserk. The Coriander plant turned into a bush that had to be staked and even then still fell over - it goes all the way out to the right hand edge of the picture. Underneath it is the French Sorrel which has also gone a bit mental. [You'll notice I've discovered how to label things on the pictures - classy, huh?]






This is where I've planted up the 200 onion sets and garlic cloves. Not very clear I know, but you can just make out at least one of the 3.5 rows. The birds had only pulled one of the garlic cloves out, which I was relieved about as I didn't relish having to replant them all again - the backs of my legs are still stiff from planting them the first time!












This is where the fruit is going to be planted, when all the bushes, etc., arrive. Two blueberry bushes are already in but they're hard to make out in the picture. I need to get more black plastic to cover the rest of the ground....









So then, a shot of the bottom half of the plopment, taken from beside the future fruit bed.













And a view taken the other way, from the shed looking up the plopment.














And finally, an action shot of me! Taken by The Husband pretending to be a papparazzo hiding behind the raspberry canes!

Damn - October already?

Oh, hey, look I KNOW I've not done an update since the beginning of September and I KNOW there's no pictures with this one but that's just the way it goes sometimes, doesn't it?!? I promise I'll take the camera next time (probably later on this week) and just take a whole bunch of pix.

First things first - just how mental is this weather? Just after I last posted it got cold, then we definitely did have an Indian Summer for about a coupla weeks which was most welcome, then it got a bit colder, and now it's raining but unseasonably warm!! Every time I go to the plopment I have to take a change of clothes because I don't know if it'll stay the same from one hour to the next....

Right then, to business. With the help of The Husband, we've managed to clear the beds that S dug while she was working the plot which meant, rather sadly I suppose, that I've had to dig out the 2 rhubarb plants she put in (mostly because I don't think I'm going to be growing rhubarb and, if I did, it wouldn't be where she'd planted them) and about a gazillion self-replicating strawberry plants (I AM going to be having a strawberry bed but, again, not where she'd put them and probably a different variety), so I'm starting with a clean slate. Also we took out about 10 pounds of Desiree potatoes! We ate the bigger ones but I have to say that I'm about to chuck out the little fiddly ones that are left because not only are we eating hers, but also all the ones that I planted, so we're swimming in spuds!

The top half of the plot is going to be mostly dedicated to fruit so, to this end, we've planted two different varieties of Blueberry bush - 'Jersey' and 'Duke' - one is early fruiting, the other later, and I have a 'Patriot' on order. I've no idea what acidity the soil is so we just played it safe, got 2 smallish (40 litre) bags of ericaceous compost, dug big holes, filled them with the compost then stuck a blueberry bush in each, watered them in and are hoping for the best.

I have many other things on order - 3 Blackcurrant bushes (Wellington XXX), 2 Gooseberry bushes (Langley Gage), 2 Raspberry varieties (Autumn Bliss and Glen Prosen), Strawberries (Aromel), and 1 dwarf Cherry tree (Maynard). I'm also looking into apples and pears but they need to be on very dwarfing root stock and we've not decided what varieties we want yet. I've decided against Redcurrants because we don't eat them now so god knows what we'd do with a bushfull of them.

Yesterday, while it was dry, I took the opportunity of planting 200 overwintering onion sets, consisting of 100 'Swift', 50 red 'Electric', and 50 yellow 'Shenshyu' varieties. I also put in cloves of Solent White and some other kind of garlic whose name I've forgotten.

Last week I cleared the Sweetcorn (as they've now finished) and weeded where the French Beans were (leaving their roots in the ground as they fix nitrogen into the soil) and put in 6 red cabbage, 4 spring cabbage and 12 sprouting broccoli seedlings for brassica fartiness next Spring. We've been eating the Curly Kale (in a fabulous pasta dish which includes bacon, anchovies and chilli, topped with grated fresh parmesan - yum!), and we've had one meal with the Brussels Sprouts, so it's all coming good. Although I do need to find a recipe that uses Chard - any ideas?

My coriander has gone beserk and I'm planning on doing something with the seeds, and the Sorrels are also clambering all over the place - think I'm going to have to thin them for next year. The peppers have done their darndest but none of them turned red. Oh well, I want to grow Chillies next year anyway so may have to rig up some kind of glass frame to go against the shed, into which peppers could go as well.

I think that's is for the time being. I'll put up piccies in the next few days...

Plop for the Plopment!

Blimey! Can't quite believe it's June already - the year's half gone!!! In three weeks it'll be the solstice then it's all downhill to winter. It's only 205 days to Christmas, dagnabit.

Anyway, apologies for the delay in updating the blog - I've no excuses really, just haven't had that much to pontificate about although I've been working like a Trojan at the site.

As you can see, the makeshift brassica cage has now been properly constructed with net that fits and everyfink, plus I've also extended it and planted it up a bit more. It's now got the original Red Cabbage and Early Sprouts - which are looking very healthy indeed - and I've just added Late Sprouts, Broccoli and half the Kale (the rest aren't quite big enough to plant out yet). Within the next few weeks I'll extend it further and pop in the rest of the Kale and the Savoy Cabbage and that'll be it! I'm hoping that the holes in the netting will be small enough to at least put off any Cabbage White butterflies that decide to have a go at this tasty buffet. I've also found what are purported to be organic slug pellets so I've scattered those liberally around the plants. I'm sort of semi-organic-ish - I don't use fertiliser and pest control is limited to the plants that really get attacked, such as blackfly on the broad beans and slugs pretty much everywhere. However if nothing gets attacked, such as my onions, raspberries or climbing french beans, then I leave them well alone.

I've also finally got round to putting some lettuces in the ground. This year I'm growing Salad Bowl which is a loose-leaf, 'cut and come again' type of lettuce - you just take leaves as and when you need them. Seven have gone in so far and I've put a small polytunnel thing over the top of them until they get established. Hopefully this will keep the pigeons off 'em too. I've also just sown some Lollo Rossa (the red crinkly leaved lettuce) which will go out eventually too.

What is new at the site is that The Husband and I this past weekend built a Plop Corral! I found a company selling through Amazon who make wooden slatted compost/manure bins for the surprisingly reasonable price of £27 and, being a lazy sort and unwilling to trawl skips for unwanted pallets, I coughed up and it was delivered last Friday. It's pretty good - slots are pre-cut in some (fairly rough) planks which you just slot together and, voila, job's a good 'un. I now just have to start filling it up with horse manure from the stables where I go riding (small plug here - www.sariaharabians.com), leave it to rot down for the best part of a year and then start digging it into the ground next Spring. One downside is that it looks like I'll have to dismantle it in order to get the manure out but I don't mind. I also took delivery last week of a 330 litre compost converter. If you go to www.recyclenow.com/home_composting/ and enter your postcode, it'll tell you whether you're eligible for a half-price converter! It's a good deal - I paid £15 for the one in the picture and they're easily twice that, if not more, at garden centres. Unfortunately the little square door that covers the hole was missing when delivered but I'm following it up. So there we have it- Plop Corral and Companion Dalek!

Finally, then, this is how the plopment is looking at the moment - all is well and doing pretty much what it should. I've only lost one Sweetcorn and one Climbing French Bean plant so far, which is an acceptable level of collateral damage. I think the next thing I'll be doing is starting to dig the long side bed where the Leeks are eventually going to go - I may start this afternoon...watch this space!

Rassin', frassin', pigeons.....

Last Thursday, gentle reader if you recall, I wrote that I had forgotten to put down slug pellets around my newly planted Climbing French Beans. And so I returned on the Friday to do so, only intending to stay for the amount of time it would take to shake said pellets onto the ground, allowing me to skip away while merrily flicking the Vs at the soon to be annihilated slimers.

So imagine my surprise, nay horror, to discover that my lovingly nurtured Red Cabbage and Brussel Sprout seedlings had been CHEWED BY PIGEONS OVERNIGHT111!!!111!!!1 Now, normally, these lumbering, comical birds don't bother me, in fact I rather enjoy watching them peck each other on the head while waiting in line to eat the nuts from my wall-hung peanut feeder but this just takes the biscuit (or brassica).

The only option, of course, is to create a net cage and, of course, I didn't have any net with me and so, of course, I had to scoot back home and return with the only net I had which I'd just got for my newly planted Strawberries and which, of course, wasn't big enough to go over the brassicas and so, of course, I had to stitch the edges together with hairy garden string, like some really incomptent sutures [*takes breath*]. This is a real pain in the bum as I've not finished planting brassicas yet (I've still got Broccoli, late Sprouts, Savoy Cabbage and Curly Kale to go in yet) so I'm going to have to ask The Husband if he'll design (and build, pretty please...) something a bit more robust and easily manageable to go over all the plants when they eventually go in. Still, I'm pleased to report that my ham-fisted efforts do seem to have worked, a week later the cage is still in one place/piece and no pigeons have gained entry.

So let me guide you gently by the hand into this week's efforts. Well, I've extended the bean poles, I now have 16 poles (8 on each side) with two plants for each pole (i.e., 32 plants). Good job, then, that we like French Beans in our house. I've also finally got my 23 Sweetcorn plants in the ground as well although I can't help feeling that I may be being a little premature here, but others on site have planted theirs so I suppose if we get hit by a late frost, we'll all lose them together!

I have monumental colonies of Blackfly nestling very happily thank-you in the tips of my Broad Beans so I started spraying today until I read the bottle halfway round and it said something like, "Extremely dangerous to bees - do not use on open flowers" and what was I doing? Naturally I was spraying onto the open flowers of the Broad Beans, so stopped immediately. I've kind of decided to use this as a controlled experiment though, to see which of the plants do best, those that were sprayed and those that weren't.

I noticed that Henry opposite had planted Marigolds underneath his Blackfly-free Broad Beans (try saying that really quickly three times) so went and bought half a dozen to plant amongst mine before researching why. Apparently, the Blackfly don't like the smell of Marigolds so will avoid them and find somewhere else. I'm going to buy some more tomorrow (they also look good).

Anyway, enjoy a picture of the current state of the allotment and I'll see you next time.

Feels like home...

The weather report stated that the fabulous weather we've been having recently would break overnight and today in the south we'd wake up to heavy rain, hail and thunderstorms. Well, they got it partly right, we've had more in the way of light showers than a downpour but it does mean that I was right to take the opportunity to spend about 8 hours over the last two days at the plopment getting stuff into the ground before the rains came.

Tuesday I dug out the rows of invisible Rocket seedlings as I couldn't find them and replaced them with Spring Onion and Carrot seedlings. I don't hold out much hope for the Carrots as they've already been attacked by a snail in the plastic-house but I'm fed up of looking at them in there so into the ground they go. I also started to weed around the row of Second Early potatoes because the chickweed, couch grass, bindweed and mare's tail were coming back. I had hoped that walking on them would kill them off but all it did was flatten and harden the earth.

Yesterday (Wednesday) I decided I was going to put up the poles for the Climbing French Beans. For the past 6 or 7 years I've been growing French Beans in two huge round pots at home so I've never done the traditional, all in a line, pole arrangement before. Last week I'd bought a batch of 8 foot tall canes and was worried they were going to be too tall but the ground at the plopment is so soft they easily sank in about 1.5 feet or so. I tied them together and then added smaller ones through the top to stabilise it. There are ten canes in the ground but I currently have 12 plants so two had to double up. I've more coming on in the plastic-house so they can go in later. (I woke up this morning though and realised that I'd completely forgotten to put slug pellets around the bean plants! I'll have to pop out later on when it's dried up a bit and just hope they're still there and not in some snail's belly...)

But I've come to realise that two really quite major things have happened since Sunday - I think it's probably more of a matter of perception within me than what's been happening at the allotment but, even so. Let me try to explain: putting the shed up and being able to use it properly since Sunday has made a big difference - I now feel that I actually own the land, it's a space that properly belongs to me now. I have somewhere to store my things, where I can sit in the shade. It all feels more permanent somehow - before it was just a plot of land that didn't really mean anything even though I've been working it for the last 3 months. I almost felt like a bit of a fraud and I shouldn't really be there - the shed has made a statement, it claims ownership. It denotes that I'm going to be here for a long time and I'm serious about it. I built the shed (well, not me, but you know what I mean), I cultivate the land - I have a place now and it feels like home. When I was doing my various archaeology degrees I was always interested in the Archaeology of Landscape and how the ancient mind related to ownership of space/land, what they did with it and how it was demarcated. Perhaps I should put up a (fake) burial mound on my boundaries.....

Secondly, bizarrely, putting up the bean canes has turned the site into A Proper Allotment. It looks like a real, grown-up one now, not just the results of me fannying around in the dirt hoping to get things right and praying that I wasn't making an idiot of myself and that people weren't laughing at me for getting it wrong. I mean, check out the pictures - the top one here shows, from the bottom of the picture, my little Raspberry bed, then on the right are two rows of Broad Beans, the dark square above them are the newly-watered rows of Spring Onion and Carrot seedlings and above them are my four rows of Onion sets. The light green 'row' next to them all running the width of the plot is actually my row of First Early Potatoes (the plants are actually in the row between the two boards) - yes, I know I need to weed it. Then there's the (weeded) row of Second Early Potatoes running the width. Next to that you can see the bean canes and, lastly, from the canes to the pathway is where the Red Cabbage and Brussels Sprouts are. It looks good, it looks right and I did it all. Yes, you may call me Mrs Smug.

This picture, taking from a slightly different angle, shows the shed in use! It also, unfortunately, shows how much is still left of the plot to be dug, weeded and cultivated. I'm going to try and get it all done this year - I still have Broccoli, Kale, Savoy Cabbage, Parsnip, Lettuce and Sweetcorn to go in yet! - but I also realise it might just be too big a job and it'll have to wait until next year. The remaining seedlings will just have to find a spot in and around what's already been done! The picture actually gives a distorted image - there's quite a lot of ground left to do, probably as much as I've already dug. But, hey, it's stopped raining so I may be there later...

Seedlings

As promised, here are some piccies of my plastic-house and the contents therein! Yes, I'm fully aware that it's at somewhat of an angle but that's because the ground goes like that just there and I couldn't be bothered to try and level it. I've also had to tie it with string to two fenceposts so it doesn't blow over but I think, all in all, it works pretty well. As you can see, there are 4 shelves (although there's nothing on the bottom one yet) and you can roll up the zipped plastic front door-thing so it doesn't get too steamy in there. The idea, as I mentioned in an earlier blog, is to use this space hopefully to produce seedlings which can then be transplanted to my allotment when I've cleared enough space.

Things are going pretty well, all things considered. For example, here are my Carrot seedlings (on the left) and my Broccoli seedlings (on the right). I'm using those compost pots because, theoretically, one can put them straight into the ground but, of course, I didn't consider thinning them out and so, as you can see, there are quite a few little capsules that have 3 possibly viable broccoli seedlings in which I'll have to separate out and pot up individually later on.

These were all planted on 13 March 2008 so they've been going now for almost a month.



These are my Red Cabbage (back) and (early) Brussels Sprouts (front) seedlings. Again, there's 4 or 5 seedlings sprouting in each pot which means I'll have to separate them. As before, these were all sown on 13 March 2008.

The compost pots are a good idea, I think, but they do dry out very quickly.








Finally, these are my Parsnips (front) and yet more Brussels Sprouts (back). I'm surprised how easily the Sprouts have germinated - if they all continue I'm probably going to end up with about 35 Sprout plants! Too many for my plot so some will have to go to good homes. Similarly, I'm surprised how long it's taking the Parsnips to get a move on. They're only just now coming up and, like all the others, they were sown on 13 March 2008. You can see how dry the compost pots get.


I have other pots in the plastic-house but there's nothing showing yet. Does anyone know though if it takes Leeks an extraordinarily long time to germinate? I sowed about 30 seeds into 15 or so pots at the same time as everything else and so far absolutely nada, zilch, bupkiss. Are they just temperamental? Or have I cobblered it up somehow? Any suggestions would be most welcome....

It's coming up, it's coming up....

Hooray - things are starting to appear! Yesterday I counted 14 Broad Bean seedlings emerging (out of 18 - I'm only growing for two of us so we don't need many) and at least 55 onion sets have poked their noses up through the ground!

So, to recap, at the allotment at the moment, actually in the ground there are:

• Broad Beans - Jubilee Hysor
• Onion Sets - Turbo
• Wild Rocket
• Carrots - Amsterdam Forcing
• Potatoes - First Earlies, Pentland Javelin

While I'm clearing the soil, I've started a whole load of pots off in my plastic-house in the garden (I don't have enough room for a greenhouse so I've one of those small four-storey mini shelving unit-type things with a zip-up plastic cover - I'll picture them for tomorrow's blog) in which I've currently got:

• Leeks - Musselburgh
• Lettuce - Salad Bowl
• Kale - Dwarf Green Curled
• Climbing French Bean - Cobra
• Savoy Cabbage - Ormskirk(1)-Rearguard
• Onion - White Lisbon
• Broccoli - Sprouting Summer Purple
• Brussels Sprouts - F1 Brigitte
• Brussels Sprouts - Bedford-Winter Harvest
• Parsnip - Tender and True
• Cabbage - Red Drumhead

Later on there will be other stuff but no point in listing that now. The plastic-house is actually really very useful - I've got it in full sun so have to remember to open it up in the morning otherwise it gets like a sauna in there and causes white mouldy mildew stuff to form on the compost pots (the ones you can just plant straight into the ground) because of a lack of ventilation. I also reckon this helps to harden off the seedlings as well. Of course I zip it up at night-time. All-in-all a good investment.