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.

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!!!

R.I.P. Cynthia

Cynthia's gone! Oh Noes! Went to the plopment yesterday afternoon and she was missing in the line of duty. I should have listened to Ali who suggested sticking a piece of wire or something through her head (Cynthia's, not Ali's...) in order to secure her to the ground. I didn't do this as, on the one hand, it seemed really cruel (not that I think inanimate objects can feel pain - I'm not that mad, you know) and, on the other, it would just provide more of a challenge to the foxes who, I believe, have kidnapped her.

I've produced a couple of posters to put up at the site in case anyone finds a rogue orange snake on their plot and wonder how it got there but I suspect I've seen the last of her. Oh well, it'll be unwanted CDs on bits of string from now on, then.

Trusssssst in meeeeee..........

Hey, everyone - say 'hello' to the latest addition to the plopment, 'Cynthia'! In my interminable meanderings through the backroads and bywaters of the Information Superhighway (does anyone still call it that anymore?), I have found myself drifting inexorably towards gardening and allotment websites - can't imagine why - and somewhere or other I read that, apart from the infuriating netting, another good pigeon deterrent is a toy rubber snake! Now, I've just put in quite a few lettuces which I now understand pigeons are also partial to. Constructing, and, indeed extending, net cages is akin to trying to stuff a live octopus into a string bag and my heart was heavy at the prospect of having to do this in order to protect the lettuces so I figured, what the hell, let's have a go at the snake option.

So off I went to eBay and found something suitable at abctoysandgames1 and for a very reasonable price too (and, no, I don't work for them). I was tempted by a black one but it wasn't clear on the advert if it was all black or had orange stripes. Now, bearing in mind that black and orange is a recognised danger sign in the animal kingdom (think tigers or wasps), it should stand to reason that any self-respecting pigeon would give a black and orange snake an extremely wide berth. I asked them and, sadly, the snake was all black. The other options were green (which I thought would get lost among the lettuces) or the colour I did choose, orange. And so Cynthia came to live with me, well, at the plopment actually.

According to The Wise Ones at an allotment forum I frequent (www.allotments-uk.com), a toy snake should work but it needs to be at least two feet long. Cynthia is made to curl at one end but you can straighten out her tail a bit and she's pretty lengthy. She went into the lettuces on Monday 16 June (see picture above). It then dawned on me as I was walking home that we have a multitude of 'playful' foxes at the allotment site who love nothing better than mucking about and playing with anything that isn't staked down or too heavy for them to move. I feared the worst for Cynthia so decided to pop down the next day to see if she was still there. Well, as you can see from the second picture, she was but it was obvious she'd been 'interfered with'. The earth was a bit scratched up around her middle and she was a bit dirty but she was still in one piece. I've not been down today but may go tomorrow and we'll see if she's stayed put.

Of course, all this may be a little academic because the site steward Jan popped down for a quick chat yesterday morning and when I proudly pointed out Cynthia to her, she remarked that the lettuces were actually quite large and probably wouldn't have been mugged by the pigeons anyway! Oh well.....

Finally, I was wandering around Homebase earlier this week and they had some really very nice sweet red pepper plants for sale at £1.99 each, so I bought 4 to put in the plopment and hope I have better luck with them than the ones I tried to grow at home on the patio three years ago. Jan, the steward, suggested that I plant them right up against the side of my shed because, (a) it gets sunlight all day there and (b) they would get additional heat that had been reflected/stored by the shed. I thought this was a damn fine idea so cleared the ground to make a small bed and plant them up. I think the next thing to do is to rig up some kind of protection for them as it's quite windy so perhaps some kind of tall cold frame arrangement with an open top would do, or even leaning some largish pieces of clear plastic against the shed. This is obviously going to be my next mission, along with the planting up of the 30-odd Leeks that are waiting to go in.

Foxes and Medieval Boundaries

In my previous existence, I was an archaeologist (until the local University closed down the degree course I was teaching on - cheers, Surrey!!!) and so now I make contemporary jewellery (another story, I'll tell you of it later) and spend time at the allotment instead. But, obviously, archaeology and history still piques my interest. The site where I dig has been allotments since the First World War (it was established for returning soldiers) and I frequently find bits of old clay pipes and Victorian/Edwardian sherds of pot etc., but this is quite common really and not all that exciting. What I did find interesting however was what the owner of the immaculate plot next door told me. Down the length of one side of the site there runs a really substantial earthen bank with some extremely impressive trees growing out of it. He told me that this bank is actually the old medieval parish boundary between Farncombe and Binscombe and, as such, is several hundred years old! I love this kind of stuff, it makes you aware of just how long things have been happening in your area. I also suspect that some of the trees have been there since the boundaries were constructed, especially the amazing oak tree in the picture - if you can see clearly, just check out the width of the trunk! It's like something from Tolkien....



To some of the allotmenteers on the site, the boundary has the disadvantage of being extremely desirable to our local foxes. Plus the ground is so soft, they have no problems at all in digging down several feet to make a den - check out this picture of a foxhole dug right in the middle of a plot (not mine, fortunately!). Apparently, a couple of years ago there was a fox living at the far end of the site that had become so used to being around people at the allotments that you could feed it sandwiches!