It's not much, but its mine.

I haven't spent much time on the plot lately, and the time I have spent there, or dealing with seedlings has mostly been categorised by fail. French beans not germinated, my tomato plants do not seem to have grown at all since I potted them on last time and are certainly not developing trusses, my leeks, parsnip and savoy cabbage seedlings have just flopped over. Sweetcorn look terminal. Lettuce, spring onions, chives: eaten by slugs. Courgette, oh my god. In fact, if these were the only things I were growing I would pack up. Because frankly, given the amount of seeds I have sown, that is not a good average. But not all is lost. Carrots and beetroot appear to be ok. Potatoes, 4 out of 5 seeds so far. Peas, excellent, runner beans, ok (I think). And today, I brought my first veg home from the plot. Not more than a paper bag full of spinach leaves, true, but still. For all that sweating, they're going to taste pretty sweet.

The plot is still a mess. I've been hacking back couch grass all the time, and pulling up bindweed and marestail. But, no matter what I do, while the beds are still covered with black weed suppressant, held down with planks, its going to look terrible. I try not to think about it, but its a bit discouraging when I see so many plots looking so up together. I know I've achieved a lot so far, but I guess I want it to just look nice. In an effort to tidy up a bit thats been troubling me for ages, where a hose pipe was hidden by (I didn't know) a bit of carpet covered by a thick layer of couchgrass, I thought I'd pull it out. Oh, my god. Ugh, I spent the twenty minutes it took to pull this mess out with the fear that rats were going to jump out on me. They didn't. But still. And now I have to get rid of it.

A free pile of crap with your plot!

Whilst doing this, one of the West Indian men who allotments a few plots down came over for a chat, no doubt attracted by my swearing at the pieces of hose I was hacking out of the ground. He is fairly deaf, I realise, and his strong accent is a bit much for me, so we often don't talk for long. At ten minutes, today was our longest talk. Long enough, to realise that the age and gender divide is alive and well on our corner of the allotments. 

He couldn't believe how much I had done 'all by myself'. Don't you have a husband? He wanted to know. I didn't think he wanted to hear my domestic dramas, and how could I really explain, but I just said, well, I want to do it myself. Digging is a man's job, he explained (huzzah for no-dig gardening), you should get a man to help you. I smile at this. No, really, I say, I'm capable. Its not right, he said. I am a big strong girl, I tell him, its fine. I think about how I made all my raised beds and a bloody bench alone, out of scrap and completely clueless, Dug into rock hard clay, shovelled almost two tonnes of topsoil and schlepped the contents of two unrotted compost bins. I nearly told him all of this. But then I realised that, there was no point. I'm not going to inflict a discussion on gender politics to a pleasant, friendly octogenarian and so what if his ideas are not the same as mine, really? He's just trying to help me. And frankly, would he have heard me. Still, had to smile at his parting shot. 'No, you're doing a good job, for a lady.' I didn't even think, until now, about saying, slowly and at the top of my voice, 'and you're doing a bang up job for a pensioner!'. Maybe I'm growing up.

My day on the plot

bindweed
bindweed
bindweed
bindweed

bindweed
bindweed

couch grass

bindweed
bindweed

couch grass

bramble

bramble

bindweed
bindweed

couch grass

bramble

bindweed
bindweed

bindweed
bindweed

bramble

couch grass

couch grass

Get arfff moy lannnd!

Finally I have met someone on my site that I do not like. I lurk on a few facebook groups and I've read some sorry tales of allotment neighbours; rudeness, theft and vandalism, snitchy jobsworthiness and honestly, mine isn't that bad. Those stories make my plot neighbour seem fine, actually. But he isn't fine. He's a...boor.
Imagine the scene if you will. On return trip 4 of 13 to the water tap because you haven't sorted out your water butt and hose, and there is a man standing on your plot. He makes you jump actually, because you do not expect, I think, a man to be standing on your plot when one was not there two minutes ago. He introduces himself as one of the previous tenants (3 years ago) and explains that he had to give the plot up due to having another child, but that he still keeps the plot opposite. You nod politely and explain you've only come to water your plants very quickly because you are busy. 
He takes a phone call on your only direct path off the plot to the water tap. You have to say 'excuse me' to get past on YOUR OWN PLOT.
A few more trips to the tap and he's still talking on the phone whilst standing on your plot. Eventually he finishes. This is how the conversation goes;
'So this used to be our plot,'
'Yes, I think you might have said...'
'I left a bit of stuff on your plot.'
I do not say, 'You left it three years,'
'Oh?' I say, 'Well...'
'Yeah, two tonnes of topsoil,'
'Yes, it came in very handy, thank you,'
'And loads of really good compost,'
'Um?'
'You know, in the bins,'
I begin to water my runner beans at the back of my plot. He follows me.
'There wasn't really, I mean...'
'I was hoping to get some of my stuff back before someone took on the plot,'
Three years!
'I was hoping to have the bins back, but I guess you're using them,'
I do not say 'You also left a lot of shit for me to clear up and dispose of, but I don't expect you want that back, do you?'
Idiotically, I point to one of the bins at the end.. 'well, I'm not using...'
'Do you see that bed at the end, I triple dug that,'
I do not say 'triple dug, what the fuck are you talking about?'
'Oh yes,' I say, 'great. Thank you,' (Thank you!)
'Yeah, the soil is really good, I triple dug it...'
'Right, well, it was covered with couch grass, but yeah..'
'I was planning to plant sweetcorn in it.'
'Ok, well, I'm putting sweetcorn in a different bed, I thought I'd try tomatoes there,'
AND HE SAYS *chuckle* 'Good luck with that!'
He strides then, uninvited, to the back of my plot, picks up the compost bin and leaves. I search 'electric fencing' on my phone.

I can't decide if he was being ignorant of my personal space, or passive aggressive. It doesn't matter, the effect was the same. The only trouble is that if he does it again, uninvited, I will have to tell him I don't want him to come onto my plot. Which puts me in the role of being pissy, unfriendly tenant (I am, granted) and him in the role of being friendly neighbour, victim of shrew. Hm.

 

Potting on Again

I'm not at the plot today because a) it is pouring with rain and b) I have this non-specific, nausea, headache, tummy pain thing again. I'm tired, the neighbours kept me awake again and nothing seems better than staying in with the radio on.
But, whilst walking the dog this morning (some jobs always need doing, no matter how poorly), I noticed that someone had planted out their tomatoes outside. I realised that not only were mine miles behind, some of my seedlings were knocking their leggy heads on the ceiling of the incubator. So, I resolved to get it done. I should have been a bit more forgiving with myself and tried to do it in two stages,because suddenly I realised I had a lot of tomatoes. After the slug massacre I sowed some more seeds, and when they didn't come up I sowed another batch. When I didn't see these come up, I panicked and acquired more seeds. What's bullet proof, I asked, thumbing through the seed catalogue. I bought some Moneymaker and sowed them too. Within four or five days I had more seedlings than I knew what to do with from all of the seeds that I had tried. Cultivation rewards patience.

Anyway, I ran out of room to pot them all on, with all the other plants that needed to be moved on, in my incubator and my mini-g. I haven't thrown them out yet. When I get my sweetcorn, my purple sprouting broccoli and my cabbage on the way out the door, and start my second sowings of sweetcorn, I might see if they want to be potted on. Either way, the ones I've done today need to catch up! (...cultivation rewards patience..om...cultivation rewards patience...om...)

So in total today I potted:

• 5 sweetcorn (please be ready to go out this week)
• 6 savoy cabbage (2 too many)
• 8 leeks 
• 4 parsnip
• 4 celeriac
• 4 oregano
• 3 chillies
• 2 alpine strawberries
• and a zillion tomatoes, OK, 20

That's enough. I'm going back to bed.

Famous last words: 'How hard can it be?'

I spent little time on the plot this week. I went down daily, to hoe up the eternal bindweed and couch grass and to top up the slug pellets that hoeing displaced. But that, for reasons I don't fully get, was that. I think that my enthusiasm was dampened somewhat by the result of sprinkling those pellets about - the gross, fly ridden, slimy mat of dead slugs that surrounded every green crop. To be clear, I don't want to use pellets at all, they make me feel awful, but after chatting to fellow allotmenteers that can't tell me of anything else, not beer traps, not wool pellets nor nematodes, that seem to protect their plants, and looking at the sheer number of slugs on the plot, I feel like its all I can do for now. I will put some beer traps down, when I remember, but the other night I put out the only comfrey plant I've managed to grow from seed, in what I perceived as 'out of reach', only to find the leaves munched fully away after one night in the wild, my slugs apparently not completely distracted by courgettes, spinach, runner beans and strawberry plants (got a bite out of all those too).

So today, I thought I would make my day count - and I spent about 5 hours on the plot, but god only knows where the time went, because I cannot see that I did 5 hours worth of work - maybe I did, maybe the hoeing and watering really does take that long. I planted out my purple sprouting broccoli in my brassicas bed, Had to fix the netting/plastic frame combo. Took ages. Planted some French bean seeds and pea sticks- could have been a quick job, but tripped and spilt the bean seeds everywhere. Nice work. I sawed a load of planks for my outdoor storage box, but still have eight to go *snore*, tried to move the wheelie bin/water butt but the previous resident had weighted it down with a flagstone and with the water in it, I couldn't even tip it. I did shift a load of heavy stones I couldn't quite work out the function of (these are two things that make me wish I wasn't quite so alone in this) and then I put my  newly fixed azada to work, cutting back a load of couch grass. It would have been quicker with a strimmer, but the azada is fine. In fact, faced with the ludicrous noise the site was filled with by just two people and their strimmers this afternoon, I'm glad I never got one. I'd hate myself. (Ponders if this is true. Yes. It is.)

So, I may not feel like I've achieved too much today but I have laid the groundwork for tomorrow. I can finish sawing the wood for the lid of my box and then I can attach the sides together. I can lay down some cardboard/weed suppressant fabric on the bed I uncovered today, and I can maybe put out my sweetcorn in cloches tomorrow (although, it doesn't look very healthy, it won't get any better languishing in my mini-g). Another hoe, another water and I can be done for the day. That's only about three hours, right?

Theft from the Plot and 'Things to Do' List : results

So I did roughly the amount of time on the plot that I thought I might today, although I started very much later due to the hangover, and the rain. I was sad to find that my storage box, which is not locked. or even secure, had been raided for my saw, wrecking bar and some wool slug pellets. None of these items were very expensive, and it sort of reminds me that I suspect all property to be theft but I'm sad all the same. I don't want to carry all the stuff I want to keep up the hill every time. I hope they go to good use anyway, these tools, gardening rather than petty criminality. Those slug pellets in the wrong hands...
On the upside, it totally did mean that I didn't have to make any planters or finish my peacage (stupid peas don't seem to be coming anyway).  This made the rest of my tasks really straightforward.

Must do:

• plant runner bean seedlings
• plant spinach seedlings
• water beds
• thin out beet seedlings
• weed beds
• prepare courgette bed
• plant potatoes

Would also like to:

• finish pea cage (abhorrent nightmare job that has turned into)
• hacksaw blue bin into two strawberry pots
• plant courgette
• make a strawberry planter (this has to wait until last, it could take me days)
• turn wood mountain into discreet wood pile Wood mountain is now more like wood munro
• hack back a bit of couch grass
• plant parsnip/more carrot seeds
• dig out hose from under pile of matting and couch grass
• move waterbutt
• grab couple bagfuls of leaves from leaf bay for covered beds 

Hoeing the weeds back seems to take me longer and longer every time I go down to the plot now. Bindweed has reared its monstrous head, couch grass is like something that drinks turbo cider and amphetamine every day before charging into work, like, " I am UNSTOPPABLE, hit me and SEE, I will just COME BACK TOMORROW!" But I will win, couch grass. If you came up my way, you'd know I have infinite patience for bullshit like this.

Bees or serious crime?

Otherwise, its been fine. Some of my neighbours are bee keepers and this was the first time I saw them dealing with their hive. I was keen to see what they were up to, but you know, given they were all garbed up in that beekeeping/soco/spacewalk stuff, I reckon I might have been somewhat under protected for just sauntering up, I could see they had honey anyway, so maybe if my flowers grow, they might give me some one day,
Thinning out my beet seedlings was a bit nervewracking, but I think they're alright. The trenches I had dug out for my spuds had hardened over into moon rock again, with hard clods that you could build houses with. I've had to give up the dream of a fine tilth for that bed (treated with soil softener, too) but I think potatoes should cope, just.

As well as parsnip and more carrot seeds, I planted scorzonera seeds and chive seeds, a couple more sweet peas to go with my runner bean seedlings. I put more spinach and a courgette plant in the ground and I cut up the blue bin. It will make great strawberry planters. Had I given it any more thought, I could have got three out of it. Just got to work out how to plant my strawbs now.
I've decided that I had better build a secure, lockable box. I've looked online, but even the plastic ones are expensive, and I do need to do something with this wood. Feels like it will be a bit of a stretch for me but my bench has given me confidence, and apart from hinges and a hasp(?) it'll cost me nothing but time, and no doubt fury. Yes, it could be broken into, yes, its probably harder than I think, but I have to do something with this bloody wood.
Guess I'm going back tomorrow for the rest of my jobs, but I'll be slipping back tonight to scatter some slug repellent about on my new plants, since the wool pellets are gone. Sluglife.

'Things to do' list, an experiment. And a sulk about buying compost.

Alright, so, a minor experiment.

I think, if I'm not hungover (could be hungover), I can manage five hours on the plot tomorrow before I have to do family things. Five hours is actually quite a long time for the little jobs I need to do, I reckon, so I'm going to set myself some fairly aggressive targets. I've got to take some plants over, to dig them into the ground, which could take two trips. But that's ok, give me an excuse to refill my thermos. Anyway, here's what I could achieve if I try:

Must do:

• plant runner bean seedlings
• plant spinach seedlings
• water beds
• thin out beet seedlings
• weed beds
• prepare courgette bed
• plant potatoes

Would also like to:

• finish pea cage (abhorrent nightmare job that has turned into)
• hacksaw blue bin into two strawberry pots
• plant courgette
• make a strawberry planter (this has to wait until last, it could take me days)
• turn wood mountain into discreet wood pile
• hack back a bit of couch grass
• plant parsnip/more carrot seeds
• dig out hose from under pile of matting and couch grass
• move waterbutt
• grab couple bagfuls of leaves from leaf bay for covered beds 

When I write it down like that it sounds a bit easy (apart from the strawberry planter), and I think if I just worked hard I could do it. I just spend too much time fucking about. Fucking about is fine. Enjoyable, bit after only having one day down there in about a week, I've got to get some stuff done. Then I've got to cajole Mr G into helping me get some (yet more, always more) compost. This whole no dig bed notion is very attractive, but fuck me, it's organic material thirsty. I was bought some strawberry plants, which will definitely need compost (I didn't want these plants, explaining I was growing some alpine strawberries, albeit slowly) and I still have a bed of rock hard heavy clay that could do with a couple of hundred litres of compost before I can forget about it. Then in October, I can cover it with lots more expensive compost and manure, and then in the spring I can do that again and then I can plant stuff in it. This sounds easy in comparison to digging soil that one's spade bounces off, but until I have a substantial amount of homemade compost from my own bins, its a lot of cash. I hear rumours about getting municipal from the council delivered to the allotment site, but its mythical as far as I can tell. I've also become sceptical about the no-dig method's ability to really change the structure of very hard clay soils. How does it do it? Just worms? These worms would have to be superheroes.
I'm feeling negative about it because of the cost, and because of the difficulties, I know. If I drove, if I wasn't trying to do everything on a shoestring, I wouldn't be so nervy about it. 

But I've set my course, and I need to stick to it. All I can do now is what I can do. So lets hope I can do what's on the list.

Rats.

I can't be (surely) the only person who anthropomorphizes the natural world when at their allotment. I hoed up a sleeping slow worm this week and I actually found myself apologising out loud as I patted the warm soil back around it, genuinely sorry to disturb its sleep. I spotted a spider with what looked like a white sack of eggs on her back (a wolf spider? I'm not going to post a pic. I understand not everyone is as happy with spiders as I am) whilst forking over the bed I am using for runner beans and I stamped about for a bit to show her I meant business as she hung around, not looking overjoyed to be shaken from her bed, before I returned to fork the soil again (more carefully). I look upon worms, ladybirds -  all birds (even the ones I think will eat my peas) as allotment friends, animals with good intent. The robin that hangs around expectantly since I dug up my compost bins is my new best friend. The invisible mammals that leave paw marks in my raised beds overnight sometimes; fellow travellers. And yet, some things, posing potentially less harm than the site badgers or wood pigeons are definite enemies. Couch grass, bindweed and brambles have no consciousness, less than even than worms, seem to appear to spite me in the places they grow, and regrow and regrow. Slugs, snails, can hardly be described as malicious but I would have no hesitation in mashing one immediately against the back of my spade or fork, eyes narrowing and nostrils flaring as I dispose of it. I know, I don't expect anyone to share my madness. It just is what it is.
But rats, probably no stranger to any allotment, everyone hates don't they? 'Have you seen any rats?' my field rep asked me casually the other day, 'there's a problem, apparently,'
Had I seen any rats? If I'd seen a rat on my plot you'd have heard me scream across the valley. I'd be walking around with a gun. Or maybe not a gun, but my dog at any rate. I do not want to see a rat, I am not scared of them exactly, but despite their blameless life of doing no more or less what rats do, I do not want to see one. They make me feel sick.And I imagine they'd try and kill my dog (again, I don't expect this feeling to be shared).
So today, while I babysit my poorly dog, the council ratmen are at the allotment. I have many things I should be doing down there today, but I am not sorry I am at home. I may be behind with getting my spuds in, and the runner bean and spinach seedlings will not dig themselves in. But there seems less risk of running into a rat here, and I am happy enough about that.

Lamb Samosas

A decent allotment snack or a superior appetiser for a curry.

This is probably an Anglican version of the samosa, made with filo, and herbed up with mint instead of coriander (I do not like coriander. If you like it, feel free to replace or join up with the mint in this recipe). I would have liked to have made proper samosa pastry, but the day I made them I was running late, and flipping through my recipe books in rather a panic, I could not find any samosa recipes at the time that did not stipulate filo. Well, fine. They were still quite delicious. They taste rather less Anglo-Indian if you only use one layer of filo, rather than two (although, harder to make without breaking) and use ghee to oil the sheets rather than melted butter. Makes loads. But they freeze well.

Ingredients:

• 500g packet of lamb mince
• 1 onion, roughly chopped 
• 4 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
• 2 green chillies, finely chopped (reserve half a chilli for adding near the end)
• oil for frying
• 1 tsp cumin seeds
• Salt and pepper
• 1/2 tsp turmeric
• 1 tsp garam masala
• 1 tsp chilli powder
• 2 tsp of amchoor powder or juice of one lemon
• Mug of water
• 1 carrot, cut into medium dice
• Frozen peas, I used three small handfuls. Wish I could be more specific.
• Small handful of mint (and/or coriander)
• Ghee
• Packet of filo

At least a couple of hours before you wish to eat, In a large frying pan, over a medium heat, add a small splash of cooking oil and cook the cumin seeds for a few minutes, until they smell aromatic. Add the onion, garlic and most of the chilli and cook down until softened and the onion is beginning to turn golden. Turn up the heat and add the mince, and cook until browned all over. Add the salt and pepper and the dried spices and cook for two or three minutes over a moderate heat, stirring to combine. If adding lemon, do so at this point and then stir through, before adding a mug of water. Turn the heat down and let this all simmer away for ten minutes before adding your vegetables. Now, turn the heat right down as far as you can and continue to let the lamb and veg cook down for at least another twenty minutes until it is a very dry mixture. Add your mint, and the remainder of the chopped chilli and leave to cool.

Turn the oven on to preheat to gas 6 or 200c. Coat two baking sheets in oil. Clear a wide space on your worktop. Take the filo out of the pack and cover with a damp tea towel and then, one or two sheets at a time (depending on your attitude to risk), take out and coat the top layer with ghee. Cut the layers of filo into four equal lengths; I found any smaller than this made for cute but irritatingly fiddly samosas. Put a tablespoon of lamb onto the end of the filo strip and then fold up, triangularly, until the end of the strip (plenty of vids and diagrams on the interwebs demonstrate this far better than I could. Seal the end up. Paint with ghee. Rinse and repeat until mixture is finished. Bake 25-35 minutes. Serve with dip, or in a packed lunch.

April Review (A little late)

I have had a bit of a tummy thing the past couple of days, so unable to get down to the plot until now. It is a real mess at the moment, but I'm feeling a bit tender to do much about it. I bumped into my plot neighbour and he volunteered that I was doing a great job. I almost burst into tears, but I put that down to the stomach ache, rather than the praise. 

So here is the rather conservative list of things I gave myself to do at the start of April:

• propagate spring seeds. Will need to be done on a weekly basis for at least this month, maybe longer
• construct mini greenhouse in the garden for growing on vulnerable seedlings
• acquire manure and extra compost for beds
• build beds
• dig up informal areas on the plot to plant out the comfrey and wild flower seeds
• reduce planks and soil bags on plot to minimal.

I managed all of those pretty well except reducing planks and soil bags to minimal. They are still relatively maximal.

So, pics for comparison:

End of March

End of April

So, because I'm not very good at taking pics, there are some things you can't see. Actually this month I've:

• Constructed and filled three raised beds
• Dug over 10 beds and cleared of bramble and couch grass. Covered most until October
• Terraced 2 beds,
• Made a bench
• Made a bay for and moved two compost bins (and their not entirely rotted down contents. Not my best day ever tbh.)
• Planted beetroot, carrot, spring onion, pea and sweet pea seeds. Planted spinach seedlings.
• Made tunnels of fleece and insect netting.Made windbreak for spinach that made no difference.
• Germinated seeds indoors for: Purple sprouting broccoli, runner beans, sweetcorn, tomatoes, tomatillos, courgettes, savoy cabbage, leeks, celeriac, parsnips and basil (but not mint yet. Stubborn.)

Insect netted, waiting for brassicas.

Poor spinach, windbreak never helped much

Bench and bins 

Beetroot seedlings. Thinning out required.

Last month this was all black plastic.

So, May. Here's my todo list:

• Keep potting on my seedlings until I can get them out. Having seen some people's seedlings on social media, mine seem very behind. My current mantra is 'gardening rewards patience' repeated x 1000.
• Put up runner bean stalks and pea sticks
• Get on top of tidying up
• Plant potatoes
• Continue to mulch my no dig beds and get the cardboard to cover them until autumn.
• Thin seedlings and plant more root seeds
• Kill wood mountain