That Went Quick

Gosh, it's been quite a long time since I've put fingers to key board. Overall it's been a funny old season, with long weeks of watering by hand, the runner beans and the pumpkins never really recovered, followed by a dull August, the coldest for quite a while apparently, which hit the tomatoes quite a bit.

But there have been highlights, the soil quality on the hill of pain has started to improve, may be one day I'll be able to grow carrots there in a fine tilth, maybe, one day. The soil was to the broad beans' liking, producing a very big crop from the autumn sowing. The peas were not so good, also from an autumn sowing.

The tomatoes produced a ton of fruit, but I've had to strip the bushes in the last week as I noticed that a neighbours plot up the hill had been hit fairly hard by blight. Hence the industrial chutney making Sunday. Green tomato and ham soup will be on the menu, which can also be frozen, to use up more of the harvest.

I'm still crossing my fingers that the pumpkins will be able to ripen up a few pumps, there's two for sure, but never count your pumpkins until you've oven roasted them, as they say. Thinking about it the HoP hasn't been that productive this year. Some cabbages, three beds of toms, two big lines of broad beans, a few peas, and two-and-a-bit beds of pumpkins. And 50 odd onions and 30 heads of garlic. Well, not that bad, but could do better.

At the moment, I've sown some green manures: phacelia, fenugreek, a bit late, I know, and buck wheat. There is most of a bed of swedes to thin a bit more. I'm waiting to clear the pumpkins and then I should be able to put in one bed of onions, and one bed of garlic. Then I will have one complete bed of broad beans and one of peas.

I will also have to prepare the back of the plot for some pear cordons. And I'm mulling having a row of vines, or is that a little too greedy of space. Also the dearest one has finally made up her mind about her olive tree, in a pot in the back garden, that she doesn't know where to transplant and the desision is, she doesn't know. So I have one highly pot-bound olive tree on my hands and the task of freeing it from its ceramic pot. And where shall that go?

But, maybe, there is a seed of an idea there. Vines, olive tree, some lavender, how very provencal. I can't wait for the south London mistralinnit to blow.

The pond has been going well, never really dried out over the summer. I need to do some clearing out later. It's looking a little choked and maybe there is some of that invasive pond weed being invasive. I keep seeing froggies around, smoking untipped gauloise and mulling infidelity, so it's had an effect.

On my little plot of heaven things have been less of a struggle, though I was lacksadasical putting in the spring cabbage. they only went in a couple of weeks ago, after being sown in September all very slow.

But there have been a lot of carrots, not that badly affected by the carrot fly, and there are some still to be picked. The parsnips seem a little on the thin side, must have been because the summeer was quite dry, but there will be plenty for the Christmas dinner.

That dryness also seemed to hit the runner beans, the plants seemd to be confused as to whether they should be climbing or not, but still got quite a few beans off them.

The real turn up for the book were the caulies. I thgought with it being so dry they'd all curl up, lose their flowers and not produce. But we've had quite a few this autumn. I was dead chuffed to see them. I'm defintely going to grow more caulies. It feels like a real achievement. Though I have done not that much.

I also had a lot of decent potatoes after loads of manure was dug in. And now the turnips and beer radishes are thriving. Though I think i sowed them too densely; too densely to thin, so will enough big roots form? But they certainly looked a cheering sight, all that vibrant green in dark November.

Digging the Dig

And yet more digging. This time, however, in the back garden, digging up the overgrown roundy bed left by the previous owners. The plan is to use it for a tomato bed this summer, so along with the toms on the allotment, touching wood and hoping that global warming isn't some sort of hysterical millenial cult, then all things being equal, and if your aunt had balls she'd be your uncle, then maybe there might be a few toms.

To Dig and To Dig and To Dig

Did some more digging and weeding on the plot of clay, after some thought, naturally,


"To dig or not to dig – that is the question:
Whether 'tis easier on the back to suffer
The stings and scratches of outrageous brambles,
Or to take scythes against a sea of nettles
And, by opposing, end them. To sigh, to sweat
A lot more – and by sweating to say we end
The heartache and the thousand natural jibes
That laziness is heir to – ‘tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep
To sleep, perchance to make a planting plan. Ay, there's the rub,
For in that sleep of winter what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off the muddy plot,
Must give us pause. There's the respect
That makes calamity of so long left digging.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of t'committee,
Th’ oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised weediness, the hoe's delay,
The insolence of thistles, and the nettles
That patient goading the workshy take,
When he himself might his excuses make
With a bare-faced cheek? Who would guilt bear,
To grunt and sweat on a weary 'lotment,
But that the dread of something at the end,
The undiscovered country after whose bourn
All slugs are safe, puzzles the keen
And makes us rather bear those weeds we have
Than fly to other 'lotments that we know not of?
Thus laziness does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of dissembling,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment
With this regard their plans turn awry,
And lose the name of action.—Soft you now!
The fair Roundup! Answer my orisons
See all my weeds dismembered."

So after mulling it all over, I dug a couple more beds.

Original idea by Bill Shakespeare