chthonosis

A bit of Pruning

2011-12-16T02:55:00.000-08:00

Sometimes you get so used to something that you don't see it anymore. A thicket becomes overgrown and full of dead, or near-dead, branches and then you finally notice that it's become impenetrable. So it comes time to get in there and do some sawing and cutting to let the light and to wake up the trees.

Much the same thing has happened with some of my links. I have a lot of links; it's quite nice to see how things are happening the world over. But in such a dense mass some links, for whatever reasons; personal hiatuses, operational reasons or sheer fecklessness, go dormant.

Well, in a fit of spring cleaning, I swear it's not my usual behaviour, just ask the commander. I've gone in there with my heavy-duty pruning shears and lopped and cut away the silent. But, true to my form, I can't throw them away. So, much like the branches that I cut in the garden and the allotment I put them into a pile, as they'll be useful for something one day, if only for insects and such like.

So I've created a section on the blog for "Resting Blogs" you never know, they might, like a neglected plant in a pot, spring into life again.

Also it has been salutary to see some of the blogs that bristled with enthusiasm just dry up. But that may not be a bad thing, maybe the authors are so tied up in their growing that writing up a blog is the last thing to be done. Fair enough. Though, it is possible to accuse me of a bit of tardiness in writing up this blog but I try to write it up every six months whether it needs it or not.

It was all prompted by my not being able to add a blog to my world of diggers list. So there is a finite amount of space. But I've fitted it in now. So welcome to "Out Of My Shed."

Feel like I need a lie down now, some early mince pies and a glass of sherry.

You've been Christoed

2011-12-11T08:50:00.000-08:00

Christo and his Mrs may have wrapped the Reichstag, a bridge in Paris and put up an artistic fence in California but they never wrapped a couple of rows of peas.

The weather has been so good lately, famous last words, that the peas sown this autumn have charged on so much that I felt compelled to put in some pea netting and, with an ear to the weather forecasts, decide to cover them with fleece as they are so far advanced. Last year the peas were hardly affected the cold weather, but they were closer to the ground and for some reason I think that offered them a bit more protection. Less to get nipped by frost and it seems more akin to hunkering down and letting the weather pass.

But this time they're up there and might need some protection, so with the help of my artistic- structural engineer we christoed the peas.

There was a strict colour codes for the pegs, like the Pompidou Centre in Paris, apart from that green peg at the end of course. There's always one isn't there.

The peas should be snug in these, cross fingers.

There is some more good stuff on shelters and winter gardening at Subsistence Pattern, along with a few links, and he should know as he's in Northern Idaho.

And it was -4C at the time of writing.

Seed for Thought

2011-11-16T04:58:00.000-08:00

I do occasionally try to save some seed. Fnar Fnar, settle down at the back there, or you'll be in at lunchtime, writing out "I must not laugh at saving seed."

Anyway, I do. Usually beans and peas, but this year I've saved some winter lettuce seed as well. Let's see how they turn out. Last year's runner beans were useless at sprouting.

However, just a heads up that there's an interesting piece about seed saving over at Daphne's Dandelions, give it a look see.

Also there this thing about Harvest Monday, where you log the weight of produce gathered over the week. Might be interesting to do for this next year, I'll try to remember to weigh the stuff.

Strawberry Fields Forever

2011-10-23T23:42:00.000-07:00

October 23rd and I was picking strawberries. Some of the plants have decided to give it a second go as it's been so hot and dry. The weather has been so strange that I have been watering my savoys and kale. Who'd a thought it.

Despite that I have started putting in garlic bulbs, white ones and the large purple cloves I saved this summer. The purple garlic did have some rust like the white this summer but on the whole grew bigger. So I'm wondering why I bought three heads of white garlic, errr. So let's see whether those big purple cloves produce even bigger heads of purple garlic.

Talking of eugenics, I noticed when shelling the old dried pods off the runner beans that one pod produced almost totally black beans, while a few others produced almost totally pink beans, rather than the usual patterns using both colours. So I wondered could I take those four black beans, grow them next year and see if they produce more black beans, and the same for the almost totally pink beans? To what point ? Well just to see if I could, maybe they will have qualities or maybe not?

Though I did sow some of my saved runner beans this spring and very few came up, which was a bit strange, and I was forced into buying some cheapo packets from Wilkos.

The Millennium

2011-10-17T05:34:00.000-07:00

I thought something had happened. Possibly it was the long line of people wandering around the allotments whipping themselves, and calling on god, or as you know him the chair of the allotment committee, to give salvation, or maybe it was those four horse men that cantered through the other day. But I definitely thought something was up.

And lo it came to pass that the thousandth reader has been and gone. Mmmm I should really try to do more updates about the allotment if I'd persevered and written a bit more, well who can say what the marketing rights might have been worth. Maybe I should put Allotment Porn in the site description ?

Everything has gone pretty swimmingly this year apart from that really dry spell in the spring then that really wet spell in the summer, but the tomatoes seemed to like it. Hardly any blight at all. Talking of solanums, the potatoes did well, and loads of them.

I embraced change and planted some sweet corn that came up a treat. I normally don't like sweet corn but if I've grown it myself, well stand back and let the bear see the dogs. I think I quite like it now.

A right disaster were the runner beans, there was a flourish and then they just dried up, while everybody else's were so much more fecund. Maybe I'll move away from the Scarlet Emperor and try something else. I only plant it as me old dad used to. Well, looking at Marshall's web site the Celebration looks quite good and with pink flowers, but I may plump for St George which is supposed to be the heaviest cropper in RHS trials, and it has red and white flowers. But maybe White Lady might be worth a try. Perhaps all mixed in together, they'd be easy to spot which was which.

Another success were the peas, the earlies sown in October, and the main crop ones, tons of peas. I used four packets of peas seeds for one bed (11' by 5' odd). Also quite high yielding were the broad beans.

An utter abject failure were the cauliflowers. Not a head, not nothing. And the giant winter ones that I had planted have been wiped clean by the wrath of the slugs while I was holidaying.

Still there's some savoy cabbage on the go and kale, along with a small horde of spring cabbages ready to spring.

It's all go.

Munchen Beer

2011-06-16T06:48:00.000-07:00

I'm off to the allotment to pick some of the Munchen Beer radish pods. The roots are quite fiery, and the pods are supposed to be quite peppery as well. The plants have sprung up from the roots left over from the winter. The bees loved the flowers. Will I love the pods?

At Last

2011-06-06T06:06:00.000-07:00

It's been bucketing down, since 4 Sunday afternoon.

You can almost hear the plants slurping it up.

First Strawbs

2011-05-10T04:18:00.000-07:00

of the season from the cold frames. Ate them so quickly, still quite warm from the frames, that there was no time for a photograph. Either that or there was a super injunction.

Frames in Place

2011-03-20T11:47:00.000-07:00

There you go. Frames in place over the already planted strawberry plants. They look a bit bright and light.

Also I tidied up what used to the old strawberry patch, now transplanted to a new bed. That has got three goosberry bushes in it:

This is my jotted map of the patch, so that's White Lion, first, that according to the fruit book of Great Britain at chestofbooks is

Large and obovate. Skin, white, and downy. Of first-rate quality, and a good late sort. Bush, pendulous.

While Howard Lancer is, according to perennials of distinction, is very large greenish white berries with a superb flavour. Strong grower and regular cropping.

and Lord Derby is a red berry that is the last of the red berries to ripen. The fruit is large and oval and is a good choice for exhibition purposes. Season Early August Dessert / Culinary, according to perennials.

Though this bush is looking a little sickly at the moment.

We had goosberry crumble the other day with the last of the gooseberries that were frozen last summer; the picture is up above as blogger is a bit glitchy with the placing of photos

I also planted 12 potatoes where the strawberries used to be and another 6 between the goosberries, as they're on the small side, for the moment.

A small line of spring onions, white lisbon was put in as well.

No Good from a Really Ill Wind

2011-03-14T06:34:00.000-07:00

During the first year of my first ever vegetable garden in spring 86; at the back of a terrace house with nice silty soil, Chernobyl happened.

I remember as I was transplanting cauliflowers wondering with the wind coming from the east just how polluted it was going to be. It didn't rain over us, but a couple of days later it did rain over parts of the Lake District. And those fells are still being monitored pretty closely.

It's only a small world so if there is a melt down or a major explosion over in Japan it won't take long to have some of that dust drifting down onto our gardens and allotments.

One of the most haunting things about Chernobyl was a description of people watching the initial fire:

(Image credits:Vivo (Ben) )

“After the explosion at Reactor 4 the people of Pripyat flocked on the railway bridge just outside the city to get a good view of the reactor and see what had happened.

Initially, everyone was told that radiation level was minimal and that they were safe. Little did they know that much of the radiation had been blown onto this bridge in a huge spike.”

They saw a beautiful rainbow coloured flames of the burning graphite nuclear core, whose flames were higher than the smoke stack itself. All of them are dead now – they were exposed to levels of over 500 roentgens, which is a fatal dose.

A Battle to be Won for the Eating

2011-03-14T04:49:00.000-07:00

Arthur Wellesley, the first Duke of Wellington of Waterloo fame would have been proud of me, and his sergeant majors, as I lay out three precise squares of Amsterdam forcing carrots to bring on under a cloche. And that cloche should also help to protect these early ones from any carrot flies that might come surging over the allotment hedge, swarming in their thousands like the cavalry under Michel Ney the first Duc d'Elchingen and the first prince of Moscow, the bravest of the brave, but also the stupidest of the stupidest as he sacrificed his cavalry on the British squares that hot, dusty and deadly afternoon. And so the carrot fly should be repelled by my plastic cloche as long as they're not riding big thundering horses, wearing a lot of gold braid and have wickedly sharp sabres, no cloche however plastic can stand up to that sort of treatment.

For the main crop I intend to build three cloche-like structures covered in that white meshy stuff to keep off the fly. Adding more belt to my braces, for a Christmas present I was given a packet of Flyaway carrot seed and I will use that for one row of carrots, while for the other row I would like to get some James Scarlet Intermediate to sow.

Cold Frames for the Hot Bed

2011-03-09T04:59:00.000-08:00

Those cold frames are just about finished now, sawn, hammered, screwed and painted into submission. I think I may paint my allotment number on to them, it might make them look a bit smarter. Working out the cost of the frames was a bit difficult, having to buy some tools and rather more screws than you need and also overestimating on the paint; but you can never have too much white gloss can you? Well using a variety of cost accounting methods that would make your average city banker pretty chuffed, I reckon that the pair of frames should cost around 60 squid for the pair. Not bad bearing in mind that the build quality is of a pretty high standard in terms of the materials, not my carpentry skills, and a double lick of paint is worth more than it's weight in gold. So there you go, voila!

Battered Broad Beans and Goosgog Chips

2011-02-28T05:19:00.000-08:00

No, that's not a weak Scottish attempt at trying to get a healthy diet. But on Sunday I had to put in 60 odd broad beans to replace the ones that had disappeared over the winter; I had roughly 50 left and growing. other beans on the site look a lot healthier; what's the secret? maybe the weather was a lot better, soil warmer when they were planted? last year the Broad Beans were a magnificent sight.

I also tried to tidy up the old goosegog bush by opening it up a bit and sorting out some of the mesh of branches. Ended up with what looks like 18 cuttings. It's the wrong time of year to take cuttings, apparently, but the couple I accidentally took last year; snapping them off hamfistedly, have just sprouted over the last few days. If these cuttings do take then I might use some of them, but they might also make nice presents.

Chit! It's that Time already

2011-02-22T05:16:00.000-08:00

Yes, it's that time already. Time to chit your taters, though the jury does seem to be out on whether it does any good anyway. As some people have been quibbling but the National Vegetable Society is pretty firm about it:

The "Chitting of seed tubers is one of the vital factors in successful potato cultivation. As potatoes are half hardy in Britain, to have good sturdy sprouts before planting will get the crop off to an excellent start. Early cultivars will mature up to two weeks earlier from properly chitted seed than from unchitted seed."

So, who am I to argue.

But I do have to make my mind up on which varieties to choose. And in this I shall take the wise advice of Dr Hessayon in his vegetable guide and Nigel Slater in the first volume of his Eat series.

I think this time I'll try to go for quantity, though inevitably I'll be seduced by taste, how different from real life.

Now Nigel reckons... to be continued when I get home

A Hot Bed of Activity

2011-02-21T03:39:00.000-08:00

I love it when a plan sort of comes together even if it is all a bit synchronistic. The allotments are getting a delivery of horse poo this morning, straight from her maj Liz. All good stuff, but it does need to rot down for a year or so. That's a long time but I've had a bit of a brain wave; I'll use some of it to make a hot bed like the Victorian gardeners used to do to bring on veg and fruit early.

I had a dig around on the internet and turned up some interesting pages such as @ and also a very informative site @.

These cover all the basics. And then another layer of synchronicity was added when I looked through the recent blog postings on my blog roll and found this at Our Happy Acres where the latest post was about cold frames.

Which all fits rather nicely into building the lights to go on top of the hot beds to keep the heat in.

And what plants to force on? Well, I think I'll try strawberries and checking out how to force strawbs I found this book on google books .

This book, An Encyclopedia of Gardening might be worthwhile checking out for other nuggets of info.

But for the moment, I think I'll try strawberries, and then use the reduced heap to grow on melons, probably under the lights, as suggested here, depending on how hot the summer might be. A nice one might be Petit Gris de Rennes @, and Thompson & Morgan seem to have some nice melons. I must be maturing not a fnaaar in sight, doh!

That Went Quick

2010-09-30T02:01:00.000-07:00

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

2010-02-01T02:15:00.000-08:00

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

2010-01-28T02:28:00.000-08:00

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

Balancing on the Edge

2009-12-21T04:01:00.000-08:00

As the ground lies frozen, and fingers drum on the table, in a toasty kitchen, I'm very conscious that we're zooming in towards the Winter Solstice, timed for 1747 GMT today. And then the days will start to lengthen and they will be taken up in a flurry of activity. Though, there are still a few more days to leaf through those catalogues and plan.

But as I think about the solstice, and its mechanics, and all the green and blue on this planet, it is the product of some pretty fine tuning.

Because the earth is tilted at an angle of 23.45 degrees relative to the sun as it travels around it, you get differing amounts of exposure to the sun, so creating the seasons. And the reason for the solstice today.

Effectively, the Earth wobbles back-and-forth as it whirls around the Sun. Leaning over backwards to produce winter, so the Sun's rays glance off us leaving little warmth behind. And leaning forwards , thrusting its face into the sun to soak up all the Sun's warmth, to create summer.

But there's just enough of a difference to produce these brief December days, which we spend hiding in the kitchen, dreaming dreams of tomatoes, peas and what have you, and the long summer days that stretch tantalizingly before us.

Any more of a tilt and we could be looking at winters lasting years, and think of the amount of paraffin you'd need for your greenhouse.

But it does seem so finely balanced for us. Much farther away from the sun, regardless of the tilt and you wouldn't want any ice for your G&T, a bit nearer and we'd be applying factor 400 sun cream.

And all of the beauty on this earth, the plants, birds, animals, everything, that has come about because of this supreme balancing act may all disappear, as such subtlety seems to be beyond the ken of our political masters.

Call me an old cynical goat, but I doubted that all those bigwigs, politicians and spin meisters that descended on Copenhagen about a week ago would ever appreciate the situation about global warming. They didn't, and they can't, as it is beyond their short-term political needs. The only winners from the global warming conference would have been waiters, taxi drivers and prostitutes, all earning their whack in their own way.

Now is the time for us to step forward and show to these politicos that polluting gases have to be cut by 40% by 2020, just to stop world temperatures rising on average by 2 degrees centigrade. Again it's the subtle balance again, it doesn't sound a lot, just 2 little degrees, but that's what we need to keep the world roughly in balance.

Anything much further than that and the world will be beyond a tipping point, and things will get fairly difficult.

So as Johann Hari says in the Independent, we'll have to take the power into our own hands. Politicians seem to have little inclination to do anything concrete, as they cannot look at global warming as a global problem.

Adding It All Up

2009-11-07T23:41:00.000-08:00

Lazy would be one word, another couple would be too busy, but it's been awhile since logging on, though I have been keeping up with the blogs on the side there, and it looks like everything has been ticking over nicely. Apart from the lady with the skin disease's matrimonial mayhem, good luck there and chin up old girl.

I started this allotmenteering about a year ago now and it's time to take stock has it been worth it? Well I'm biased; if I had only produced some dried-up radishes and slug-nibbled strawberries it would still have been worth it. just standing out on the ground with the weather happening around you, breathing in the smell of freshly-turned earth is fairly priceless, and working outside is a reward in itself. So I won't do an accountant's look at this, though the 12 lbs of strawberries have got to be a bargain, but just to look at the failures and successes.

Failures first: Well what happened to the rhubarb? I put in four different crowns, and a couple tried poking their leaves through the soil but kept failing......soil, weeds or jinx?

I had a lot of potatoes, but generally smallish, so more watering and manure there I think.

The cauliflowers were pillaged by pigeons after I planted them. Mea culpa on this one as I failed to cover them. This has to be permanent standing order on this, putting out brassicas, cover them immediately.

I think I could have had a few more pumpkins, one per plant isn't great, and a lot more courgettes. I think this may have been to do with my lack of watering.

Some of my tomatoes, the big ones like mortgage lifters and some of the cherokee ones were hit by some strange viral infection, I don't think it was blight.

Successes: Strawberries, bags of them, quite literally.

Along with some delicious ice cream.

I was hit by some weird disease which I didn't think was blight but some form of blossom end rot. The tomatoes went all bubbly and started to rot.

However, there were quite a few tomatoes on the unaffected plants. I adore the smell of tomatoes, so rich, and the ripening green fruit covered with minute hairs seemingly dripping already with some sort of essence of tomato. Sometimes they look even better half way grown than when ripe.

to be continued...

Of Cabbages and Pens

2009-07-16T04:52:00.000-07:00

"The time has come to speak of cabbages -and pens-

And why the tea is cold—

And whether slugs have souls.”

Spent about 3 hours the other day building two pens to keep the cabbages from escaping to attack the pigeons. Having seen the cauliflowers devastated by the pigeons I would be quite willing to go out shooting pigeons. Greedy little dunderheads.

I didn't realise I had so many cabbages in the seed bed. Planted out 30 odd assorted cabbages, january Kings as the label tells me. But courtesy of the numpties at B&Q where I bought the tags and a pen, the name was washed off the label; the pen wasn't water proof, numpties.

The cabbages were a little large, some of them, to be transplanting as they seemed to have quite a large tap root, and they wilted quite quickly, but I gave them a good water and we'll see.

There's still a truck load of red cabbages to take up to the other allotment, another twenty or so. if all these cabbages come good, well we'll be cabbaged out.

I also sowed a few lines of swede; a bit late but we'll see.

Salad Days

2009-07-13T03:23:00.000-07:00

Naff headline but I have been sowing lots os salad in the back garden, along dome radish d'avignon, spinach, bella?, along with perpetual spinach and some nero broccoli, a little late but there you go, and a few lines of the beetroots, red ace and the bolthardy.

This afternoon I should make some sowings of swede, magres, that well late like, but what you going about it like, yeah and some spring cabbages, advantage and durham early.

That is all folks.

Oh and I tidied up my pots and planted a small herb bed, oh turned the compost, both bins, sigh.

Courgette a Go Go

2009-07-07T03:19:00.000-07:00

The courgettes look like they're taking off. there are two types there an Italian striped one and errr another one, I'll get back to you on that.

Pain de L'eau

2009-07-07T02:32:00.000-07:00

It's turning out like Jean de Florette; the tanks were running dry last week. Mmmmm some sort of water rationing going on. I arrived at the tank with me cans and all i saw was a dead donkey lying in the bottom, oh well that may be an exaggeration, but it was certainly pretty low. I had to go on the prowl to other tanks to get some.

I also sprayed the potatoes with Bordeaux, it's expensive but it keeps away the blight, though the Gentlemen of the Can who invade the allotments to suck on my potato leaves are a bit of a problem. That was on July 3, so fingers crossed I'll do that again in two weeks, 17 ish.

I have also augmented the pumpkins and marrows that I put out earlier with more pumpkins from the seed saved last year. Since I saw how strong the runner bean plants looked, which were from seed saved last year, I'm converted to saving my seed. Fnnaaar.

Picked the peas on the eden allotment, but about a quarter had pea moth caterpillars in them. That took a while to sort out those nasty little beggars; I'm going to compost them having drowned the caterpillars in a bucket of water.

Also picked a load of green goosberries, so I might have a tart tonight or possibly a fool. Ther was a bit of a small rain storm when I was picking, but that made a nice change, these days.

Strawberry Fields Forever

2009-06-24T01:31:00.000-07:00

The other day I sat down in the strawberry patch, in the stealth fruit tent, and picked 4 lbs of strawberries without having to stretch. The day was sunny so I was working in a sweet, heady strawberry-scented cloud.

What can one do with that many strawberries? Well, we weren't geared up for jam making but we used the newly bought ice-cream making machine (A dangerous purchase, who would have thought the health conscious under gardener would do such a thing?) and churned up a bucket of strawberry ice cream along with a pail of sorbet, while the rest became Cossack strawberries, bathed in vodka as cold as the steppes in January and sprinkled with some sugar.

And the next day, another lb or so of strawberries were collected, more sorbet mixed up and more eating of the strawbs. The whole house is beginning to smell of strawberries.

And it's a sugary, heady combination, so unlike the artificially manufactured strawberry flavourings. One lad at work says he doesn't like real strawberries as he prefers the chemical strawberry taste. You know when you eat strawberry ice cream that it's not quite right, the taste is sweet but not rich enough and redolent enough, the colour a little too glaringly pink, like someone overcompensating and becoming excruciating.

It's an eye opener when you see home made strawberry ice cream, it's a pale delicate pink, more of a misty pinkness, possibly the colour of angel ears, while the taste is complex but understated in a very modest way.

Eat your heart out super, mega, world global mega-brands, pedalling your cloying, saturated dreams of your food scientists.

My strawberries can barely travel more than 2 miles and will only last a few hours after that, hence the sorbet and ice-cream rushes. But the ice cream hawkers have to have industrial strength strawbs, and the resulting concotions ahve to be bolstered by their chemicals.

But then again when you have people who prefer the taste of chemicals and the many more who have never made their own ice cream, then maybe the food giants have inherited the earth.

The next glut to look forward to is blackberries. I pick these wild across south London, yes wild in London, there are many secret places where there are jungles of brambles.

Can A Snail Eat a Large Strawberry

2009-06-03T05:28:00.000-07:00

I'd noticed quite a large strawberry reddening in the frame the other morning, and thought "Aye, aye, I'll have that tomorrow." Tomorrow dawned, wandered down to the frame and there was just a stalk, no strawberry, gone, picked clean by something. Now I found a snail in the pot, and he was dispatched to the great snail heap in the sky, but can it have slurped down a whole, large strawberry?

Then I thought, maybe, it was a mouse, or a rat?

Traps, I think.

The words of Genghis Khan sprang to mind, he wasn't a great gardener, but this is certainly good advice,

“The greatest happiness is to scatter your enemy, to drive him before you, to see his cities reduced to ashes, to see those who love him shrouded in tears, and to gather into your bosom his wives and daughters.”

Well maybe I won't gather into my bosom the daughters and wives of the snails, mice and rats but I'm certainly going to scatter them.

Those strawberries are mine I say, mine.

The Stealth Fruit Cage

2009-05-25T01:08:00.000-07:00

Over the last few weeks I've built a fruit cage on the Eden allotment, it covers the strawberry plants that were there before and the gooseberry bushes I put in, along with a few raspberry canes, and now apparently some rhubarb which has sprung up in the cage. Though it is difficult to see it on a photo, it is there. I was a bit worried about the bees getting in and out, but after watching one force it's way through the mesh like a British Lions forward then there isn't too much to worry about.There's the old greenhouse, a while ago full of runners, sunflowers and pumpkins, which got blown over a couple of weeks later, also the B&Q cloches which are quite good, should have got some more of those, this is in the back garden.
And some of the lettuces started under the cloche, beetroots started under the other one.

Best salad I've grown, those nematodes are doing their job.

These are the beans at Eden, field beans planted as a green manure, but they've really sprung up so I'll let them go on and try the beans, they seem so much more vigorous than the other named types I've sown. We've alreday had a lot of the bean tops with bacon, and in a soupystew.

This is the allium bed at the house, white onions, which are slightly running to seed, garlic which is getting a good kicking from the brown spot disease, I keep rippin leaves off. The garlic are still going, they loved the snow we had. And finally, some afghan shallots, well if they're not shallots we can have opium parties in the shed.

More beans, the bees are loving all the flowers.

And finally one of the cabbages, 9 more to go.

2009-04-29T05:18:00.000-07:00

So having got some more grass clippings, and secured them from being liberated by a person or persons unknown I was eventually able to plant all the rest of the potatoes on the Clay Hill allotment. They take up three beds, which are roughly 5 by 11. I noticed the other day that one of the earlies was poking out of the ground.

I also noticed that one of my rhubarb plants has been nibbled, can't remember the variety.

Note to myself, to make a proper plan, but just thinking about it briefly I've got 10 beds in the back garden, 9 on Clay Hill and 11 at Eden Lane, that's 30 odd, I'll have to make a plan of these. Plus I've got the names sorted out, result.

I've also got a gnome for Eden Lane, got to have a gnome.

It's a beautiful day, I'm off allotmenteering.

The Strange Case of the Grass Clippings

2009-04-14T01:18:00.000-07:00

This case sticks in my mind as a strange combination of nefarious cunning and petty intrigue, it was just after Holmes and I, Doctor Watson the erstwhile recorder of his fantastic cases, had just taken over an allotment. The shortage of allotments in London was such that it had even forced Holmes to leave the cosy environs of Baker Street to move to the dreary hills of south London. We managed to secure a reasonable house in the dull suburb of Dulwich, where the local inhabitants seem to be fascinated by white posts. I propose to study this sometime, for surely this must be an example of a deep-seated twee syndrome.

A few years ago we had had recourse to travel the high ways and many low ways of south London as he investigated his celebrated case of "The Diamond Geezer of Streatham," and after, for many weeks, his rooms had been as full of opium smoke as the dreadful crater of a rumbling volcano as he tried to forget the horror of south London.

I began to fear the worst, as after we had laid waste to the weeds of the long forgotten plot, and had then exerted ourselves in hearty digging of the lumpen clay soil, we divided the plot into two and I proposed to grow on my half some potatoes and other roots along with some runner and broad beans; healthful vegetables that would drive away the soots of London. However, Holmes' first enthusiasm for deep beds and bio-dynamic gardening seemed to have withered on the vine, and looking at his planting plan there seemed to be a preponderance of poppy beds and a small hemp plantation.

It was then, that an instance of great peculiarity served to jolt Holmes from his moribund state. One afternoon I had given the extensive lawns that we had at the back of the house their first cut of the season. Being of the mind to be as efficient as possible I thought I'll save the grass clippings so as to use them to plant the potatoes on, it stops scab growing on them.

Imagine my surprise on the morning of Good Friday that I came around the side of our house and saw that the bag of grass clippings had been emptied, with just a few clips left on the floor. Who could have taken them. I instantly thought that i should try to use the methods of my renowned companion. i instantly deduced that it must be a desperate person who would steal grass clippings; for what intent though? it must surely be some insane composter who seeing me cutting the lawn had though "yes, I shall have those for my very own heap," no doubt rubbing his hands in some mephistophelean glee.

"Quite, quite, Watson, don't get carried away, what we are looking at here is quite simply the work of..."

to be continued

No one Can Hear You Scream in the Rhubarb

2009-03-26T04:11:00.000-07:00

On Sunday I managed to put in the first early potatoes; Emerald Vale and Kestrel Early, diging a small trench and lining it with grass clippings, it stops scab, apparently. maybe I put the rows too closew together, 16" rather than what I've been reading recently of 2', oh well we'll see.

Also, the crocuses are flowering and the tulips are sprouting on the clay patch. Also slowly, slowly the rhubarb is sprouting alien like out of the soil. It's just rank speculation, but I reckon the designer of Alien, or indeed the Director, thingymawhatsit, Cameron, that's it, had been in a rhubarb forcing shed in the Rhubarb Triangle and seen the disturbing sight of rhubarb rhizomes breaking through the ground by the light of a candle.

I have also put in a row of early carrots, Paris Market, which was under a cloche but that got blown off by the wind, lucky cloche, I say.

Also two rows of different parsnips, tender and true and errr something else.

I have also started building a cage around the goosegogs, strawberries and the raspberries. Slow going and every time I go down to build it it seems to strat blowing a gale.

Dung Beetles

2009-02-24T06:25:00.000-08:00

A pile of dung and bits of straw and wood chippings was dumped inside the allotment gates on Friday.
Cue the scene on Saturday, everybody rushing for their barrows shouting "There shit goes." It was as if the massive pile of manure was a beached whale and we the benighted islanders of the lost isle of allotments have descended to take our share of sustenance. Wheelbarrowing the sacred loads of the muck to our own little plot. And mounding it and then cuddling it, muttering "my precious, my precious, all mine."

Still seven barrows up the hill has given me a decent pile to play with. With all that, I haven't had any time to do any digging but I have three days off work and am content to spend them digging and mucking around on the allotment.

But I did manage to clear up the remains of the previous owner who must have been a bit of a gardener. He, I'm presuming there but I've got a feeling, has left a large cold frame and a tool box, both in a state of disrepair and some pots and tools left there and a pair of shoes. Ah, That's why I know it's a man.

He has also left a allotment deity, which I found sitting at the foot of what I think is an apple tree.

On the other plot I managed to sow two rows of the parsnips; to see the difference, and under a polythene cloche some short carrots. Also some chives, to see whether they take off.

Packet of Dreams

2009-02-20T04:21:00.000-08:00

Just like the hippy farmer Kevin Costner in Field of Dreams, I keep hearing a voice as I stand on the allotment, well both allotments, on the field of clay allotment, I keep hearing "If you concrete it over, it will be better," fair point, but I will keep persevering with the Paschendale-like slog of digging the clay.
One good point is that I don't have a lot of heavily-armed Germans shooting at me.
Always grateful for small mercies.
But on the second allotment the voice is more beguiling, "If you sow it, it will grow." The possibilities seem endless. Shall I grow melons? Always good to have a nice pair of melons to tuck into. Or maybe peppers? It looks like this site will get pretty hot. Though I'm trying not to think about all the watering that will be needed. Hosepipes are banned, so it will be buckets. i can't help feeling that I might end up like Jean de Berengere in Jean de Florette, broken man from the watering, obsessed with rabbits, driven mad by the avarice of the peasants of Dulwich. Ah peut-etre, on verra, ma jolie lecteure.
Still, it'd be nice to see Emmanuelle Béart flitting around the allotments naked with a flock of goats.
But after listening to the second voice I've bought some more seeds from the organic seed company:
Early Jalapeno
Ring o Fire peppers

and Tender and True parsnips along with Cobham Improved Marrow

also inspired by optimism I'm going to sow some early carrots under a cloche, Paris Market.

And also for the back garden, I have two packets of parsley, Italian Giant. Which was great last year, the smell of fresh parsley, "smells like...like victory" "You just knew that he wasn't going to get so much as a scratch on the allotment."
The parsley is still growing under a cold frame along with some strawberries, which should be a bit early this spring.

A Day in the Life of Denisovich

2009-02-01T09:27:00.000-08:00

Clearing the allotment the other day was a bit like a day in Ivan Denisovich, perhaps not as cold and not so much of a threat of dying from the cold but a lot more brambles to be pulled up, and some of those thorns were slicing their way through my gloves. Tough, dirty work but it had to be done or you would lose your standing on the allotment. As a newbie I was wandering around the groups, wheeling barrows, cutting brambles and eventually, eventually pushing twigs into the shredder.

But we did see a frog whilst doing some clearing. it was only a Common Frog, but what do you expect in South London

Potato Frenzy

2009-02-01T09:05:00.004-08:00

The other Sunday I went to a Potato fair. Cycling across the hills of South London in a sharply cold wind was not the best and when I got to the fair, which I thought would just be a few people looking at some tatties, I had to fight to get near the potatoes, elbowing my way past middle class voices wondering whether to get Pink Fir or Charlotte. A sign of the new trendiness of the allotments.

Anyway I managed to pick up most of what I wanted.
So I got ,

Vale Emerald, first early, 9 of those

Royal Kidney, second early salad, 15

Belle de Fontenay, early main salad, 10

Maris Piper, main, 11

King Edward, late main, 5

Golden Wonder, late main, 10

that's 60 in total, which is probably about three beds worth.

If there are no potato fairs out there, try Thompson and Morgan's potato section, it's quite good but you have buy a score at a time, usually.

The Fruits of Planning

2008-12-23T04:51:00.000-08:00

Now there are 7 beds dug on the allotment from hell and the green turtle pool thing I found on the allotment is buried as a pool and it may attract some frogs, though I hope they don't sit around all day discussing philosophy, throwing their Gauloise in my veg and trying to commence cinq heures septs with the girls of the allotment and if I get a shed no doubt shagging their new mistresses in it.

Still, some progress has been made and plans are afoot. At the top of the allotment there should be space for seven pear cordons. After a bit of dreaming through some fruit web sites, I thought no, I'm heterosexual, and started looking at sites about fruit trees and the pears I might plant.

At the moment I think I will get:

Dr Jules Guyot fruiting mid August

Williams Bon Chretien September

Gorkham mid September

Doyenne du Comice October, November

Winter Nellis late October, November

and two more to choose, so I'll go back to

chrisbowers.co.uk

Since I wrote this a while ago I have had a change of mind about the plants. I thought that the Allotment from Hell (Allothell) might not be the one that I stick with, heavy clay but great view and maybe the other allotment, Eden, might turn out to be the alpha allotment. So I revised the grand plan. I wouldn't have pear cordons but I would get some different types of rhubarb. In the end I chose to get from the above nursery four rhubarb for the top end of the allotment:

Albert and obviously

Victoria then

Timperley Early and finally

Cawood Delight

I also bought some gooseberry bushes, two for the back garden, for my girly as she loves goosegogs, and three for Eden, these were for the garden:

Broom Girl, its early fruits are very large and oval being yellow to almost olive green. The fruits are excellent for exhibition. A heavy crop from a vigorous grower.

and

Jubilee, an improved form of Careless with substantial improvements. The fruits are slightly earlier and are larger, handsome and yellow. Superb for all culinary purposes, freezes well and delicious for dessert when left to ripen. The flavour is excellent.

whilst on the allotment I went for

White Lion, an old but vigorous variety that crops late in the season with heavy crops of large white fruits. The flavour is excellent.

Lord Derby, one of the largest berries of all varieties. Large round, dark red fruits with a fine skin that is almost shiny with a very faint down. A good crop of well flavoured dessert fruits that are produced late season. The fruits are the darkest red of all and excel for exhibition.

and lastly

Howard's Lancer which is a mid-season to late cropper with large, smooth, yellow/green berries of superb flavour. A strong grower in all soils, believed by many to be the best variety ever raised. Also does well on light soils where other varieties may have proved difficult.

I was partly seduced by the names and the colours, white gooseberries, I've never seen them before. All the descriptions are based on the Chris Bowyer website, worth checking out.

I have got the beginnings of a fruit cage, with some mesh and I think I will extend this to cover the masses of strawberries that are living on the site already. At the moment I'm casting covetous eyes towards the allotment at the end of mine, not so much land but a fruit cage, tool boxes and lots of other kit. I'll have to cross my fingers.

A Tale of Two Allotments

2008-11-24T05:26:00.000-08:00

It was the best of allotments, it was the worst of allotments; it was a dark, friable loam of Eden, it was a deep, boot-sucking clay; it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity; it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness; it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair; we had everything before us, we had nothing before us; we were all going directly to Heaven, we were all going the other way.

As Dickens might have said if he'd been hanging around like little Dorritt on the waiting lists of various allotment associations for what seemed like the very eternity of time, but I had great expectations. And eventually something turned up. Well two allotments turned up in the same week. I said yes to the first and then the second; you can't say no after waiting so long. I now have one tenth of an acre but be careful what you wish for.

Allotment the First is on a hill, totally overgrown with briars and small ash trees, on what turned out to be deep, unforgiving, boot-sucking clay. But in a fit of desperation I took it on. The digging of beds on this allotment has been hard back-breaking labor. The sowing seed in a properly prepared bed has been quite difficult; the story of my life.

I've put in some crocuses and tulips in a small flower bed. I'm not sure whether they will come up out of what seems to be pure clay.

I have also planted a mixed bed of Sutton Broad Beans, along with two heads worth of White Garlic, and a few rows of onions, with a sprinkling of reds among them.

On the other 3 beds that have been dug so far I have merely sown some field beans as a green manure, they might come up.

Allotment the Second is also on the side of a hill but there the resemblance disappears. at first glance I did not appreciate the difference but the first time I slid the spade into the soil there was a whole world of difference.

On the other allotment you have push the spade through body armor camouflaged as matted couch grass and then push down through the clay and risk a hernia trying to turn a spade's worth of sod. That's if you don't hit a buried plank, iron bar or a medium-sized piece of sheet metal.