No one Can Hear You Scream in the Rhubarb

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.