Let's get dirty

Hello blog!  Nerys and I headed down to the allotment this afternoon for a couple of hours, despite the fact that it was clouding over and looked like the heavens might open at any moment.

 

I weeded the carrots and leeks, and Nerys dug up a new bed.

 

She found some coriander, so I planted it in the former cauliflower bed, since the caulis refused to grow and just died instead. It looked a bit crap by the time we left so I'm not sure whether or not it survived being moved... I fear that spot is going to become The Bed Of Death where plants go to die.

 

Frank and Anna from plot 12 came over to introduce themselves to us.  They confirmed that the big purple things growing down the end are indeed weeds, and then gave us some lettuces and potatoes from their plot - FREE DINNER, WHOO!  They were really friendly and said if we ever need anything we should just go over and talk to them.  The whole place is so lovely, it's got a real community vibe to it which I'm just not used to as a hardened Londoner.  It gives me the warm fuzzies :D

We set about digging up the purple weed.  My god, those things are tough.  It took the two of us a good 25 minutes to get a single one out, and this involved digging a hole at least two feet deep.  The weather decided it was time to laugh in our faces, and we found ourselves up to our armpits in mud, hurling obscenities at a weed whilst it rained cats and dogs.  It was all very messy and hilarious fun, and eventually we pulled out the majority of the root!  TAKE THAT.  Let's just not discuss the fact that there are about ten more of them still to do...

 This photo does not do the hole justice.  If Nerys had fallen into it during this shot, I could've planted her and grown us an army of Welsh gardeners.

The rain of course stopped as soon as the weed was out and we were thoroughly soaked, so we planted the pumpkin Nerys brought with her.

Exciting stuff - we can GROW OUR OWN JACK O'LANTERNS!

This done, we decided to call it a day - and it was lucky we did, because about five minutes after we got into the car it started to absolutely LASH it down.  At least we don't need to worry about the plants needing water!

Tomatoes.

Due to our wild social lives we only had a couple of hours on the allotment this week. I was impressed and surprised with how much we got done in such a short amount of time. All the plants currently in the ground were doing well, with the exception of the cauliflowers. We had doubts about their survivability as they need a lot of water all the time, something we weren't able to give them immediately after planting. However, they might still (literally) come up trumps so we'll wait and see. The beans are growing very well, they're already winding themselves round their poles. How magical that they know how to do that, to know that the poles are there and how to use them to grow effectively. I think that's amazing. The carrots are flourishing, Mum and Sarah thinned them last week but they'll clearly need thinning again as we planted so many in such a haphazard manner. The leeks are also great, some of them really look like something you could actually eat! The lettuces and peas were also coming up, tiny tiny fresh greens shoots of goodness. It really is wonderful to watch things coming up from the rather stony, clumpy imperfect soil. 

Mum and Sarah had cleared a patch last week so we had a good bit of clear space to plant in immediately we arrived. 

We had, very luckily, been given some wonderful tomato plants by our friends June and Duncan. Thanks guys! Mum and I turned over the already dug plot while Dad got to work clearing some more ground. In their garden at home Mum does the decorative and creative gardening while Dad limits himself to what he calls 'clearing'. It's all about playing to your strengths, apparently, although he is clearly selling himself short as he told me lots about the care of the tomatoes we were putting into the ground. 

He did amazing work on what was a very stony and grass covered bit of ground. We're learning that the grass is the hardest going when it comes to digging, and even when you think you've dug it all out there are stull huge clumps left. The lettuce bed had some big grass plants growing in it, even though we were sure we'd removed all the crafty bastards before planting. Clearly it's a case of following MadEye Moody's advice of CONSTANT VIGILANCE!

Along with the grass we also dug up some other interesting things. It's a bit like being on Time Team, you can see what the previous owners of the plot had planted in different places as we dig along. I pulled up this mammoth fennel, the plant above ground was about 3 foot tall and required a lot of arm strength to get it out. 

With my (very dirty) foot for scale

Dad pulled up spring onions and we found one, lone intact potato plant that we left to see what happens. 

We put in ten tomato plants. We did actually stake them up more effectively than this, I just failed to take a photo of that! 

We also gave everything a good watering. We've been really lucky with the weather, a mixture of sunshine and (sometimes torrential) rain but I figure it's good to get into the practice of watering everything anyway. 

Before .

And after!  

Mum and Dad are going to do some more work during the week - god bless retirement! All the beds need weeding, the carrots need thinning and Mum has some butternut squash plants she'll put in. Those take up a lot of space but also help keep the weeds down which is clearly something that's really important! The next big thing will be to clear all the wild massive scrub that is down the left hand side of the plot. It needs cutting back and pulling out so we can use that part of the land. I'm not sure what it all is, some of it is weeds but some of it looks like previous crops gone to seed. 

 I felt like we'd achieved a surprising amount in a short space of time. It was a good idea to go early (we all skipped our various religious activities and communed with God through gardening) because boy, it was hot! It was almost too warm to do much strenuous digging even at 10am, being there at midday would have been very uncomfortable. I need to invest in some better sun proof clothing and a better hat. Hurrah for an excuse to go shopping! 

Weeding and thinning.

A guest post this week from Madeleine - with Sarah helping with the digging They kindly took over the weekend duties as the rest of us were busy with other commitments. We're grateful to them for their hard work! 

Sarah and I had a good hour at the allotment last Saturday. Given it was a sunny Bank Holiday Saturday we were surprised that so few other people were there.

Margo and co had done great work the previous week - we were very impressed with the neat rows of new seed sowings. Sarah did some weeding of carrots and leeks (leeks doing really well; plants already looking very sturdy), and between us we managed to separate out some of the carrot seedlings, which had originally been planted in a rather clump like manner......! We made a new row alongside the runner beans, to accommodate the sorted out seedlings. Some of them look a bit weedy, but the rest are doing fine. And this rain will help!
I dug and cleared a new patch, not as large as last week's effort, but still.... 

There is room now for tomatoes, if anyone would like to provide some! It's still not too late, but we should get them in quickly if we want them to produce fruit before the autumn.

I also think we should plant some raspberries. They are so delicious to eat, and good value for hard work, as once they are in, they more or less look after themselves.  There is an autumn fruiting variety, I think, so not too late for this year.

Lettuce, cauliflower and peas

Mum's guide to planting peas

Yesterday was hot. Really hot. Sunburn and ice lolly hot. The perfect day to spend doing some hard manual labour on the allotment. I fear that I may be the worst kind of fair weather gardener. I don't mind the cold weather but I hate the rain and mud and I fear that the desire to sit in my house and drink tea may well overrule my desire to grow things once it stops being warm and sunny. I hope that the momentum of seeing things growing and my own innate stubbornness will outweigh all that. I should also buy some actual waterproof clothes, this is another example of how much of a city dweller I am. I bought some super cute striped ankle wellies which make me look perky and helpful but I'm not sure they'll actually keep the water out. Perhaps I am overdue a trip to Millets...

It was great to get to the plot yesterday and discover that everything was still alive! We'd been quite lucky with the weather with some heavy rain interspersed with sunshine. I can see, even at this early point, that the main problem with working full time and having an allotment will be the watering. We may have to try and work out a schedule for nipping down after work. I also need to take full advantage of my parents being retired, surely they have nothing better to do than water an allotment?

We arrived to see that the crops we planted last week (beans, carrots and leeks) had not only survived but had grown! The beans seem to have come on the most. The leeks, honestly, looked pretty much the same. The carrots seemed to be wilting in the heat but had certainly grown. I fear they won't do that well as they need fine tilled soil and our soil is really the absolute opposite of that!

Beans!

We decided to do the same approach as last week, with digging another few feet and then planting that. It was HARD. Much much harder going than last week. From what we were digging up it was clear that part of the area had been used as an onion bed. That was not too bad to dig up. The rest of it, however, had obviously either been a path or left fallow for grass. And, my goodness, that was such hard going. Enormous clumps of deep seated grass roots that required brute force to dig them out. We discovered that we really need another fork, trying to turn the earth and get out roots with a spade is pretty ineffective. It was interesting to see the difference in the soil quality and trying to deduce what the previous holder of the plot had used it for. A bit like gardening archaeology! I did start to slightly hate the previous holder as we dug out clump after clump. 

Before

Once we'd dug it all over we had a well deserved break, drinking a lot of water and eating the lovely allergen free snacks N had brought. I took a bit of a walk and looked at some of the other plots. 

The allotment as a whole seems to be divided into two halves, one on each side of the main path from the gate. Those on the left are very well tended and well used with sheds and trees and every addition you could wish for. Our BFF Terry has his (many) plots here and I wonder if everyone who really knows what they're doing and has their whole life to dedicate to it has gathered round him. The other side (our side, natch) is much shabbier with a lot of vacant plots. There are some exceptions, Baffled Maria from last week is on our side and her plot is going great guns. Terry did say to us something along the lines of everyone wants to be on his side, that's the good side etc. He was joking but it does seem partially true. So now, obviously, our aim is not only to grow vegetables but to stop this awful left right plot war and bring unity and joy to all. 

Between the three of us we had lots and lots of seeds, more than would fit into the area we'd prepared. We decided to go for lettuces, cauliflower and peas. We did two rows of each. 

The end result 

Phew. I was very hot, very tired and very dirty by the time we'd finished. I ache much less today though, considering how hard going the digging was. This is clearly a sign that I am fast approaching my peak physical fitness and will have buff Madonna arms able to dig up whole trees by next week. 

We spoke to two more people, more friends! We met a lady and her pre teen daughter, their plot is near ours and they seemed nice - and they had good hats which is now A Thing given the heat and our awesome hat selection we had going on. We did instantly forget her name but she seemed nice. The big social event of the weekend though was meeting Our Second BFF Debbie. She may take over from Terry as he wasn't there and she seems more on our wavelength. She came past our plot to the compost heap. We started chatting. She has a plot which needs a LOT of work, it has tons of old carpet under the soil so is hard digging. She's doing it on her own and she has a 7 month old boy. Massive props to her for taking on such a task with a small baby! We watched her (very cute) baby while she took stuff to and from the compost heap. She seemed really lovely and she said she'd be there most weekends and maybe we could have some beers together in the future. Hurrah for lovely people. I think our next session may need some extra people as we've reached the area of the plot with huge well seated plants. They will have big roots that will need a lot of digging, we'll certainly need more forks and some brute force for those. 

Carrots and beans

We had our first day working on the allotment on Saturday. Sadly Marie couldn't come but Mum, Ruth and Nerys all came to lend a hand.
We sadly didn't get the plot I wrote about in the last entry, I think we were too late by the time we'd been to look at it and I'd emailed the lady from the Council. Damn those other plot stealing people! The plot we did get is the same size but sadly has neither a tree or a shed. Sad face. However, we can always get a shed if we want to and after three years of waiting I'm just glad to have any plot at all! The one we got (2A if you want to stalk us more efficiently) is nearer the road and in slightly worse condition - the ground is very uneven and the whole quarter of the plot nearest the fence is filled with random rubbish (chairs, bottles, buckets etc) which we will need to clear at some point. For now though, it's fine to just be left there.

Here is the 'before' shot. My BFF Terry - the dude in charge of the allotment association - says it's been unused since October meaning that is has one season of growth on it. 

Once we started pulling the weeds up it turned out it was most surface cover, meaning that the plants came up easily leaving the soil more or less bare and ready to plant. This is a huge advantage as it means it'll be much easier to clear and plant. Some of the plots we were offered had five or six seasons of growth meaning they were neck high in brambles and deep rooted well established plants. No thank you! So this is great for our slightly clueless beginnings. We started pulling weeds and clearing the ground. We decided, having taken advice from everyone from Terry Our BFF to my boss, to clear a strip and plant that and then work along the plot like that. To attempt to clear the entire thing before planting would lead to burn out and madness and we don't want that! 

We started nearest the path because the other end is filled with the aforementioned rubbish. I also took the advice of my boss who said it's best to start nearest other people so you can get chatting and then they might help you and offer you free stuff. A+ advice. We did borrow a bucket from a nice lady on another plot, I attempted to make her our second allotment BFF but, as she only spoke Portuguese and my use of that language is limited to 'thank you' and 'small', we didn't get very far. We smiled a lot though which is a good start to any relationship and her bucket was very useful. Thank you slightly baffled Maria!

Digging away.

Terry Our BFF came over to chat (he LOVES to chat) and offered to use his strimmer to cut down the surface growth. We said YES PLEASE and he happily strimmed (strummed?) away - he did about half the plot. You can see in the difference between the photo above and the one below this meant the soil was then much easier to work, all we had to do was turn it with a fork and pull out the big clumps of roots. Much much better than starting totally from scratch. WE LOVE TERRY. 

Once we'd cleared an area the width of the plot and about five foot long we were ready to plant. I'd made a run to Homebase that morning and got some seedlings. Let me tell you, Homebase at 9am is really the place to be. It was me and three very old very serious gardening type men who were actually all wearing flat caps - one of them even had braces on and tried to talk to me about poly tunnels. 

I got carrots and leeks. Mum had grown some broad beans in her garden and brought them. We made a bean frame with poles that Ruth kindly donated.

We put in six bean plants, four rows of carrots and four rows of leeks - I slightly didn't understand how many plants I was buying but it means that if half of them die we still have plenty! 

It was a fab morning. I was really impressed at how much we cleared in a relatively short amount of time. It was so lush to be outside working with the earth, I even got a bit sunburnt in the sunshine between the rain. I need to build up my bending stamina though, my legs hurt so much on Sunday that getting out of a chair was really painful! I also forgot how very dirty mud is, my life is normally so sanitised that it was almost a shock to be so grimy when I got home. 

We hope to go back next weekend to do more clearing and hopefully some more planting - I've got some perpetual spinach seeds I want to put in and we're going to do potatoes I think. I want to try and do some fruit too but that'll have to wait till Mum returns from her holiday as she is the woman with the canes to prop them up.