Weeding and a chair - a guest post

A guest post today from Madeleine aka Mum. 

We had another good session there on Tuesday, although it was very hot, so an hour is probably all that's doable while the sun shines without frying up.

I hand weeded the carrots, runners, tomatoes and leeks. They are all doing well, especially the carrots. 

The lettuce and pea seedlings are a bit sparce, but we will need to plant some more lettuce in any case to keep a moderate supply, rather than suffering from a south London lettuce glut. Here's hoping more peas will have appeared by our next visit.

Nick did heroic work clearing the remains of some huge seeded cabbage plants left over from the previous owner, on the left side of the plot. They actually came out quite easily, leaving loads of new space to plant more stuff. We dug over the cleared space from last week's visit, and planted all the broad bean plants: they are looking really good.

Nick found a hardly damaged garden chair at the jungle end of the plot, so we had a little rest before packing up! Useful.

Next visit we need to plant the round cucumber and butternut squash seedlings, kindly donated by fellow friends/allotment buddies.

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.

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. 

So it begins...

I started a blog to keep track of our achievements and failures and so that everyone else can laugh at our inability to know what we're doing. And maybe offer helpful tips! I am Marguerite and I'll be mostly writing it but the 'Core Team' of Marie and Mum (aka Madeleine) will also contribute, along with anyone else who feels like it.

We have an allotment! Hurrah! After being on a waiting list for three years (three!) I finally got assigned an allotment. Cue much rejoicing. I went to look at it yesterday with The Core Team. It's really convenient for us all, it's about the mid point of a triangle between our three houses. We were welcomed by the world's most friendly and enthusiastic man called Terry who told us everything we could ever have wanted to know about the allotments, the people on them, what to plant and more. We were offered a choice of about seven plots by the council. The one we went for in the end was one which had been offered as a ten rod plot (read about wtf a rod is here (nothing if not forever a researcher)). However, we thought, and our new BFF Terry agreed, that it was better to ask the council to split it in half and take a five rod plot. Ten rods is WAY too big for us. The half plot seems perfect. It has an apple tree on it which he said produces fantastic apples. It also has rhubarb, raspberries, blackcurrants and redcurrants. It also has a shed which will be a huge help. We don't have a car between us and so the thought of lugging equipment back and forth on a bike or the train was a bit daunting. But this way we can just lock it all away! We also really need to get some folding chairs and a kettle so we can sit and drink tea and look at our achievements. It's near the water supply and the rubbish tip. The plot had only been left unworked for a couple of months meaning what is there is mostly 'surface growth' and won't be that hard to dig.

So, what next? We need to make some plans for what we'd like to grow. All the advice seems to point towards clearing a metre at a time and working that rather than trying to uncover the whole lot at once. Someone else recommended that we have a book and draw what we plant every season so we can effectively rotate the crops and not leech the soil.
We hope to have a Dig For Victory day on Saturday May 10th if anyone is around and would like to help us. Also, if you have any gardening equipment and/or seeds you'd like to contribute to this venture they'd all be very gratefully received!