When the Going Gets Tough

I have been slaughtering the innocent, or as it’s known, thinning out and potting on. As I worked, I thought of Pam’s terminology of the ones you cull being volunteers. I haven’t heard that terminology before and whilst it made me a bit sad, the thought of them sacrificing themselves for the greater good crossed my mind more than once.

The survivors

I’ve sown some more tomatoes, some of which were seeds I got free with Gardener’s World magazine. In fact, I had three lots of those, as my Mum, who also gets GW mag gave me her packet and my sister handed over hers. Both of them are gardeners, but neither grow seeds. I passed on one of the three packets to Julie ND.

This afternoon the girls sowed ten sunflower seeds each. Jenny used the Giant Yellow seeds that have a sunny sunflower face on the packet. Rosie did half of those ones, and half from the mixed packet that were in the selection of seed packets I bought earlier today (because, of course, I don’t have enough seeds yet). I put some courgette seeds in, plus some basil seeds in a tray. My other basil seeds have not materialised at all, which I’ve found very perplexing, so I thought I’d start again. Then I did the thinning and tidied up (I add that last bit about tidying up, because I’m not so good about that usually). My Hubby looks out of the kitchen window and the lawn is strewn with evidence of my propagation activities, sometimes for days on end.

These are fun. Pepper seeds embedded in paper disks. A lot less fiddly, although of course not very economical.

Rosie, the saviour of all creatures, rescued a slug from the allotment at the weekend. We thought it looked very interesting with its yellow and brown stripe. I asked her to take it as far away as possible from our – down by the river would do. If Julie had been there, it would have been dispatched swiftly.

Another survivor

Post-Easter Progress

Did you know National Welly Week starts tomorrow? It’s an initiative by Garden Organic (formerly HDRA) to raise funds to help educate and inspire people about organic gardening, farming and food. Sadly I haven’t managed to organise anything – I might have tried to get the girls’ school involved but the school needs more time to set something up. Maybe next year. But if it’s not too late for you, get over the Garden Organic site and download some of the resources to help you raise money to support their educational, social and international programmes.

Meanwhile, my seeds haven’t been doing as well as I’d expected. The Alicante that I sewed in the coir jiffys have all germinated but there doesn’t seem to be a lot happening with many of the others. I think maybe they’ve not been warm enough. I thought I would get enough heat our lean-to – it’s not a greenhouse, but does trap the heat as the weather gets warmer. But I know as the temperature drops outside at night, so does the temperature in the lean-to. I’ve moved some of the trays into my heated propagator – there’s not enough room for all the trays, so I’ll have to think of other solutions for the others.

I also need to do more sewing over the weekend – maybe I need to find a warmer place, somewhere inside the house for those seeds.

Last weekend at the allotment, I wilted under the lovely sunny weather. I am definitely not adapted to hot weather, having very fair skin that burns, even after a slathering of factor 40, and invariably I develop a heat-related headache. I was very aware that I need to develop strategies – ensuring that I am super-hydrated, that I take plenty of breaks in the shade, and wearing light-coloured, light-weight clothing that covers as much skin as possible without smothering me. If anyone has any other suggestions, please offer them up.

Here are some more piccies of our allotment progress. We’ve made great inroads, especially considering we only got our plot in February. Julie ND has been the star, doing much of the digging.

The potatoes are showing their foliage – really exciting.

In absentia

I’m afraid I didn’t get down to the allotment at the weekend. Julie has been down a couple of times and did some good work, digging a trench and chucking in some of the manure we’d had delivered to the plot and then putting in some broad beans.

In turn, I spent beautiful yesterday afternoon sowing seeds, as follows:

• 18 Tumbling Tom Tomatoes
• 22 Alicante
• 17 Sweet Million
• 7 Gardener’s Delight
• 20 Shirley f1
• 10 Sweet Basil
• 16 Rudbeckia Rustic Dwarf
• 20 Coriander
• 10 Tendergreen Dwarf French Bean
• 6 Enorma Runner Bean
• 10 Borlotti Firetongue Dwarf French Bean
• 5 Thyme
• 5 Greek Oregano
• 20 Aster Carpet Ball Mixed
• 12 Pepper Big Banana
• 16 Flat Leafed Parsley
• 20 Aster Ostrich Feather

The flower sowings are for my garden and for the NCT plant sale. I’m going to struggle if all of those tomatoes germinate. I didn’t have the heart to thin out the weaker ones last year but ended up with no space for some of them. I read on a gardener’s blog recently to think of it in terms of the cycle of life – put the thinnings on the compost heap and it goes back into feeding the crops in the future.

Batemans at Easter

We travelled down to Bateman’s in East Sussex. The house is set in beautiful grounds and there’s a working flour mill powered by a waterwheel.

As we walked through the dappled shade of the wild garden, hubby asked me name of the delicate, nodding flowers. They were the fritillaries, of course. He was amazed by the chequered bells of the f. meleagris.

A wide expanse of lawn at the front of the house is perfect for children of all ages to pelt across and blissfully there are no “Keep Off the Grass Signs”.

One of my favourite places to visit.

Growing Blogs

I’m a lurker over at Rebsie’s Daughter of the Soil and also at Patrick’s Bifurcated Carrots. They’ve teamed up to create a new blog, Root Cause – go and have a look.

I also wanted to point you towards Hedgewizard, if you haven’t been there before. He’s recently posted a couple of examples of when things don’t go exactly right, which I’ve found very helpful.

My Smiling Shrub

I love Forsythia! It does “green” all year round except for a few brief weeks in the spring, when it is the star of my garden. It brings me smiles and memories of my childhood home.

I am very disorganised in my seed sowing this winter/spring and I’m not sure how it’s going to progress. So many demands on my time, not least of which is the allotment! I’ve found it hard to be inside when I could be pulling muscles down at Dorset Road.

Here are the few that I have sewed, so at least something is happening.

In the ground

I have muscles aching that I wasn’t convinced I even possessed. There didn’t seem to be anything different about the way I dug yesterday, but I guess I must have worked the muscles harder. I have come down with a wretched cold, which might be connected to the acheyness and certainly will explain the brainlessness of this post (sorry).

It was lovely weather yesterday. The girls were on a sleep-over with a friend of ours, which had allowed hubby and I to meet friends for dinner on Saturday night. As a result, I was free to wander down to the lottie in my own time. I got there at about 10.15 (that’s after I changed the clocks) and was able to stay until 1.15, so it was a satisfying amount of time, and we did get a reasonable amount done.

We sowed beetroot bolthardy, carrot nantes frubund (fast crop), parsnip hollow crown, planted some onions (don’t know which ones, they came out of Julie’s Magic Bag) and our first potatoes!

We bumped into more friendly folk. I chatted with one of the Mums from Rosie’s class who, it turns out, has the plot a little down from us. She’s got her nephews to build 10 amazing raised bed frames, which she’s planning to line and then fill with compost. That’s going to be a lot of compost.

I’ve ordered some sweetcorn, broccoli and leek plants from Suttons. We thought we’d try the Three Sisters – corn, squash and beans.

Before I slope off to bed, I would be very remiss if I didn’t point you in the direction of Potato Cam, where you watch, well, potatoes, growing. You knew there was something missing in your life.

Oh, and if you’ve never seen the fab Storewars video on YouTube, please go here now.

I was just thinking . . .

. . . that there aren’t enough gardening/growing/green programmes on to keep me amused (because, of course, I don’t have anything else to do but watch lots of TV), and then I saw a trailer for It’s Not Easy Being Green, which is starting a new series on Thursday. I have to say I didn’t really watch much of the first series, but I think I’d like to see how the Strawbridges share their experiences with various families who were inspired by what they saw in the previous shows.

And I’m now going to retire to bed with my new purchase, acquired at a bargain price from The Book People.

I’ll let you know what I think of it later on.

Bean there

I know, I know, you’re wondering where I’ve been and whether I’ve given up on the lottie. Well, of course I haven’t. Last weekend I couldn’t get down there as I was busy both days.

Yesterday, I had to nip over to a friend’s house to feed their cats, and so my time down the allotment was restricted. But I did spend about an hour in the company of Julie and the girls. Julie had done some splendid digging last week and it’s really looking beautiful.

I wandered down the shop to buy some Aquadulce Claudia seeds, as suggested by our Monty on Friday night, some Tendergreen Dwarf French Beans seeds, some Meteor Peas seeds and some Mange Tout.

I also couldn’t resist adding to my shopping a packet of Alicante Tomato and a Multi Colour Mix of carrots, which will amuse the girls hopefully. Much sowing to be done over the next week.

Whilst I was in the shop, Julie and the girls put in some rhubarb – our first planting, how exciting. I think we need to actually start to making more of a plan, so I’ll give that more thought too over the next few days.

I just love digging

(Hey, Flighty, I remembered the camera today.)

I didn’t manage to get down to the plot during the week. I had quite a busy week, a lot of it involving school governor business, and when I got to Friday, the first properly free day, I felt I needed to catch up on admin, e-mails and phone calls (although I didn’t manage to get everything done).

This morning’s start wasn’t as early as I’d hoped, as there was some umming and ahhing about who was doing what and where the girls were going to be, and then Jenny threw a tantrum about my insistence that she put a plaster on her thumb, which she’d cut yesterday, as I wanted her to keep it clean. Eventually that was sorted and we headed off to the plot.

Julie ND was already there and had made some more progress with the digging. She reported that some fellow allotmenteers had popped by and they’d chatted about the Gardener’s World special on Friday last about allotments. I’d taped it and had managed to watch it last night. It was great to see some many different people with their plots, and I think it helped to dispell the impression still held in some quarters that holding an allotment is the preserve of old men in flat caps. That’s certainly not my experience.

We’re not ready to put anything in yet – we’re still chitting the potatoes – so it’s still more digging.

As you can see we had some helpers. Even in today’s less than favourable weather, the ground was relatively easy to dig. The girls didn’t really do much. Rosie is quite keen on communing with the worms and transferring them to a different part of our plot. Jenny also wanted a turn in worm transferral.

Yes, I know, Rosie had the spade round the wrong way, but we sorted her out.

The rain persisted, and in the end we downed-tools for a cuppa in the clubhouse. It also meant that the girls could be under-cover.

Whilst we were clearing up, I took some photos of our neighbour’s plot. Judith has some lovely daffs – OK, they are probably narcissi, but be kind to me, I’m a novice.

Julie and I were also interested in her pond.

I’d been reading over at Plot 29 about veggie friends and foes – which plants and creatures to introduce to your plot to combat pests, and how to achieve that. I think a mini-pond would be great to attract those froggies who can munch away on our sluggy-visitors.

Mindful of Monty’s advice on Friday about the correct posture for digging, I kept myself aware of my alignment whilst working today. But, even so, I think I’m going to ache more tomorrow than I have on previous weeks. It probably won’t help that I had a busier than usual day yesterday for giving reflexology treatments too, and that sometimes really tires my upper back. Ah, well, it’s all good exercise.