Playing catch-up

It's official; it's a terrible gardening year. Monty Don said so on Gardener's World, and Terry Walton said so on Gardener's Click. All my allotmenteering friends and neighbours agree, too. This knowledge has lifted my spirits, because now, I'm not alone. I was getting a bit downhearted and wondering why I bother, but now I know everyone else has had collapsing seedlings, poor yields, slug attacks and phenomenal weed growth, I feel in good company. There's a sort of blitz spirit, perhaps if we keep our heads down we might just get through it.


Photgraphic proof that the sun did shine, albeit briefly, in 2012

Monty said it's not too late to plant things so I followed his example and got some baby carrot seeds into the ground. I may not have many potatoes for Christmas this year but maybe I'll have a few carrots instead. I also put some dwarf French beans ('crops in 7 weeks', the packet says) and when I have cleared a space, I will put some spring onions in as well.

In other positive news, there are some peas and beans on their way through soon, and I await with interest to see if my cucumbers are edible.  They are about the size of a small sausage presently and looking good. We've had some new potatoes, although they're a bit bigger and fatter than I would have liked. I've never actually been able to time new potato growing properly, they either get killed by frost or I let them grow too big. They should breed a variety that grows a little stalk with a flag on it when the potatoes are at optimum size.

Lots of other plots are looking much more overgrown than mine. I'm disappointed to see a few newly-rented plots have already been left to be reclaimed by the weeds, the new gardeners no doubt as dispirited as I have been this year. I guess having no experience to tell them things might get better (if not easier), they have given up. Having said that, I started working my plot in 2007 which was, at the time, one of the wettest summers ever seen, and I'm still here. So perhaps the expectations of these new entrants are too high, or they just don't have the staying power that is needed.

One pleasant side-effect of tall weeds everywhere is that quite a few wild flowers are blooming, and I had thought of just letting mine grow and calling it 'prairie planting' like they do on TV. Only a couple of weeks ago the grass was waist high in places. However, the lack of good growth and harvesting has meant I have been able to spend my last few visits to the plot catching up with the weeds, and it is beginning to look like a plot that is cared for once again.

I've also started dismantling the wooden borders I had been putting round my beds. The grand plan was to fill them up like raised beds, but of course I have never had the volume of compost or topsoil available to do that properly. The boards do mark out the edges nicely, but in reality they get in the way, and mainly harbour slugs and other menaces, so they're coming out. I'm surprised it's taken me this long to come to this decision, perhaps it's because I didn't want to undo the hard work of putting them in. But I am learning that allotmenteering is more successful when you accept that nothing is permanent, and you work with what you've got, not against it.