Tidy

It seems hard to imagine, standing on a sun-baked plot in September that just a few weeks ago we thought it might never stop raining. One of the benefits of having had most of my crops ruined by this year's weather is that I can find time to do all those tidying up jobs that I never normally get round to. So the plot is looking quite tidy at the moment and I've even managed to do some autumn digging. Today I managed to dig up and burn a lot of weed roots and got rid of a big bag of rubbish. When the plot is tidy I feel more in tune with it, I hope weather and time continues to let me keep on top of it.

It's easier to see the structure of the plot when it's tidy too. I'm thinking of making more of an effort next year to get the top part of the plot shaped a bit more like a garden, with flowers for cutting and maybe some shrubs or herbs. The end of the plot closest to the shed is never very productive for veg growing. I think maybe some wild flowers would work better if the soil is poor. It was always my intention to have the plot as a garden with a mixture of planting but sometimes, like this year, I don't plant as many flowers and I always miss them.


 

Harvesting (and funny carrot picture)

There's nothing quite like bringing home a basket of fruit and veg at this time of year. I popped to the plot on my runabout bike which is an elderly Raleigh Estelle with a basket on the front. I may have picked rather too much as the ride home was a little tricky. You don't see Bradley Wiggins trying to stop potatoes flying onto the road as he goes along.

Basket of delights. Slightly too heavy for an elderly bicycle

Included in the basket are new potatoes, carrots, peas, French beans, onion, garlic and a rather nice cucumber. This is my second ever cucumber, which I hope is as nice as my first ever cucumber, which I picked a few days ago. That is another satisfying allotment feeling, trying something for the first time and finding out it's really rather good.

My first ever cucumber

Finally, as promised, the obligatory funny-looking carrot shot:

Funny looking carrots: The allotment staple.

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.

Murder in a green and pleasant land

Ah, England, that land which is kept forever green by a never-ending supply of rain. The green, when you look closely, consists mainly of weeds.  

Turns out I was right to scoff at the experts when they forecast a year-long drought; I mean, have the people who say this sort of thing ever been to the UK? If there’s one thing you can rely on, it’s that whatever the weather, it won’t be what you want.

The lack of sunshine has stalled my climbing beans, whilst the squashes (courgette, pumpkin and butternut squash) are all just sitting sulking instead of romping away like usual. One cucumber has managed to survive but again isn't doing much. My tomato house is up, assisted with four stakes, some bamboo canes, zip-ties, string and several bricks to stop it flying away in the constant, unseasonal gale-force winds.

Meanwhile, the damp conditions have brought my strawberries, raspberries and onions on well, but very slowly, so they are under constant attack from snails and slugs. Snails are more evident and I have caught a number of them committing suicide by crawling over the top of my strawberry netting and getting stuck. Unfortunately the weed-control fabric that keeps the plants from being over-run is also the ideal hidey-hole for invertebrates.  

Last week, my gardening friend and colleague Derek recounted how he had visited his plot on a damp evening and been greeted by a huge army of marauding slugs. He bravely slaughtered as many of them as possible until he found himself, like the soldiers in the movie Aliens, out of ammo and still surrounded by a rising tide of slime. I can empathise with the sinking sensation of doom, having fought similar battles with other pests but I was feeling quite pleased that I haven’t seen that many slugs this year. Unfortunately, I must have thought that a bit too loudly because karma overheard and my last trip to the plot was accompanied by a light rain shower and a gastropod plague of biblical proportions. I thought the strawberries were bad, with both slugs and snails queuing up to munch the ripest fruit, until I saw the onions and garlic, each plant wilting under the weight of three or four slugs each. Some just a few millimetres in size, some huge.

So, with the same feeling of being surrounded by an enemy horde, I was forced to make a stand and despatch as many of the offending creatures as I could get hold of. I would like to say to any Buddhists reading that it’s not something I greatly enjoyed doing and I feel sure that if I’m ever brought to account by a higher power for the number of living things I have destroyed, the foreman of the jury is very likely to be a slug or snail.

Unfortunately despite my attempt at slug genocide I fear I have only stemmed the first wave, and I felt the sensation of doom rise up in me too.  

On the plot, no-one can hear you scream.

Distractions

I have been trying to be more disciplined. It's not working all that well. There are just too many interesting things to do once the weather warms up. It took me about three weeks to get two short rows of peas in the ground, amongst all the other things that were calling for my attention. On one memorable evening, I spent an hour sitting in the shed because the rain was hammering down so hard, complete with thunder and lightning, that I couldn't even make it home never mind do anything. Luckily one of the distractions was coaxing my lawnmower back into life, otherwise I wouldn't be able to find the plot by now.

As for progress, I can report the potatoes have survived the frost and are growing on well. Carrots and parsnip seeds are sown, finally. Garlic and onions are doing OK, despite the weeds. Both raspberries and strawberries are flowering away, promising another good fruit crop.  Sadly most seedlings that I was growing at home have been a complete disaster, meaning about half the plot is still empty, so I'm going to look out for some young plants in the next week or so. Hopefully garden centres will be stocked up ready for the jubilee weekend.

Potato damage

Last year's new potatoes were a disaster due to frost damage. This time, determined not to be caught out, I carefully placed a plastic tunnel over the bed to keep the crop safe. The spuds have been drawn into early growth by a lengthy warm spell, followed by a cooler period and a couple of frosts, so I was glad I had thought to add protection. On checking the progress yesterday, I can confirm that the tunnel was bloody useless and the young leaves have all been burned to a crisp. Luckily, they do still seem to be growing strongly, so ditched the tunnel and earthed up instead. Let's see if that does the trick, if not, next time I'm going to have to put the potatoes in the ground much later and see if that works.

The firing squad

As I walk down to my own plot there is a horrible messy allotment on the right hand side, surrounded by a six-foot wire fence. It seems solely used to keep a dismal bunch of scrawny, rag-tag chickens who nervously peck around on the bare earth inside their prison. The whole thing stinks, looks ugly and worst of all it is populated by a huge number of rats. I rarely see anyone there. However, last week as I headed home, I was startled to see a group of three men in drab clothing, standing in line in an eerily familiar posture, all with air rifles trained on the rat holes. I tried to strike up a conversation but they were immersed in their grim task and I quickly left them to it. By the looks of it they haven't had much success, the rats are just getting fatter by the day.