Public Enemy Number One: And the winner is...

Each year brings different conditions and some veggies do better than others. Unfortunately this also applies to weeds as my old enemies seem to devise new ways of taking over my plot.

Here are the top 5 worst offenders on my plot:

1. Dandelion
2. Bindweed
3. Creeping Buttercup
4. Couch grass
5. Stinging nettles

Dandy

This year there seems to have been a particularly strong dandelion crop. It’s levelling off a bit now but around April, conditions were nigh-on perfect and they just seemed to be everywhere. Thankfully the picture here was a local roadside verge, not my plot. I’ve dug up hundreds of them, and cut the tops of plenty more that I didn’t have time to dig out. Like Arnie, they'll be back. As plants, you almost have to admire them; cheerful bright flowers, lush foliage, tough long roots, all thriving with no care and attention whatsoever.

Second on my list is bindweed. There’s just no stopping this stuff. The only way is to remove the roots from the soil, but they’re so brittle and go so deep they always break off to leave a bit behind. Again, so devious you could almost admire them if they weren’t choking my strawberries and getting tangled in my netting.

Next are buttercups. Yes they look lovely in a meadow, but they creep their way round the edge of my raised beds like crazed groupies trying to get into a boy band’s tour bus. You literally have to beat them off. My main reason for hating these is they have particularly tough roots and will cling on, under the assault of a hoe or trowel to come back when you’re not expecting them, usually right next to an onion or somewhere hard to get at.

Finally, the creeping menace of nettles and couch grass. You neglect weeding for a couple of weeks and before you know it they’re back! Thankfully they are mainly restricted to one side of my plot where they weave their nasty secret way through the soil from the neglected plot next door. I find the searching white roots quite revolting for some reason and take a grim satisfaction in pulling them up and burning them. The nettles also make a fine compost tea which seems a fitting end, especially if they’ve managed to sting me whilst raspberry picking.

So those are the plants I could happily live without. Close runners up, if I was doing a list of 10, are plantains, volunteer potatoes, speedwell, dock, and oilseed rape.

What’s on your hit-list this year?

Help has arrived

The Tiny Human is now just big enough to help out on the plot. She enjoys carrying the empty watering can down to the tap and watching it being filled up. She also wanted to carry the full can back to the plot, which was very sweet but it was too heavy for her to lift. I should add, I'm not enforcing child labour here, she volunteers by taking the watering can out of my hands, in fact it's hard to stop her!

My little helper

Her reward is a go on the new swing.

Reward after all that hard work

Roll up, roll up

Gather round ladies and gentlemen, can I interest any of you in some of the things that have been left on my plot for me by a previous tenant?

A sample of some of the unearthed treasures

First up, who likes plastic? I've got plastic bottles, plastic cups, plastic plant pots; plastic bags, plastic mesh, green tinted plastic, clear plastic, plastic string. Plastic not your thing? What about metal then? I've got metal nails, metal bars, metal scissors, metal penknife (rusted solid, sorry), metal wire? Glass (hurry, only small pieces left); gloves (two, not the same)? a single very long woolly sock? What about a tub of slug killer - vintage circa 1980s at a guess. What's that? have I got any stones? well yes but sorry, you can't have the full bucket of great big stones, I've decided to use them in my drainage channel.

Don't worry if you miss this opportunity, there'll be more. ALL the above items have come out of one patch of ground about 8ft by 4ft in the last week...

Talking poo

I wanted to have some compost delivered to the plot again this year, but the council have banned anything bigger than a car from the site due to damage to the ridings. They said I could still have it delivered to the gate, but I don't fancy wheelbarrowing a tonne of compost from the top of the site to my plot, so it's back to the drawing board. According to the council, the ridings are too wet, but I think they're talking poo.

My wife then started talking poo. let me clarify; she was talking poo with a lady who owns a horse. An unlimited free supply was promised, so I got all excited and went to have a look.

The pile was located about two miles from home. There was a huge amount of material, about 10 metres by 5, and nearly 2 metres tall. Unfortunately most of it was straw and woodchips. The decent rotted manure was right at the bottom, the owner of the farm told me, and would need digging out. Hmm, two metres deep of heavily packed straw? Well, I bravely dug into the pile, heaving straw out of the way and eventually getting down to some decent rotted stuff. With lots of huffing and puffing, I managed to extract two car loads before I lost the will to carry on. I don't think I'll rush back; it's useable stuff, but needs further rotting down on my own heap.

Some poo

Hopefully someone else will want to talk poo soon.

Soil



Some soil



Alliums

Varying degrees of success so far with my allium crops.

Garlic is doing well and has now received a dose of organic (blood, fish and bone) fertilizer to get it going. I've been able to keep the bed weed-free so far, but I know that won't last long once it gets a bit warmer. This year I've only grown one bed of garlic, the last two years I got carried away and had too much.

Leeks are looking healthy at home in a propagator. nice strong green seedlings are now all pricked out into individual paper pots. I've had patchy results getting decent sized leeks over the last few years, let's hope we get some big ones this year.

Onions started well but are now looking very sickly, after potting on they didn't really get going and haven't adapted very well to life in the cold frame. Not all are completely dead yet, but for the effort that is going to be required, for the production of about 10 onions, I think I will write them off shortly and reclaim the cold frame for something else.


Rather sorry looking onion seedlings



Structural jobs

Lengthening days and rising temperatures have meant I've been able to get some gardening done again, at last!

I've been getting on with a few structural tasks around the plot. After the new compost area, I moved my lawnmower storage box up to the top of the plot as well, and began reclaiming the vacated ground for a new bed. I had forgotten what a state my soil was in when I first arrived three years ago; out came bits of plastic, metal mesh, broken glass, concrete, even an old spade head.

The new bed.

I found time to box in another bed with timber to make a raised area and have refreshed all my wood-chip paths. I've also dug up one of the grass paths and replaced it with wood-chip, that's another path that won't need mowing or strimming this year, hopefully leaving me time to tend my crops, or even sit and look at them! I'm pleased to say my plot is starting to look like one of the more tidy examples, although there's a bit of work to go yet. 



New raised beds and paths, and a bonfire on the go

Next on the list is to grub up the rosemary hedge at the front of the plot, sadly this has been killed off by the cold winter. It's just clinging on to life to be fair, but it tends to shade out the edge of the first bed, so it will be coming up soon.

Rosemary, decimated by the cold weather