Autumn standstill

So most of the plot is dug. We did a little more on the weekend but really, there’s not much you can do in autumn, is there? Apart from order manure (yuck) and strim the grass, like our neighbouring allotmenteers. Still, the first little green things are appearing in our brand new beds (Garlic Marco and Onion Radar – horrible names) and we sowed Broad Bean Claudia last weekend, too. Those haven’t appeared yet, but assuming they haven’t been eaten by robins, pigeons or mice, or trampled on by our neighbour when he was strimming, they ought to, soonish.

One thing I can do, though, is plan. (deputy gardener doesn’t do much by way of planning. He can, however, parrot growth information about carrots and broad beans, annoyingly.) After measuring, constructing, and checking for the sunlight, we now have a full-blown plot plan. Springtime’s crops have homes – and as soon as I have redrawn the sketch without the crossings-out, I’ll scan and post it.

The next part is choosing seeds from the catalogues. I must admit that I veer towards the ones with pretty names – Broad Bean Claudia and Pea Greensage, Rudolph Radish and Christmas Cabbage – but I need some kind of tactic, otherwise I’d just be overwhelmed by choice. And deputy-gardener says that I can’t order the vegetables that grow to look like rude body parts. Some of the seed companies offer small starter-sets, but these don’t include all the things we want to grow. So where do we start with, for instance, five pages of carrots? How do we choose between dozens of potatoes and thirty types of squash? I also know that whoever writes the descriptions may well be leaving out negative information about each species. So perhaps some types of squash are hungrier than others, and perhaps some of them need far longer to ripen. But – partly because of space and partly because of spin – the copy won’t always mention everything. Anyway, I don’t expect it to. But I would like a bit more guidance on choosing. You know – “you really can’t go wrong, unless you go on holiday for six weeks, with these vegetables”.

So there we are. Back to choosing the prettiest names, I suppose.

Other jobs for autumn:
Digging the Cutting Flower garden
Installing water butts (we bought one at the local dump for £3 yesterday!)
Improving soil and covering for winter
Sowing hardy pea seeds
Building cold frames
Saving up for a greenhouse.

Getting ahead of ourselves?

There are still 9 whole days before we pay the first rent on our plot, so yes, probably.  But the deputy gardener and are ambitiously planning to get the plot into production as soon as possible. 

Very good, you may think; at least, you might think that until you actually see the said plot.

Not only is it huge (I mean six or seven times the size of our garden), but it’s also covered in weeds.  For years, it has been a vast, devoted cabbage patch. 

So yes, we may be overestimating our weeding powers.  We are ridiculously keen at this point.  Still, we have recruited a team of dedicated weeders and a fierce dog, and we’re not afraid of the Roundup gun, if it comes to that.

So we’ve been shopping.  The idea is to prepare a couple of beds by the end of September, ready for sowing our first crops, and getting the plot productive as soon as humanly possible.  Above is just some of the loot!

We also have a selection of seeds from the wonderful Heritage Library, the annual seeds for my cutting garden (which are in a box, in the shed, guarded by spiders), plus a few lettuce and bean seeds leftover from this summer. 

Wish us luck – we’ll probably be back here in four weeks’ time with our heads in our blistered hands.