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.

Under attack

 After a weekend’s worth of hard work from our faithful volunteers, this is what the plot looks like!  You can see the frame for the fruit cage there on the right, followed by an 8×6′ space for a greenhouse, and some beds without boundaries further down.  To put it in perspective, I guess we have now structured perhaps half or two-thirds of the plot.  The bottom part, where the ground ends in a pointy triangle, is reserved for cutting flowers – no raised beds there, just some cute picket fencing (because I am a girl).   Across the back (running horizontally below the photographer’s feet) is a 40′ bed for beans (broad and runner), and behind that is a raised bank, into which I will be planting apple and plum trees.   And in the bottom left of the picture you can see the onion and garlic bed (covered with netting), from which my little darlings have started to sprout!  God bless their little green legs. 

All plotted out

Check out all that dirty potential! So here it is.  After months of boring everyone witless, we’re boring ourselves to death with rakes and shovels.  Plenty of raking, digging, manuring, boarding, and bracketing – full weekend, not such a full blog. 

The plot is very slopey, in both directions, which is confusing our plans.  We have been arguing over which direction our trendy raised beds should point.  We finally agreed on the direction for the first three:

 

Holly absolutely loved it – all that space, so much to pull up!  Harvey would have loved it just as much.  Plenty of sunshine all day for lying around after you’re all run-out.

We have been blessed with the most wonderful weekend (weather-, not back-wise).  On Day 1, we arrived at about 11am.  After panicking a bit about where to start, and arranging a nice (too) big place to sit, we managed to dig over and build some beds – a long one along the back for runner beans (and the early broad beans, which will be going in at the end of the month), and two shorter ones (for root veg, I think). 

The allotment holders are very friendly (or nosey), although they appeared mostly to be picking and eating, not weeding like us.  (I suppose it’s the time of year, sigh).  Richard gave us an assortment of seeds, suggested onions if we wanted to get something in the ground, and boasted about his strawberries (just finished fruiting).  Two teenage boys locked themselves in a shed, and didn’t come out for a couple of hours.  Muriel and Stephen told us that after years of intensive savoy production, our plot is all cabbaged out, then boasted about their squash and raspberries (STILL picking).  We looked at our bare mud and wished vegetables were faster. 

By 7pm Holly was licking her lead hopefully – even she felt she’d been out long enough.  We sat on our £4 garden chairs and looked at what we’d done.  Then we walked 100ft to the other end of the plot, and squinted hard to try to see the beds we’d done.  Three red hot air balloons passed overhead, and we waved, and ate dark chocolate.  Then we went home for baths and boil-in-the-bag dinner.

On day 2 we went to the garden centre (again).  We taught the parakeet how to wolf-whistle on command.  We asked the fencing man how much it would cost to gravel over 25sqm.  (£150)  Then we filled the car with planks (again), unloaded at the plot, dug a lot more and built another bed, scattered chicken poo on everything that didn’t move, planted onions and garlic, and stretched some 75p netting over the top.  Pretty good for two people who are making it up as they go along, huh?

The pumpkin season

Unfortunately, not our plot!

Pumpkins and squashes are some of my favourite vegetables.  Every year I’ve ordered a mixed squash box from Riverford farm, piling them prettily in the kitchen until the time comes to hack them up.  Fortunately, there’s plenty of space on our new plot for a sea of pumpkin plants – even if I do have to wait a whole year.

Here’s our favourite way to eat pumpkin or winter squash:

ROAST PUMPKIN PASTA
2 handfuls tagliatelle
1/2 pumpkin, peeled, de-seeded and chopped into chunks
1tbsp olive oil
1 clove garlic, crushed
Salt and pepper
1tbsp good butter
Goat’s cheese or feta: 1 packet (about 200g)
1 handful pinenuts
1tbsp fresh sage leaves

Boil the tagliatelle until al dente.  Set aside.  In a large baking tray, combine the pumpkin chunks with the oil, garlic, salt and pepper.  Smoosh together with hands, then roast for 20-30 minutes until golden around the edges.  (The pumpkin pieces are irresistible like this, so be prepared to make a bit more than you need!)  In a large pan, melt the butter, and add the pine nuts, frying until toasty brown.  Add the sage and let it crisp for a few seconds before tipping in the pasta.  Warm through and add half of the cheese and most of the pumpkin, reserving a few pieces to scatter over the top.  Dish onto warm plates and top with the rest of the pumpkin and cheese.  Yum!

PS. I promise – new plot pictures tomorrow.  We start digging at 9am sharp!

the wonder of worms

It’s amazing how much worms can eat (and poo).  We have one of these wormeries outside the back door and, no matter how many potato peelings I tip in, the worms keep the level at the same height.  Apple cores, boiled runners, mouldy garlic, grass clippings – those worms love it all.  We can hardly keep up with the unctuous brown feed that drips out (actually, it’s more like a deluge, when I remember to tip and drain).

 The liquid food is doing great things with my dahlias – which were slow and reluctant at first, and are now on a par with the ones grown by the dahlia wizard who lives up the road.  (I hate the green-fingered.)  I suppose if I were of a scientific bent, I would carry out an experiment, feeding some and not others, but life’s too short, and I like flowers too much.

 In case you’re wondering: still no allotment.  I can hardly believe how unenthusiastic those people are to hand over the keys to our much-anticipated new plot.  We keep knocking and asking, and passing on the off-chance, but to no avail.  We have been vaguely promised takeover this weekend (1st Oct) but I’m not loading up the wheelbarrow yet. 

We discovered that we would be inheriting our plot in June.  After a mad flurry of ordering books and creating vegetable spreadsheets (ahem), our sleepless excitement subdued.  We stopped boring our friends and neighbours and we finally stopped boring one another.  We were silenced into waiting.  Now we’re still waiting.  I wonder if this waiting period has been a good thing.  I have forgotten half the stuff about pruning tomatoes and planting onions, but we will be taking an altogether more relaxed and civilised approach: slowly cultivating the parts we need.  After all, we have a whole winter of nothing-growing to dig, read, and twiddle our thumbs.  But… that said… we’re poised for action.  Tools, wheelbarrow, old planks, and seeds at the ready.  That plot will hardly know what hit it.

And oh do we have things to load it with!  Our garden compost bin is full and ready.  We stopped adding to it a few months ago, added some organic speeder-upper, and now it’s all gunky and brown.  Perfect for mixing with other stuff * and slathering onto that neglected old plot.

My shallots are here too, confusingly (I checked: they don’t get planted until spring, which is making me panic: how will I keep them alive until then?).  Rhubarb, blackcurrants, and gooseberries are all on order – and boy, we’d better have a plot by the time they arrive.

*I am so down with the allotment jargon.

How to get an allotment

Some are being sold to housing developers – some are being created from imported soil – some are overgrown, and some are extremely well hidden.  How exactly do you get an allotment?

A plot of land on which to grow vegetables is a British entitlement.  Ever since the war, people were allocated strips of unwanted mud for growing their own.  And now we’re entering a new phase of thrift-for-pleasure (not requirement), suddenly demand has peaked.  Unfortunately, we are also in a phase of housebuilding-for-profit, which is not such good news.  This means that, not only are modern gardens shrinking, but house-developers are slowly eating into our existing garden land.  Allotments are more attractive than ever.

So we knew, as soon as the moving van trucked our extensive collection of garden pots (square ones for parsnips, round ones for runners, shallow ones for strawberries and mint) down to this little village, that an allotment must be the next addition to our land-portfolio.  t took us two years to reach the top of our waiting list.  But don’t let that put you off – at £20 a year, it’s an investment worth paying for.  More than that – it’s your right!

Did you know that, in the UK, local councils are obliged (by law) to provide allotments?  See, I knew we paid council tax for a good reason (lovely green recycling lorries aside).  If yours does not have any, you should round up a group of neighbours and petition them until they agree to build you a lovely new allotment ground.  In Devizes, Wiltshire, existing allotment land has actually been extended by the lovely council, complete with topsoil shipped in from Bournemouth (I don’t know, either), and little boxy sheds (made from ticky-tacky).  (Not really – I have been watching Weeds, which is about a completely different growing culture.)

Well, I’ve said my piece, and I am going to get some coffee now.  Here’s the definitive link for wannabe allotmenteers:
http://www.nsalg.org.uk/#

techy

Here is a dahlia picture, just to brighten things up.  I do grow other things, honest!

I have been trying to set up the webcam on this computer.  Wouldn’t it be just brilliant to set it up at the plot and film our progress?  I would have to speed it up for web viewing purposes, obviously.  But it all depends on overcoming my in-built technophobia.  I could be a while…

Planning a cutting patch

Charlie in front of the dahlias (Dahlia ‘Fascination’ planted with crimson snapdragons)

Because the allotment is so big, and because I will insist on cutting flowers from the garden, I have been allowed to reserve part of our plot for a cutting patch.

As a big fan of Sarah Raven’s books and arrangements, I’ve wanted my own florist patch for ages. There’s just no space in our garden for blocks of cut-and-come-agains.

the dilemma
One of the things I dislike about annuals – okay, the only thing I dislike – is the dead stage. You’re supposed to leave them to dry and brown and fester in order to collect the seeds in a proper state, which gives the garden some big old brown patches just when the sun is finally shining (ie, now). I have been in the garden today removing enormous sweet-pea wigwams and digging out wizened snapdragons, because I just can’t put up with their miserable dry faces any more.

the solution
Using the allotment for these plants will resolve this problem, since I won’t have to look out of my study window at the dead stuff, and I can cut to my heart’s content, filling (I hope) the house with flowers.

a place of magic
I am dreaming big. My cutting patch should, I think, be a place to sit and rest – as well as being enormously productive for 8 months of the year. I have instructed the deputy gardener to make me a bench and arbour from hazel wood (I know, I know, I am “SUCH a prima donna!”) so that I can sit beneath the perennial sweetpeas, after a morning’s cutting, and read books about flowers. (I have also suggested a wine pit, but this idea doesn’t seem to be floating.)

Anyway, deputy gardener is concerned by my flower dreams and keeps reminding me that the allotment is mainly for food. “Yes, yes,” I waft him away and carry on drawing tiny cosmos symbols. The brilliant thing is that I can sow lots of hardy annuals (the cut-and-come-again types) in September – giving them a nice warm start before winter freezes their growth – which, in other words, means that I am planning to devote my initial digging to the cutting patch, leaving deputy gardener digging a lonely furrow through his raised beds.

shopping list
My cutting wish-list is very long indeed – I want everything from echinacea to heleniums, lilies, gladioli, and – well, it goes on and on.  I daresay I will only sow half of the seeds I order, half of which will be neglected after the exciting germination stages.  But here are some of my must-haves:

Dahlias. I am in love with dahlias this year, and I don’t think this love will dwindle any time soon. I understand that dahlias have been untrendy for quite some time, but they seem to be making a come-back.  As far as I’m concerned, they are wonderful for so many reasons. They are such glamorous, showy plants, producing huge flowers in rich and juicy colours. They come in different heights and with different coloured foliage. Best of all, they love to be cut and will carry on flowering for months on end. After creating a dedicated dahlia bed in the garden this year, I am planning to weave them through other borders to add late interest where the midsummer plants have given up. At the allotment I will be growing those which survive in the vase (as per Sarah Raven’s instructions), and searing the ends in boiling water to boost them a little more.

Cosmos. This floaty, generous, daisy-like annual is easy to grow from seed. It goes in the ground in late spring and flourishes with enough space, turning into a veritable bush. It actually likes to be snipped.

Sweetpea “Winston Churchill”

Sweetpeas. Winston Churchill and Matucana are my favourites from this year – the former a beguiling ruby-crimson (nothing like the podgy man himself) and the latter very heavily scented. I can smell a jug of these as soon as I walk into the room.

Nigella. Our paltry plugs from Suttons have done well since going into the borders, but I hope bulk sowing will produce a field of those pretty ballerina flower-heads.  (NB: am boycotting Suttons since rude customer service woman put me off for life)

Snapdragons. In every colour and height – particularly the velvet red type that we grew this year for the borders. Combine with orange and deep purple.

Gypsophilia. Oh but this is slow! I am growing this perennial from seed, since — ooh, spring — and it’s about an inch tall. I do wonder whether it will be fully-grown by next summer, but here’s hoping – for the perfect, floaty background to my solid blooms.

Bulbs: For early spring cheer.  Anemone coronaria (the taller type), Longiflorum Lilies, Fritillaria, and an array of Lily-flowered Tulips (even if they last about ten seconds in water).

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.

Welcome to the weedland

This is our new blog.  I will mainly be updating it, with regular interceptions from the junior gardener and the destructive canine.

I thought I should explain the story so far.  We don’t get our hands on the allotment until September, but we are counting down.  We have already made some covert trips to the plot, tried to measure it by paces, and scribbled copious plans (which are currently lying all over the house). 

A little about the plot we’re due to inherit.  It is happily situated in the corner of an allotment field in a village in Devon, where we live.  We are very fortunate to be inheriting this plot (despite the weeds) since it comes complete with its own corner gate, and a splendid car-port (ahem), even if this is presently inhabited by a rusty trailer and other junk.

The plot is on a south-facing slope.  It is also subjected to a LOT of wind, and I’m not talking about the other plot-holders.  It commands fantastic views (especially in winter) across the valley.  There’s no water or electricity, but there is a chestnut-coloured horse living in the field behind our plot.  I have no idea how these factors might contribute to or hinder our success, but they will definitely be blamed for all our failures.