Where'd my garden go?

Combination of a week away in the Lake District, a very very busy time at work, and other not particularly joyful stuff going on lately, means that amongst other things, I've been neglecting doing any writing & drawing. But things moving back to an even keel again, so will get back to doing weekly updates from now on. The practical hands-on lovely stuff of gardening & growing however, has not been ignored.

A conversation with my plot neighbour a couple of months ago about rampant blight on the allotment site (apparently tomatoes & main-crop potatoes are a complete no-no), resulted in me spending some time tidying up the back garden over the past couple of weekends to make space for potting on the 25 tomato plants which I had sown back in March, intending to grow on up at the plot. We've squeezed up to 8 friends into our backyard for for a BBQ in past years. This year, would be lucky to get anyone in - specially when the plants really get going. But I'll happily forgo garden space for amazing tomatoes.

We are at the stage now where most of our meals are based around things that we've grown ourselves- new potatoes, turnips, broad beans, peas, courgette, purple sprouting broccoli, lettuce, onions, spring onions, garlic, chard, spinach, beetroot.

Besides the fact that it all tastes incredible and not like the tasteless pap masquerading as vegetables from your average supermarket, is it my imagination or is it so brimming with freshness & vitamins, that I feel better & healthier than I have done in ages?

Those pesky curvy straight lines

Now, I've been gardening for about 20 years. I thought I knew what I was doing, but the plot..... oh, the plot.... Different kettle of fish entirely. Allotment gardening is all about straight lines. I had visions of vegetables marching smartly up and down the beds. All my plans were drawn with pen and ruler, vegetables stretching away to infinity & beyond. But now my onions & garlic are coming up, it's clear that everything I've put in so far has a distinct... how shall I put this?.... wobble. Mr SNAH says "why don't you just use 2 pegs and a bit of string next time to mark out the straight lines before you plant/dig?" and I wail back "but I diiiiiid!".

And as for my potato trenches....oh dear. Everyone else's at the site look like this:

But mine look like this:

Actually, I'm probably being a little kind to myself there.

Nevermind. My first earlies (Maris Bard, Vales Emerald & Homeguard) & seconds (Edgecoat Purple, Wilja) are in. An iffy planting line isn't going to have any impact on the taste, and with a bit of luck maybe it'll confuse any slugs intent on burrowing into the tubers before I dig them up. As I'm sure I read somewhere (ahem.... cough cough) that slugs working their way through underground crops only work in straight lines (couldn't possibly offer a citation on that). Least that's what I'll tell everyone, until I can get up there again to rig up a set of curtains around my potato trenches. I'll invest in some flowery Cath Kidson ones and maybe no-one'll notice - they'll blend in with the general springy springiness springing up everywhere. Oh the shame.

So, busy week ahead. I plainly need to redraft my plot plans, banishing all straight lines, I'll be going for the circular wavy look, by the way. It's the way forward.

Tidy Backyard

Spent Saturday at the plot - got another 5 square metres dug over, only another 20 or so to go. Unfortunately it's the section I was planning to plant potatoes, so may have to whittle down the number I was hoping to sow or reduce planting schemes elsewhere. Hey ho. The last bit won't be easy either, as a few tentative fork pokings & exploratory spadings have revealed that at some point in the past some kind of structure - probably a shed - has been built there, as proved by the vast amounts of stones, bricks & lumps of concrete buried just under the surface of the soil. May need a period of good weather & some prolonged hard work with a sieve to properly deal with that area. Still, the stones are proving to make fantastic path material, and being of the sharp broken flint variety make brilliant slug barriers.


Hey! I'm making myself my own personal corral! an encampment of vegetables protected by razor-sharp flints from marauding slugs and snails! Well, it will be once I've pelleted all the ones I've encircled. With slug pellets of the organic variety, of course - wouldn't want to put anything down that harmed other wildlife. Or maybe I'll just drown them in beer (bit of a waste of beer though).



Today weather forecast suggested rain (which is only just starting to fall now at 7pm in the evening! Grrrr) so spent the day tidying up the back garden instead, which has been sadly neglected since we got plot last October. Insane really, as it's the backgarden that I look out onto everyday. Still - all nice & tidy now, everything trimmed back, and ready to receive the tomatoes, aubergines & chilli plants that I think'll do better in my sheltered back garden, rather than up at the exposed plot.

Keep on Digging

And the digging goes on, whenever the weather holds off and earth is dry enough to allow us to continue. Luckily, unless saturated, 2 or 3 dry days is enough.

We're about three quarters done - just the final quarter to go. It's where I'm planning to put my potatoes, so reckon we've got another 4 weeks to get through it.

It's March in 2 weeks time - it'll be time to start sowing in earnest. I look at the sowing calender I've made, and although every window sill is already covered with seedlings or chitting tatties, I've got the motherload of stuff waiting to get started next month. Here's hoping for a mild spell of weather so once seedlings show, I can harden things off and get stuff shifted outside to the 4-tier greenhouse relatively quickly.

Chilli & Chitting

Sowed a number of chilli seeds mid-Jan in a heated propogater - these are popping up nicely. Have a mixture of indoor and outdoor plants. May try one or two up at the allotment, though think conditions may be too exposed up there. Will mainly have them in my back garden. I've never been a huge fan of eating chilli till a holiday to Mexico last year - suddenly I got chilli.






I return from work anxiously each evening expecting to find a parcel of seed potatoes ordered back in November, but still no sign. But found & purchased 3 varieties in a local pound shop yesterday. Ok, these are not exactly the varieties that I'd spent careful hours selecting & choosing on the basis of reported disease resistance, taste and productivity, but at least I now have something chitting on my windowsills.