Progress report for April

What a crazy month its been, at the beginning I was so worried about the broad beans that I resorted to exhaling over them in an attempt to thaw the snow cover and by the end of the month I was blistering in the sun.

I’ve planted out loads of the over zealous seedlings from the front room nursery and so yet again I am watching the weather with crossed fingers. Surely we can’t have a frost in May? I have the feeling that April is the pivotal month in the gardening calendar, we are so vulnerable and yet the temptation to get a head start with the tender crops is almost irresistible.

Here’s a quick spin around the plot (as at 27th April 2007) so I can compare progress this time next year.

Starting next to the shed we have the spud bed, most of these have peaked through the surface but I am still able to keep on top of the earthing up process.

Spin to the right and you get the fruit area - strawberries, rhubarb, gooseberries and blackcurrant.

Then the second sowing of peas are coming though.

These are the cabbages I planted way back in week 1, I’m not terribly impressed with them. The blue ones are incredibly strong and need boiling for about a week before you can serve them. Some are riddled with white fly and most have juicy slugs living in the cosy hearts. I imagine I will compost these soon.

Next to them I have a few onions left but I’ll have eaten them all in a couple more weeks. As they go I am planting parsnips and carrots in their place, not having much success with either of these though, the carrots won’t germinate and something is eating my parsnips.

Here are the broad beans I’ve been so protective over. They seem to have survived although Ive probably lost some flowers and therefore productivity with the snow but I’ve eaten all the tips so far and started on the small pods.

Next to these we have the garlic - 2 forgotten varieties and the 2 overwintering onions.

I’m happy with this section.

Under the cloche are the ruby chard plants which are beautiful and tasty and productive which makes them number on my list. Next to it are my second sowing of broad beans, also now in pod.

Right at the bottom of the plot I have the first sowing of peas with a backdrop of pear and plum trees and a selection of holes awaiting my squash plants.

On the other half of the plot we have the pond, a predominantly empty bed with sowings of french bean, kohl rabi and turnips.

Under the cloche are transplants of greyhound cabbage, they are pathetically small though.

Finally we have the bed with the 99p cloches. I’ve mostly got salad crops in here - mustard, rocket, radish, lettuce etc.

I reckon this is going to end up being a picture post, I’m far too shattered to string words together. The day was glorious but after about 6 hours on the plot my skin is tightly shriveling with the sunburn and I need to spend the next month in a vat of E45 cream.

My seedlings have been going crazy in Shakti’s front room nursery, the beans are threatening to smother everything in sight and the tomatoes need staking. None of these things go well with toddler sized birthday parties so they need to go. Not wanting to shock them into submission with an immediate relocation to the outside world, I’ve been hunting down one of those mini greenhouse affairs to act as a coldframe. I spotted something even better from Wilkinsons though, a full on walk-in greenhouse complete with staging for £40.

Considerable rearranging was required to squeeze it onto the plot. The compost bins were pushed to the corner shaded by the hideous ivy which seems like the best spot for them considering nothing else will grow there except for slugs. More problematic was the wigwam I planted up last weekend with some 7 year old experimental peas. It’s quite a palaver trying to retrieve ungerminated green orbs from a patch of soggy soil.

Given my unchallenged bodging tendencies, I’m quite surprised but pleased to say, the greenhouse went up relatively well. It only has one little tear in the polythene and I’m sure that existed before I took it out of the box. I’ve piled the edges up with soil, staked, pegged, clipped and tied down anything threatening to flap and if it’s still there tomorrow morning I may well do a little jig.

I’m going to plant the tomatoes in grow bags around the base - anything to try and keep the structure anchored, and I think the chilli peppers and aubergines will be overjoyed.

Before the construction started we (I had Shakti’s help today) transplanted the greyhound cabbages from the seed bed and sowed a row of yellow french beans. We also managed to acquire a load of broken paving slabs from the site skip and have a veritable highway laid out between beds. Unfortunately the new compost bin and greenhouse layout, blocks all access to the bottom of the plot. I haven’t a cat in hells chance of accessing the peas if they decide to crop.

We left with a sack of multi-coloured delights for tea - Ruby Chard, Broad Bean tips and some of the overwintered onions.

I went to Shakti’s house yesterday to see how the seedlings were, I thought they’d be drying out and need a little freshening up, but how wrong could I be?

She has taken this nurturing responsibility very seriously. I found her sitting in the brightest house in the neighbourhood, trying to watch the telly in her sunglasses because the seed trays were on the floor soaking up the rays in front of her industrial sized anti-SAD daylight bulb.

She is doing a wonderful job. The sweet peas now have multiple leaves and don’t even look too straggly, every other seed has germinated as well except for the two pepper varieties which I imagine will pop up in a few days.

Progress report for February.

The weather was remarkably mild and I enjoyed a good few sunny weekends on the plot.

• The peach was planted and tentatively pruned to within an inch of it’s life.
• Paths and a seed bed were constructed in a fashion.
• The Hellebore flowered beautifully and provided a lovely welcome to all frogs that were considering setting up residence in the pond but none came.
• The broad beans were exposed to the elements as they were growing too big for their toasty covering.
• The peas were staked.
• First row of spuds were planted - Swift.
• Aubergines and tomatoes were sown and promptly shipped off to Shaktis for nurturing on the window ledge.

I gave myself a day off the running so I could enjoy another leisurely session on the plot. I carried on where I left off yesterday and weeded most of the remaining beds. The peas are getting a bit lanky as well so I stuck some titchy sticks in to keep them on the straight and narrow til the weather becomes more stable and I can remove the mesh cover. There were quite a few empty stations where the peas either didn’t germinate or were swiped by meeces so I popped in a few spare seeds, hopefully they’ll come along soon enough and pad out the row.

Before I came down to the allotment this morning, I passed by Shakti’s for breakfast. She posed the question “If we ran out of money tomorrow, what would we live off from your plot?” About 3 months ago she sowed the pea seeds that I supported above and can’t quite believe that we aren’t eating fresh garden peas yet. I don’t thinks she’s altogether too impressed with the DIY food malarkey, life is just a little more instantaneous down at Tescos.

On arrival I surveyed the crops with a hungry mind but was somewhat disillusioned. I think the only currently edible produce is cabbage and some other critter already seems to have eaten way more than I will ever get to enjoy. Don’t these look like a pitiful bunch?

So in answer to the question, I think we would survive for about a week on limp cabbage leaf. Life would then get tough unless I could find an inspiring recipe for roasted bind weed and couch grass roots. I’ve got enough of those to keep us cooking on gas til the peas start cropping!

More seeds went in today as well, I’ve sown half a row of carrots - early nantes that came free with “Grow It” magazine and a full row of parsnips. Both have gone in the space I cleared yesterday by removing the salad leaves.

I’ve also started a batch of aubergine and tomato seeds in individual modules. My flat is no go zone for anything green, within 24 hrs every living form of plant life collapses in an irradiated heap. Quite concerning but I seem to cope unscathed. Anyway, the seeds need to live somewhere warmer and brighter than the shed, but safer than my flat so I’ve sent them to germinate at Shakti’s house. She accepted them willingly so I’ll see what other delicate little seedlings I can pass into her care. She’ll soon discover the joys of DIY food growing.

London woke to a pretty dreary and overcast day this morning. Not the most inspiring of days and it seemed to push me into the dumps as I arrived at the plot. I haven’t been keeping my eye on the allotment stores recently, the shed was clean out of digestives and my cup of tea just wasn’t as revitalising as usual.

I wandered round the garden sipping tea and imagining the future, a day of the triffids style future where the weeds grow to 6 foot and throttle you as you reach hopelessly for the hoe.

If I’m sweating with dread in February just imagine when the growth really starts to kick off. You have to pull yourself together when the weeds on your plot start to give you daytime terrors. I put the cup down, stopped stressing about the future and just knuckled down to the here and now.

I like gardening, it never fails to ground you.

First strike today went to the old rocket and spicy salad leaves bed. The rocket has been a super provider but has now past its best and the spicy leaves are so overrun with nettle plants that my salads have a tendency to give far more bite than is healthy. Both were whipped out at the roots and plonked in the compost bin. First tidy patch sorted and I have space for something new now.

My early planting of broad beans have been very successful, maybe even too successful? They have been pushing at the top of my fleece cloche for a few weeks now and bending at the tips. Today I decided it was time to expose them to the elements and whipped of their toasty covering.

Most of them are flowering so hopefully they wont be traumatized by any more frosts. I spent about an hour tying myself in knots with about 100m worth of twine, fashioning a cats cradle support. There is very little wind protection in that particular spot and the beans are effectively trying to stand tall in a wind tunnel.

Carried away with the weeding, I whipped off more of the cloches and cleaned around the chard and cabbages.

Everything started to look beautiful again, I began to smile and contemplate my next cuppa and a future decidly more rosy and bountiful than it seemed when I started.

I finished by planting my first row of spuds! How ridiculously early is that? The traditional date for planting potatoes is Good Friday which this year is particularly early anyway so I’m not sure what possessed to me to anticipate the great day by about a month.

I’ll do my best to keep them cosy and earthed up til summer arrives.

Oh and did I mention that my sweet peas have germinated? What a glorious and uplifting day its been.

I didn’t think I’d get to the allotment this weekend but while I was in the park, trying to squeeze in a long run for my half marathon training, it struck me what a great gardening day it was. Didn’t take much for me to cut the run short and head off to the plot.

What a lovely day, plenty of signs of spring, vibrant colours bursting out of the soil.

My legs were aching a bit too much for digging (I’m full of excuses) but I did do something productive - seed sowing has commenced! I know I am way too early but I’m working on a tip off from my Dad who has suggested I might get away with an early batch of spring onions, radish and greyhound cabbage.

My early broad beans and peas have quite a spacious row between them so I’m trying to utilise the cosy spot under the cloche for bringing on the seedlings. Hopefully the existing crops will provide some protection for my seeds and not grow so quickly that they turn in to the neighborhood bullies.

I left with another sack of rocket. It’s starting to taste very strong though and I’m not such a fan of bitter salad leaves so I may check out some cooked arugula recipes, I’m bound to be able to do something pasta related.

We may have just hit the point of mid winter but it wasn’t all that bleak down the allotment today, jolly misty, a bit chilly, but not bleak at all. In fact it was quite a joy to be down on the site, the old apple trees are looking particularly sculptural and most plot holders have been involved in a flurry of tidying, the plots look great. Even mine seems to have adopted a sense of the seasonal spirit, I should have taken some mulled wine and chestnuts to roast over a little blaze of bindweed roots.

When I first took on the plot, one of my more experienced neighbours told me that most of the site remains free of frost year round but that they occasionaly get a freak frost that passes through a handful of plots in a diagonal band. My plot is definitely within Jack Frost’s dropzone, he scatters the ice through my plot like rivulets. In some areas I had to jump on the fork to crack through the frozen tilth but then a foot to the side I found myself squelching in a soggy patch. Probably not ideal digging weather but Good Friday falls early this year and I need to crack on if I want enough clear space for my spuds to be in for March.

I laid out my seed potatoes for chitting in the shed. I was a bit concerned that it may be a bit cold for them in there as I always used to do them on my window ledges but I think they should be ok in these polystyrene seed trays.

They look pretty toasty to me but they aren’t the only cosy veg on the plot. Check out the new pea seedlings, doesn’t it look appealing in there?

Shakti planted those peas for me on the 14th November alongside a double row of aquadulce. The broad beans are only just showing signs of awakening and have been pretty tardy in comparison to the peas. It would be cruel to compare them to their older brothers which were planted two weeks earlier and are now almost pushing through the top of the fleece enclosure. It will be interesting to see if the head start makes much difference to the bean cropping.