The Allotment and Garden Year: February 2018

Wednesday, 28 February 2018

28th February

I went to the garden centre after work and bought some red and yellow bell peppers – 4 plug plants of each for £1.89 and also some plug plants of fuchsias – 2 bush type and one trailing, as well as some blue trailing lobelia (75p each). My idea is to have some hanging baskets on the fence posts going for colours that we don’t already have. Another purchase was 7m of 2m wide clear plastic sheeting for £8.40. I went straight round to the allotment and laid it out over the section I am going to plant the onions sets in. The sheeting will let in the sunlight and raise the temperature of the soil by a few degrees, making the ground more agreeable to the onions sets. After I have planted the onions, I will warm the ground of another section – probably the one for carrots.

What I’m supposed to be doing in the garden according to the books is nobody’s business. I’m supposed to be planting all sorts of legumes which I dislike eating so I’m not using up the ground on them when I can be growing more brassicas and squashes! The books say I should be sowing seeds of this and that, and I haven’t started on anything yet. We are having quite sunny days at present but the nights are cold and there is a fairly decent frost every morning, so I am somewhat reticent to be sowing anything outdoors. For indoor sowing I need to get a little more organised. I have been cutting up plastic containers to make pot labels on which I can write the details in those fancy pens you get for writing on CD and DVDs. Our council will not accept plastic food pots although they will accept plastic bottles. They claim there are no facilities in the UK to recycle them. I have a friend, however, who visits Canterbury fairly often and he takes his food pots there where they are warmly welcomed for recycling!

Next post: 2nd March

Monday, 26 February 2018

26th February

We have quite a few of our daffodils out now. Don’t ask me what variety they are but they have yellow petals and an orange trumpet. Probably about 40% of the daffodils that have come up are in bloom so far, and I noticed one little narcissi almost in bloom, but I’m pretty certain I planted more than that. Still, it is early days. There are no flowering crocuses in the ground, but the ones in the outside containers are coming up well. My eldest boy, who by the way is officially my assistant gardener, has a small pot which has produced 2 yellow ones, whilst my 2 large pots are yielding some lovely deep purple ones. The pots for indoors have been OK. One pot, well, I don’t know what the problem was, but it has 3 shoots and nothing much more. Another one has had purple crocuses blooming in turn then fairly quickly shrivelling up. The third indoor pot is showing a few tulips shoots for hopefully a few weeks' time.

Some photo trickery to emphasise the dogwood. I selected the colour of the dogwood on the camera screen and the function made every other colour turn to black and white tones.

Round our way, I’m always a little hesitant to open the door when I’m not expecting anyone. You never know if it will be someone wanting to talk you into changing your gas and electricity company, or asking you to set up a direct debit to their charity for as little as 78p per day, which if you did that every time someone asks, it will soon be 10 times 78p per day and rising. I’m afraid I cannot give to everyone who asks me. The other dreaded caller is someone trying to sign you up for a free inspection of your exterior walls, as I mentioned before. These can be a real con. They did it to us once and poured some water onto a brick and the water was quickly absorbed by the bricks before trickling down very far. This is allegedly evidence of old and decrepit brickwork. I went to work the next day to a wall that was 10 years old and performed the trick – with the same result as my 100 year old wall at home. They also tried to tell me that there was a fault line running from top to bottom. Actually it was a mark left from the old drainpipe, which could be clearly seen if you look at our neighbour’s wall that faced us, where their drainpipe is still in place. So when the doorbell rang my heart sank and I walked to the door with a feeling of due trepidation, but today was different. I soon saw, through the door glass, a red uniform – the postman! We had a bumper parcel delivery. My wife had ordered a few DVDs and a book from Amazon – spending her Christmas and birthday money and tokens, and buying some Mother’s Day presents. That came in 3 packages, but the crowning glory was a box addressed to me from Suttons Seeds. The final instalment of my seed buying has arrived. Crown Prince squash, 2 varieties of broccoli, green courgette, Russian tarragon and for my first time – a 400g pack of onions sets with 160 bulbs. Wha-hey!

Next post: 28th Feb

Wednesday, 21 February 2018

21st February

Aaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh. That sums up the feeling in my lower back. Yesterday I was spurred on to dig by 3 factors: my wife and sons would be out all day – no one home at lunchtime so no one to miss; an allotment plot that needed digging and weeding and I’d better do some before my Dad does more and shows me up as a lazy young-un; and the weather forecast passed on to me that it was going to rain quite a lot today. So with rake, fork, spade and boots I ventured off to the allotment yesterday lunchtime and dug. The 2 sections where I will be planting onions and leeks were edged and all of one and some of the other was weeded and raked. I went from there to my parents for lunch for a much needed hot meal that made me feel great again and ready for more work. My back felt a little bent over but nothing too bad. After work I returned to the allotment and did just over another hour with more weeding of the onion bed, and forking over the next section and weeding it. After just over an hour of that I was really feeling my back to be in a forwardly stooped position. I returned home to find the rest of my family still out, and set about making a cup of tea and doing some back stretching exercises. I don’t know if it was the overstrain I placed on my back by digging or that of the stretches, but after being home for 30 minutes I could feel the muscles of my lower back tighten, maybe they were in spasm. By the end of tea, my back was locked and yet it hurt like crazy when I moved. Later I tried a relaxing bath with special potions to ease sore muscles. It was agony to get in, of no effect or palliative use, and agony to get out. I remained stiff and in pain until bed time where at least I could lie and relax of sorts.

Today when I woke, the pain started where it left off last night, although I had had a fairly good nights’ sleep. I had to go to work because if I stayed at home I would just sit or lie and do nothing but hurt. Working would force movement and I figured that would be the best thing. After a shower where I could wash no lower than my knees, and my wife putting on my socks and sorting out my shoes for me, I ventured off to work armed with determination and anti-inflammatories (I guessed that would help the muscles to ease off if there was inflammation due to the strain). I don’t normally take pain killers so 2 aspirin (2/3rds of the maximum dose) was a big dose for me, and after about an hour I was feeling a definite limbering and easing of discomfort. I took another dose 4 hours later and the magic continued to work. I needed no further pills and by the afternoon I felt like going and doing a bit more digging. Don’t worry – I didn’t. If I had, and did the same damage again, it would be no sympathy for me on the home front and deservedly so. So today and tomorrow it is a case of moving gently and no silly bending or lifting.

What I did do was to go to our local multi-purpose shop and buy some garden (biodegradable) green string, 3 seed propagating trays and some horticultural fleece – wow, I really am getting keen. Up to now the limit of my attack on pests was organic slug pellets. The princely sum of £7.11 was charged to my credit card.

I have seen some quite harsh comments about gardeners and their unrelenting attack on poor defenceless slugs. Such gardeners are the new point of attack for eco warriors, but only the eco warriors who do not seem to live in and with the environment. The people who live with the ground and tend plants are, in my experience, a really green bunch (OK, not the ones who spray everything with chemicals). They were recycling years before it became trendy by means of the compost heap, and as for allotments, they are famous for being a display of purloined and recycled junk made into useful equipment rather than it become landfill. The issues with slug pellets is that they poison the slug which is eaten by a bird which itself is then poisoned – quite a problem. These new organic pellets are different, they only kill the slug. If you care for slugs, then obviously they are still a problem, but the birds live! An organic gardener will be someone who uses none of the myriad of chemicals that pollute the environment either directly in the locality or in the run off into our rivers that pollute the water, the sea, and our drinking water, they will be people who try to help the beneficial wildlife such as the lacewings, beetles, bees and ladybirds who are natural predators of pests and will be people who waste as little as possible and try to recycle and reuse as much as possible. Maybe all this effort accumulates to far more than a city dweller does simply by using a green car and buying organic vegetables from the supermarket and then spends much of their time railing against those people who are positively benefitting the environment who just happen to keep down a local slug population.

Next post: 26th Feb

Monday, 19 February 2018

19th February

There has not been much to report until recently. The bulbs I potted up for indoor displays are coming along well. We have a grand total of 3 crocuses. They are a lovely purple with a yellow stamen. There are more shoots coming through, including the tulips, although they are lagging behind. The outside bulbs are also progressing well. The ones in the containers planted last autumn are looking very promising, with many crocuses shooting up, a good proportion of which can be seen to be in bud ready to flower. In fact, two in the pot of our eldest have flowered already – much to his delight. There are quite a few tulip shoots beginning to emerge now as well.

In the borders, the daffodils are looking splendid in the budding stage and their yellow tinges can be seen from the kitchen window. More tulip shoots are emerging, some growing faster than others, and there are more bluebells and crocuses on their way. There are a few spots where there seem to be no shoots coming through yet I know I planted bulbs there. I am hoping that these are just late developers.

I popped into the allotment last week – I was going to do some forking over and raking of the soil, but time was slipping me by. At lunchtime I had visited my Mum who told me Dad was there so I went down to see him. He was forking over my plot – well, the first section anyway. What a nice surprise. I told him that I had planted a row of garlic in the fourth section, and that the third and fourth sections were for onions and leeks and as onions like a settled ground, there was no need to fork up those sections, I would give them a weed and a rake myself later. Yesterday I visited the site and saw that Dad had progressed and forked over the second and third (!) sections. Ah well, I thought, I can move up the proposed site of the onions, but I made sure I stuck in two sturdy sticks at each end of where I knew the line of garlic was. I proceeded to work on my short project for the day – clearing out the upturned, bottomless plastic bottles I had used to channel water down to the roots of the courgette plants last summer. I would have loved to recycle them but they were filthy and mouldy. I didn’t want them rattling around the car so I threaded them over a long bamboo cane and left them until I could bag them up and dispose of them.

I returned to the allotment today with a bag to collect the plastic bottles to find a hive of activity. Alfie, who has a plot just opposite the track and one along from me says this is because we only have today and tomorrow before the weather breaks and we have cloud and rain. For the last 2 weeks, we have had a standard frost in the mornings (window clearing has been a regular job on the car) but the temperature through the day has gone rather high for the time of year (we had the hottest 12^th February on record last week!), and so we have enjoyed warmth and sunshine – a real bonus right now. What this also means is that the soil is in a good condition to dig and fork, which is the main aim of all this activity I saw around me. I would like to employ a no-dig approach to vegetable growing but the soil is riddled with weeds especially bindweed, is heavy clay, and as far as building raised beds to be filled with loamy soil and compost (necessary on this soil for a no dig garden) I haven’t the time or money to build them and fill them before sowing time. Anyway, I again saw my Dad, and he was digging the fourth section – the one not just set aside for onions, but already containing 20 garlic bulbs.

At 36 I can’t get upset with Dad for this minor lapse. He is 70 and has been digging my plot after finishing his with all the gusto of a young-un. I have, after all, been acclimatised in my youth when he would video various TV shows with the last 10 minutes missing. We quietly chatted about the 20 bulbs of garlic (of which he had unearthed 4, one of which was sliced up, giving the air a certain fragrance) before I replanted them. I will just have to wait and see how many have survived. If I plant another 20 I may have 40 minus the chopped up one. Maybe I could go on from this to develop a garlic bulb that is grown peeled and chopped! The comforting thing is that I have far more important vegetables to grow – it would be worse if I lost most of my beloved courgettes, brassicas or squashes.

In this ‘no news to report for a fortnight then it all comes along at once’ entry, I can report that I have now bought or ordered nearly all of my seeds for this year.

The list is as follows:

Pumpkin (F1 Becky), wild rocket, leek (Lyon-Prizetaker), Brussels sprouts (F1 Brigitte, Bedford-Fillbasket), carrot (Chantenay red cored 2, Autumn King 2), cauliflower (all the year round), cucumber (F1 Burpless tasty green), courgette (F1 Orelia [yellow] F1 Endurance [green] ), broccoli (F1 Claret, Rudolph), squash (F1 Crown Prince), onion sets (400g Setton), oregano, sage, sweet marjoram, fennel and tarragon (I already have seeds for other herbs).

For flowers I have bought 3 varieties of sweet pea – Red Arrow (deep red), Charlie’s Angel (blue/purple) and Sweet Chariot (blend of red, white and blue to commemorate England’s Rugby World Cup win of 2003). I have also bought a packet of sunflower seed – always a hit with my eldest boy – the variety is called Vincent’s Mixture, and a packet of Nicotiana (F1 perfume mix). I saw the Nicotiana in a seed and plant catalogue and liked the look of it, as well as the fact that it produced different coloured flowers. I was thinking of buying the plug plants but that would leave me too many. At least with seeds I can save some for another year. The only concern is slugs – they tend to get every seedling I put out. Last year I put all my tomatoes and courgettes up on the water butt and before that, in the house on our back room window sill. This year, that room is occupied by our 1 year old. At least he doesn’t have a slug problem.

There is still more to add. I will buy the sweet peppers as plants from the garden centre as they are difficult to germinate, and I will also buy some plug plants of fuchsias. I may move one or two of the fuchsias from the back garden to the front and plant the new ones in their place – especially if that cutting proves fatal! What else I would like to buy are those turbo tomatoes, and maybe 10 Flemenco long-fruiting strawberries to replace the ones in my patch, and a blueberry bush. I’m definitely going for the tomatoes, but it’s a maybe on the strawberries and a possible maybe on the blueberry bush. Sadly, my dreams and enthusiasm are greater than my available space.

Next post: 21st Feb