10th March

10^th March
Last night the South was ripped by 80mph storm force winds and quite a bit of rain too. The only thing noticeable in our garden was that the lid of the recycling wheelie bin had been blown open, and one small pot had fallen. A neighbour’s fence panel had come down with a post and hit his car (he has a garage that would have been safer!). After work I visited the allotment to check my plastic sheeting was in place and it was. Unsurprisingly, no one was working there today. I really want to finish my last piece of digging but it is so wet and with the clay soil it takes a long time to dry out – good in hot, dry spells, but not right now. I also went to the garden centre and bought another trailing fuchsia for the hanging baskets that we don’t have yet, and 3 bags of 60ml general purpose compost – for the price of 2!

11^th March

Unless I am not much mistaken (cue somebody yelling ‘you are much mistaken), there is a small fuchsia stem growing from the transplanted and hacked at cutting in the front garden. If this is the case, it is a big relief. There are now 4 tall cauliflower seedlings in the propagator, and 15 sprouts seedlings!

13^th March

Last summer I seemed to be cursed to the extent that whenever a certain lady at work wanted to be enjoying herself outside of an evening or over the weekend, she told me not to have a barbeque. It seemed that after years of planned barbeques going ahead as planned, last summer it always rained when I was due to cook one (with one notable exception on Father’s Day). Mind you, last summer was monsoon season so I reckon most people felt they were cursed. Anyway, this year it seems whenever I announce ‘If it stays fine, I’ll go to the allotment from work and do a bit more digging’, to anyone, it rains. Today the rain began just as I was starting my lunch break and persisted all afternoon and into the evening. That means I have to wait until the ground dries up a bit – some days after the last rainfall due to the heavy clay soil.

14^th March

I showed my impressively spindly sprouts and cauliflower seedlings to my Dad and we both agreed that they were too tall for their age. My fear is that at 3 inches high, very thin and with 2 small leaves at the top, they are heading for a rather spindly life. As they will not be entered into consideration for a basketball scholarship, they need to be shorter and stockier at this stage, to help support the weight of all those vegetables groaning on the stems come the end of the season. So in the evening I uprooted the ones that have germinated, and sowed more seed.

I decided to pull up the curry plant we have to make more room along the border for the expanded range of herbs I intend to grow. The plant was very woody, only had silly little yellow flowers, and smelt of a fragrance that is great for one type of meal a fortnight, but not for a garden plant. I dug in plenty of home made compost and rotted horse manure and gave it a good digging in.

Next post: 18th March