Onions neglected; Cabbages attacked

Conventional wisdom is that onions don't like competition. Shallow roots, relatively weak upperworks (ah yes, leaves, I knew it would come to me); they're easily put off their stride. And this year's onion bed has certainly given them some competition. I'm almost embarrassed to show you this.


But see what lies beneath.


This is certainly the best onion crop I've had for the last two or three years; in fact I was on the point of giving up attempting onions because they'd been so poor. Just think what they'd be like if I'd looked after them properly!!

Meanwhile, in Fort Brassica, the netting has worked wonders in keeping pigeons off. Look at this fine specimen of a Feldenkraut

(German shredding cabbage; it'll eventually become pointy & even bigger). But right next to is this pathetic little thing

which was once a Stonehead cabbage. So what's done for that? Caterpillars of the Cabbage White butterfly, is my guess. There aren't any visible; they're probably all lying on the ground somewhere quiet clutching their bulging tums, unable to move a muscle after gorging on my cabbages.

Anyone got a sure-fire way of dealing with them?

Meanwhile, back at the plot.......

...... It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; as Dickens often observed about his own allotment.

The best, in that nothing much has died; the worst, in that nothing is doing very much either, it being so very very dry and me not having been around to water it for the last two weeks.

But it coulda been worse. I've harvested a decent crop of shallots and got a nice tidy [part of the] plot in return, although it's bone dry. And I've got the first picking of blackberries,

which are due to be eaten tonight with shortbread and a little cream.

The things I'm carefully not showing you, being a tad economical with the truth, are the onion bed (horrendously weedy), the salad bed (ditto), the runner beans (puny; hope the water will perk them up). And I've given up on the climbing french beans and the mangetout - the 3rd batch didn't germinate either!!

Mon Repos - or where's Woody?

I have been away, sur mes vacances, tout seul dans la France profonde. Yeah, I know, again. Listen, somebody has to keep the travel trade going.

Not that this would contribute greatly, being an El-Cheapo trip to the Landes of Aquitaine, specifically to my favourite little town of Le Porge and my favourite campsite - Aire Naturelle de Lescarran.

Here it is: This must be the sixth time I've been there and it never changes much. Old Madame has had a stroke and Young Madame (these are relative terms, you understand) is now in charge. It still costs only threepence-three-farthing a night and the showers are still cold. It's actually €5 a night in early season (can you believe a bargain like that?) and you can get jetons to shove in a box to make the shower run warmish. But I rather like the cold showers (it's all we got in the North when I were a lad; character building), especially when the temperature is 106F.

I like to travel fairly light, as you can see, although it's possible to travel much lighter. One happy camper (quite a big bloke) arrived by bicycle with one of the tiniest tents I've ever seen. He didn't so much sleep in it as wear it.

But this has all the important elements for me - a car, a bike, a tent, a chair and a coolbox with wine, cheese etc etc.

What more could a chap need?

Well, freedom from thunderstorms at 3am would be nice. It occurred to me at said 3am that lying on the ground in a thunderstorm next to two vertical metal tent poles was perhaps not the brightest or safest place to be. Although it could have turned out to be extremely bright indeed with a faint smell of singeing and roast pork if I'd stayed there much longer. So I wimped it out in the car, resting firmly on four nice big rubbery tyres while Armageddon raged overhead.

Incidentally, speaking of roast pork, the site is sometimes visited by sangliers (wild boar). I've seen them on previous visits and although I didn't see them this time others did, and I did hear them. When something large snuffles round your tent in the middle of the night and says Oink you can put money on it having a curly little tail. It behoves one to make damn sure the sausages are packed away; don't want les sanglier finding their best mates all trussed up in sausage skins and pret a manger.

I'd happily spend all summer there (and at €5 a night I could!!) but you'd all pine for news of the allotment so I guess I'll just have to buckle down to it. Next post soon.

101 Dalmatians?, and another question

Well, not exactly, the Dalmatians that is. It's just a weak link to how many Leeks I've been transplanting this morning - viz 116. Sorry, i did say it was a weak link! They've spent their formative years in a nursery bed (never underestimate the value of a good nursery education) and just look at them now.


Most of them are Musselburgh but there are about 30 which delight in the gloriously unspecific name of East European Leek. I'm sure they have a proper name but it'll be in Polish.

I've also been sticking the Bishops in a pile of poo. Alternatively, I've transplanted the Bishops of Llandaff (dahlias, don't y' know; do try to keep up), very carefully, into lovingly prepared planting holes, each with a good shovelful of sh** manure to help them on their way.


Speaking of the nursery bed, the bit not full of leeks is full of assorted saladings and they're looking pretty neat. Salads? We got 'em. Sadly, what we ain't got is successional stuff coming along behind as I have failed yet again on this key skill. Pah.

And, lest you think this is all done by pixies and elves (I wish), there was a rare sighting today of the Wilbury in all his glory.


Note the grubby knees, from hewing & delving in the earth. Note the slightly manic feature caused by exhaustion and trying to do too much too often (ah, 'twas ever thus). Finally, note the slight flicker of puzzlement as he contemplates the other big question, namely:

What happened to my peas?

To explain, I sow peas in half-round gutters. They germinate well and they transplant even better, just sliding out (I block the end with masking tape and it just peels off, mostly). But this year I've had real trouble with them.

The first batch were in the greenhouse, on the floor, and germinating well. Then, over a day or two, they weren't there any more. A-ha, I thought, chuffing mice. They do a lot of chuffing, mice; second only to rabbits.

So, sighing wearily, I started again but this time I put them on a shelf in the greenhouse to keep them out of the way of the meeces. Time passed, and some more, but no peas. What's going on here, I think to myself. Eventually, nothing to lose because they clearly aren't going to germinate, I start rooting around in the compost in the half-round gutter to see what is going on. And what do I find?

Nothing.

Nothing even faintly resembling a pea, or a half-germinated pea, or a half-decomposed pea, or a mouse-nibbled pea. Just nothing.

Now this is worrying. Either the peas have acquired the power to dematerialise from my greenhouse and rematerialise somewhere else, and are even now gracing tables at Hogwarts Academy for the Terminally Incompetent Gardener. Or, and this is worse, perhaps I only thought I sowed them and I have in fact been carefully looking after a gutter full of nothing but potting compost.

I fear that all the indications point to the latter position; indeed the men in white coats have very carefully explained this to me as they helped me to plant a 3rd gutter.

I know they're in there this time; the little beggars had better germinate!!

Hedgecutter: 1; Hosepipe: Nil

When I installed a semi-permanent hosepipe on the plot, to save faffing about coiling/uncoiling it every time I wanted to use it, I carefully threaded it through the base of the hedge out of the way.

Well, that was the plan. Just about every time I cut the hedge I also cut the hosepipe.

Hedge looks great. Hosepipe doesn't. It's a good job they're easy to repair.

Memo to self - take more care next time!

Not as bad as I feared

First visit to the plot this afternoon, after an absence of two and a half weeks in which it's rained quite a bit. You'll understand my trepidation. I was expecting to have to scythe my way in, grass shoulder high, tigers in the undergrowth; that sort of thing. Not a bit of it. The worst I could say is that it looked a bit unkempt. Wilma often says the same of me.

An hour with the strimmer soon saw it looking positively dapper. And nothing seems to have died or gone AWOL. Well, apart from the cherries. This was the first year in which I was expecting some and there were certainly some, quite a lot in fact, on the tree when I went on hols. Today, just a single solitary one clinging grimly on. At least I think it was clinging grimly on; it's a bit hard to tell with cherries, notoriously tight-lipped emotionally they don't give a lot away. What could be the cause? We've had a lot of high winds, apparently. Perhaps they just blowed away; the tree was swaying a lot. Or could it be birds/squirrels? Hmm, possibly, but the cherries were a long way off ripe. Either way I take two lessons from this (shrugs philosophically) - stake the tree so it don't sway about so much (should have done this already; Doh!), and net it to keep thieving blighters off (Ditto, Doh!).

The plums and sloes are holding up well on their trees, the salads are coming on well, Fort Brassica is intact and the contents are growing and the Blackberries, although listing heavily to port following the strong winds, are coming on nicely.

But I always hold the best till last (come on Wilbury, get on with it, you're such a tease).

Strawberries!!!!

Aren't they just yummy? I'm really pleased with them. They've had no protection and hardly any of them have any bird or slug damage. They're Marshmello and I can assure you they taste just as good as they look.

Fort Vancouver gardens

No, we haven't run off in despair at the British weather. In fact we haven't been experiencing British weather at all. We've been on hols in Oregon. But their weather was mostly the same as ours! In some places it was decidedly worse. At Crater Lake we had snow; quite a bit of snow in fact.


But at Fort Vancouver, just outside Portland, Oregon, we had great weather.


Fort Vancouver is a [pretty good] reconstruction of the original Hudson Bay Company fort which stood on this site from the 1820s. I've been to it several times because it is a key site in the David Douglas story but Wilma Wilbury had never been.

Just outside the fort is a small facsimile of the gardens which were once there to feed the fort's inhabitants and the small army of labourers & native Americans based in the village which grew up around the fort.

The gardens are clearly only a fraction of their original size but I was pleased to see them growing Scotch Kale, peas

and spuds.

Meanwhile, nearer home, I haven't been to the allotment since we got back. But the jet lag is nearly gone now and it isn't raining much at present so I guess I must steel myself. More on the full horror of a fortnight's neglected allotment in due course.

Not so Sloe after all

Remember my post last Autumn about the miserly quantity of Sloes the Blackthorn bush managed to produce? Well, if these


manage to stay on the tree we might be doing a bit better this year, and there are lots more all over it. Sloe Gin in prospect already, and it's only May! Yummy!! Plum is looking pretty good too, provided they stay on.

And in another full-on bash yesterday, I managed to transplant:

• Lettuce - Green Salad Bowl
• Lettuce - Lollo Rosso
• Lettuce - Romaine (anybody would think we liked lettuce; well, it is a mild soporific!)
• Pak Choi
• Sorrel (one of this year's finds; it's got a really sharp vinegary taste. But then with a name like Rumex acetosella it would, wouldn't it? The clue is in the acetic acid bit)
• Rocket
• Mizuna
• Stonehead Cabbage
• Broccoli
• Climbing French
• Mangetout peas
• Courgettes

In response to the hoots of derision I got last year for planting 10 courgettes, I've only planted 4 this year. Well, OK, 10 was perhaps a bit excessive! But I've got another 4 in reserve so may yet go ape on ratatouille.

I've had to build some more forts around the beans

and peas

and everything in the (now full) nursery bed

is protected too. I hate doing this but the alternative is lose everything to pigeons. Anybody got a catapult?

Fort Brassica.....

.....has been rebuilt.

It's the only way to keep thieving pigeons off my cabbages. It's actually, I think, really good design. The blue hoops are external water pipe from Wickes, sold in 20m rolls and cut to length with a handsaw. The netting is pegged down at the sides, slid up the hoops to meet in the middle and joined with clothes pegs at the top. For access, just remove the clothes pegs and the netting slides smoothly down to the ground. It's by far the easiest way of using netting that I've ever worked with (ordinarily, I hate using netting!).

They, the pigeons, that is, have also been known to attack sweet peas. So here's Fort Sweet Pea,


which you'll notice has the virtue of being vertically expandable as the sweet peas grow. Nothing if not innovative here you know.

And finally, for ye who doubt the purpose of nursery beds, here are the leeks nestling in the nursery bed for a week or two.

They're almost, but not quite, ready for transplanting. So why don't I just wait a bit and transplant them to their proper home? Ah well, you'll just have to wait and see.

Provision of Allotments - a sham consultation?

I've just stumbled across this, entirely by accident.

The Dept for Communities and Local Government are running a consultation on removing statutory burdens from local authorities, one of which is the statutory requirement to provide allotments.

The consultation ends today, Easter Monday. Did you know about it? I bet you didn't. Nice one, CLG. Run a consultation but don't let interested parties know you're running it, then you can claim that because there weren't any replies no-one is that interested and you can remove the statutory duty with impunity. Pah; rumbled that one, matey.

You've just about got time to write to them. And your MP.

At last

It's taken a long time but I've finally managed to dig over Section 8 at the bottom of the plot. This is how it was at the start of the afternoon.


The big heap is last year's compost, thrown on it with good intentions (you can't beat a big dollop of good intentions; almost as good as a big trollop with bad intentions) to empty the space for this year's compost; but then never acted on. The whole thing was becoming an eyesore.

And that's a shame really because it's a nice enclosed bed with good soil. It's clearly been a very big cold frame at some time and every autumn I say to myself "I really must get on and build that back into a cold frame; it'll be really useful in the spring". Of course when spring comes around I've done no such thing and it's too late then.

But at least I got it dug over and the compost worked in.


You have to admit it looks better already. It's going to be a nursery bed for leeks and then for salads and possibly a few tomatoes, overspill from the greenhouse at home.

Six Butts

I've got six butts.

Well, not me personally. I may have put on a bit of weight since I was positively skinny but even so, six butts. Dear me, no; how rude.

I do, though have six water butts, strategically positioned up & down the length of the plot, watering for the use of. Two of them are courtesy of Duck Dinner Dash, and much appreciated they are too.


I know you can only see five in this picture but that's because one is behind me. Technically, one is in fact a bath. No lack of amenities on this allotment, I tell you. There'll be an en-suite soon. And, yeah, I know, the one lying down (look very closely) has a hole in it. That's a hole at the bottom; obviously it has a hole at the top otherwise it wouldn't be a butt, it would be a tin. Do try to keep up.

The one with the hole in it will soon have a concrete bottom, a condition I feel sure many of us have suffered at some stage. Then it will hold water and I'll be fully up to strength butt-wise.

Levity aside, this is important because we are being exhorted to save water, use butts, water from the butts with a can and avoid watering with a hose. All very worthy if sometimes a tad misplaced. The Council seem to have this idea that we all leave sprinklers going for hours on end. I've never seen anyone using a sprinkler; no-one would let them monopolise the tap for that long. Anyway, mi' butts are full to bursting and all's well with the world.

The onions & shallots, started off in the greenhouse, are in.

The wallflowers are still flowering well, albeit nowhere near a wall.

But I'm saving the best till last. I know, what a tease.

Look at this chap.


The first Asparagus of the year. Hopefully there'll be lots more. I didn't cut any last year, to let the bed establish. I cut this one as the very last job, raced home with it and had it with my tea. Sausage, egg & chips. And asparagus. A classic combination. Remember where you heard it first!

Cherry, Cherry

Well I hope so, given how many flowers there are on this cherry tree. This is it's first year flowering so I've got great hopes of lots of cherries for Wilma Wilbury later this year (you'll remember that I don't actually like cherries so planting a cherry tree is a great act of selfless devotion!) ;-)

Strimming On (or, more accurately, Off)

It was one of those days, yesterday, when strimming off was just exactly the right thing to do. The grass was at the length where if I left it another week it would be too long and "a problem". The sun was hot enough to dry it out where it fell and, crucially, the boy's own wondertool which is my petrol-powered strimmer hadn't seen action since the autumn.

Needless to say, it made it's point by being reluctant to start but once firing on all cylinders (that's all 1 cylinder!) it made short work of the excess. And doesn't it look tidier? Well, all right, apart from the heap of old wood and the strategically placed manure heaplet. Have faith. The first one is going to the tip and the second will get dug in.


Mind you, I now have a touch of vibration white finger. The strimmer's reluctance to start (sorry, technical bit coming up) is probably down to it being full of stale petrol, at least 6 months old. I used to pooh-pooh the idea that petrol could "go off" but I'm coming to the conclusion that it can. Whenever any of my arsenal of power tools (that's 3 in total) are reluctant to start, fresh petrol almost always does the trick.

And then I went a-mattocking, all the live-long day, slicing the top of the overgrowth off the soil and just leaving it to crisp up. It doesn't eradicate the weeds, because it just clears the top growth and doesn't dig 'em out. But it does give them pause!

So, all in all, a good day yesterday which has left the plot looking considerably tidier. I wish I could say the same for the shed roof.

Those of you with sharp eyes will see the parlous state of the thing, not waterproof and sagging hard. I have two sheets of corrugated bitumen-y roof stuff at home to fix it. Fingers crossed; perhaps next weekend.

Progress......

.....is slow. I've been "off-plot"for nearly two weeks, on assorted other duties (!), and at this time of year that's a big mistake; things (mostly weeds) just grow so fast.

But I'm back in the groove and made a good start clearing Section 1 at the very top of the hill. It has the lightest soil, fewest weeds and is closest to the manure heap. I'd hoped to finish it and get some manure in but didn't manage it.

Still, the rhubarb is roaring away. I think it's Timperley Early. It's also beginning to grow it's own Triffid. I've never seen a flower spike as big as this quite so early; that probably means it needs splitting up in the autumn. Crikey; even more rhubarb!

And things are flowering. Look at this Plum. I'm due a big crop this year because last year was a 'resting' year for the tree. The Blackthorn has almost finished flowering now and I'm hopeful of more than the 8 sloes I had from it last year. The Cherry hasn't started yet but the buds are positively fecund. And I'm very pleased with the wallflowers, which have survived a real bashing & crushing by the snow.

In just one afternoon....

.... I cleared the brassica patch,

rough dug it, rough manured it (is there any other way?), chopped the manure in and transplanted:

Garlic - Christo
Garlic - Thermidor, and
Shallots - Jermor

All of them were started in the greenhouse in November and sat in a big sulk for nearly three months before they did anything at all. But they look good now; fingers crossed that they stay that way! When I'm transplanting I always try to make sure the plant doesn't know it's left home. Usually it works!

And look at the Lovage;

and the Rhubarb.

It's my signal of Spring, when the Lovage comes back.

And don't the raspberries look good,

every one of them wrapped up in it's own personal pile of manure. Just what the doctor ordered.

Shovelling it....

....manure, that is. Whatever did you think I meant?

At long last I've done something about the manure-less state of this plot. The lack of ongoing fertility additions has become ever more obvious. Steps had to be taken. So Shaun arrived with his big tractor this morning and his even bigger trailer-load of manure. £25 for a big trailer load strikes me as worth every penny. And it's really good stuff; well-rotted, not like some I've seen which was still warm and reeking of ammonia. The worst I ever handled was pig manure; how did I know it was pig manure? - I found a dead piglet in it!

Anyway, back to the plot. Shaun's delivery completely blocked the access road around the allotment, greatly inconveniencing the dog walkers who also use it. Some of them are less than punctilious about cleaning up after their dogs. Some of them also occasionally forget for whom the road was made, like the one who almost felt the sharp edge of my tongue this morning.

"Is thet manure?" she asked, querulously. "Nah, luv, it's Attar of Bleedin' Roses; course it's manure. Chuffinelle." I almost said. But I was of course ineffably polite; as you'd expect, although some effable words did go through my mind.

A trailer-load of manure is a pretty daunting prospect though. You look at it and think, Lordy, Lordy, this is a piece of work. I'm never going to be able to shift this; will my back stand up to it?

But it's like eating an elephant; a bit here and a bit there and soon enough you've eaten an elephant. And probably tastier than a pile of manure.

Some of it went through a specially-created hole in the hedge.

The rest of it went in a barrow down the hill. It was easier and faster through the hole in the hedge. The barrow developed a mind of it's own going down the hill. My role was simply to cling on and skid-steer it.

Laugh? You'd have lain on the ground; I nearly did, several times.

But it all got done, in only three hours and with no undue twanging from my back (which was my greatest worry about the whole process). And here's how it looks now.


Is that a pile of manure or is it Attar of Bleedin' Roses?

Much reduced, following MOAB

How it was

How it became

How it is

Sometimes, only a Mother Of All Bonfires will suffice.

This week I are mostly been.....

....croaking.

Woke up one morning to find someone had crept in during the night & filled my throat with rusty razor blades. Opened my mouth & moved my lips, as for speech, and not a sound emerged.

Since then it's improved a bit and the hosepipe someone else had attached to my nose has been removed. In short, I've been full of cold and have done absolutely zilch on the alloto.

But that must change.

This week I are mostly, nay totally, not at work and thus have a pressing appointment with a pile of manure. And a new shed roof. And strimming. And seed sowing. And the garlic needs planting out.

I'm just, like, so totally not at work, yeah?