Hollyhocks? Not on my watch

So it's been a funny old growing season. With both parents fully retired I've been somewhat relegated to weekend duties. Most of my time is spent weeding, making coffee and running the group of Community Payback workers that help us out with general site works on Sundays. Occasionally I get to play with the chickens.


Despite my initial misgivings about flowers on the plot we seem to have ended up with a few garden areas and I'm not totally adverse to them. Some of the flowers Coryn has chosen are nice enough. The Spurs fan in me hates the colour red but she's managed to get some deep pinks in and I'm too soft to dig them up but I guarantee that they will not make selection next year.


There is also the Hollyhock. If you have never come across this plant before your life is better for it.

This ghastly plant grows six feet tall and has big blousy pink blooms that flower directly off the plant stems. It's horrible chintzy cottage garden fuzz and I have begun a hate campaign against it.

I'm going KGB on this monstrosity. It's an affront to all things smart and slinky.
My plan is old school cold war tactics. Take down and misdirection. First inject it with undiluted Jeyes Fluid in the Autumn and deny all knowledge of a Hollyhock ever being in the plot.

"You are mistaken Mrs Coryn." "We have no records of a Hollyhock with growing privileges in that area."

Later I'll admit to a humour of Hollyhocks in the general area but I'll blame a mysterious, well meaning but misguided member using weed killer on the nearby path for killing the plant.
I know I’m an Evil genius. I am also available for children’s parties.

I miss my allotment

It's lunchtime on Friday 15th January 2010 and it looks like I might just get down to the plot this weekend.


Next weekend I have the rather large 40th birthday of a very dear friend of mine and I will not be around. the next weekend is Coryn 65th Birthday bash so it is imperative that I make an appearance this week.


There won't be much I can actually do as the soil will be too damp and cold to walk on. Soil structure at this time of year is so fragile. My dirty great size 12s stomping all over it will do no good at all. Size 12s are however very useful for preparing a firm base for planting the brassica plot later in the year.


As I am blessed with a very large greenhouse. I’ll move the tea making stuff into there and have a potter around. Perhaps I’ll prepare some pots for planting or just sit and listen to my ipod.

Seed potatoes arrive next weekend. 8 weeks til spring.

It’s been the coldest winter for many decades. But you know what? The water in the toilet bowl still hasn’t frozen. When it does, that’ll be proper cold.

Be careful what you ask for

So in my last post I was ruminating on the idea that a few decent frosts might kill off all the bugs in the soil that have been ruining my carrot harvest this season.

Because of all this rubbish weather I've been to the plot twice since mid December.

I went once to pick up some cabbage to be greeted with a two inch covering of snow all over the plot. This was about a week before Christmas. Not until you see the snow on the ground do you realise just how busy the foxes are on your plot. Every couple of inches across the whole plot there were fox prints. The whole site looked like a massive skin of a golf ball.

An couple of days before new year I dropped off some manure and spread it around on one of the plots and picked up some fresh herbs for my trip away to the Cotswolds for New Year.

Since then the whole plot as been frozen solid and covered with snow.

We did manage to get some planting done at the beginning of December. We managed to get a lot of garlic in the ground which will love all the snow and frost as garlic likes a good cold snap.

We also planted some Broad Beans which will now be dead. They were a bit leggy when they went in so the snow would have crushed them. Never mind I'll get some more in soon and hopefully they will be big and strong before the aphids arrive.

It will soon be spring!

strike out another day to the great god of unplanned quick halfs that get right out of hand

Every good allotmenteer should by now have now have made their to do list.

Got One? Me too.

It's just a reliable way of documenting the outstanding jobs that have been creeping around in the periphery of the plot during the summer.

Whether it's general maintenance like paths, roofs and steps or more seasonal jobs like disinfecting the greenhouse or tidying the shed the irresistible march of time and the continual exposure to the constantly changing weather means that these jobs become due ready or not.

Winter is the time to get some of these jobs done.

Why?

Well lets face it, with everything else that is going on, who has time for all this during the summer?

And that's how it starts.

The to do list summons into being all of allotment life's little irritants, together with the big jobs that have been skulking like black dogs on a dark foot path.

There is always the vain hope that in recognising the extent of your exposure you will some how steel yourself to achieve more. Nope! The to do list serves only to highlight the level of our own poor time organisation and makes us realise that the spell of the dark fairy of indolence is a strong one.

R: Dark fairy help me out!

DF: Well.... You've got all winter.

R: Yes! Yes I have. Thank you dark fairy. I've got all winter.




No I don't.

Between now and March 13th (that's about spring time right?) it will raining, hailing, snowing and sleeting. Heck, it we might even have some frozen soil this year. Doubtful when you live as close to London as I do, but you never know.

Celebrating Christmas this year? Me too. That's another two weekends gone. You won't see those again. Let's not forget the Christmas shopping time too. Let's Just write off the last two weeks of December and the first week of January for starters.

I have several birthdays during that time including a Father, Mother, Grandmother and a couple of very close friends which will each wipe out a Saturday or a Sunday or two.
Despite the wintery conditions there are still plants that need to be sown and all of my soil is in desperate need of compost and manure so that's another two weekends when the general maintenance jobs won't get done.

Allow another weekend for unexpected illness and another one for last minute visitors and strike out another day to the great god of unplanned quick halfs that get right out of hand, and your staring down the barrel of a long weekend and a planned day off work to catch up on the allotment before you need to start planting again.

R: I hate the dark fairy.

DF: Oh Really Rad? How about a quick game of Pro Evolution Soccer? It’s the 2010 version. You can be Spurs I’ll be the Arsenal. Best of 5?

I've said it before. It's not all dirt and turnips.

So I've been absent for a few weekends recently.

Reason one. Java settings. Or as I like to call it Javaaarrrggghhh! Some how I've managed to prevent my PC from uploading photos to websites including facebook and my blog. Fixed. Relived but puzzled but I suspect that is not a thread that I want to pick at.

Reason two.

This bloke
Yes that's Tony Christie. Avenues and Alleyways.

and these


but we were not with the Clanggers. We were dressed as Coneheads. In the very unlikely event that you too were at the best kept secret somewhere just north of the M25 this summer then you probably saw me that weekend. Probably? No, you saw me.

and reason Three.

I was here

doing this


and watching the Muse homecoming gig in Teignmounth.

Pronounced "Tin mouth". You not fram round 'ere bay.

No turnips. It was quite dirty.

Weeds provide the greeen shoots of recovery

Don't panic I'm not a halfwitted politician gasping for the oxygen of publicity by claiming that I can see the green shoots of recovery.

It's weeds man. You need weeds? Come see me I've gots acres of them. I pull up bags, trugs and buckets full of the wretched things every visit. Some of them go on the compost heap but most get bagged and taken by car full to the recycling center (formerly known as the tip).

Talk about "where there's muck there's brass." I dig up my weeds and take them to the council recycling centre. A year later the council sell them back to me. I know.

Here's your everyday magic in action.

The council put my weeds in a massive pile with all the other rubbish people don't want. They build the weeds and grass cutting and hedge trimmings into giant mounds of largely organic something or other. They water it, turn it and occasionally have to cover it. All this is done on an industrial scale using reclaimed land and the kind of earth moving equipment that brief mortals like us cannot get their grubby hands on outside of a quarry site or maybe Diggerland.

Diggerland? No? More muck and brass. Here's your link http://www.diggerland.com/ because I can't make this stuff up.

FOCUS!

So the breakdown process that make your hedge into humus (no not the chick pea dip although that would be magical) actually produces enough heat to kill off the most pernicious of weeds and all the spiteful and hostile bacteria too. So there is no need for burning infected plants any more.

I'm not claiming that industrial composting is some sort of divine gift but it is a cracking idea and, whilst it does have a few suspect down sides, it's a step in the right direction.

Here's the kicker. Come spring next year the council will sell me back my own weeds and your hedge clipping and grass cuttings in the form of compost at around £4 a bag which, I should add for reasons of full disclosure, I will happily pay.

The circle of shite! Capitalism at it's most happy and shiny. No casino banking, no quantitative easement, no cash for clunkers, kickstart or stimulus packages, just rubbish turned into something useful and sold on to help perpetuate it's own usefulness.

Oh it's gooood to be back!

For every action there is an opposite but equal reaction. I'm not sure it's equal.

Don't let anyone tell you that allotments are easy. There is a pastoral dream associated with growing your own veg that has been cultivated (if you'll pardon the expression) by the BBC, Hugh Fernley-Whittingstall, Jamie Oliver and others. Don't believe a word of it.

Unless you have your own walled garden and garden staff ( and all of the above do) then you can't just step out into the garden and pick a bunch of veg for a salad or a soup or for Sunday lunch with out a significant amount of time invested in digging, sowing, weeding and general husbandry.

Don't believe me? Try scattering some parsley seeds on the ground and six weeks later nip out into the garden and try and find the parsley let alone pick it!

So the pay off for all the hard work is the fresh food ( and it really is very fresh)

I've got dirt under my fingernails just about all the time. I spend my free hours gently sweating in work boots, denim and tatty t-shirts. I dream of carrots and spades, I fret about weeds growing on my land whilst I'm at work. I measure weed encroachment between visits to my plot. I can tell the difference between various ages of horse poop and I have a minimum of two baths on Saturdays and Sundays.

My allotment is in many ways better than the gym, and a good deal less expensive. The word 'aerobics' came about when the gym instructors got together and said: If we're going to charge £10 an hour, we can't call it "Jumping up and down".

This is just jumping up and down really. My muscle mass has increased dramatically, I'm fitter and I'm more flexible than I've been since I stopped playing rugby. I've just about deadened my fear of spiders (via allotment induced immersion therapy).

I have open access to seasonal cut flowers and fresh vegetables at all hours of the day and night, which is much more handy than you may think. I whilst I've never been one to knowingly turn up empty handed anywhere, at this time of year I can turn up with seasonal veg and occasionally fresh cut flowers as well as the obligatory bottle of wine.

Like most things in life you get out what you put in. I put in sweat and manure I get back tomatoes. Which luckily do not taste of sweat or horse muck for that matter. Fascinating!

As long as people accept rubbish it will be financially profitable to produce rubbish.

I found a local farm shop that sells duck eggs and Goose eggs (Available only six weeks of the year) and sells lots of veg that it grows on the farm. Don't panic. I'm not going to preach to the choir.

I now do my very best to buy all the veg that I cannot grow myself from my lovely "Veg & Bloom Farm". I ride there mostly so I'm not making extra trips in the car either. It is nice for me to think that you too might think about doing the same where you can. (Obviously don't shop at the one in Upminster that would be folly). It's not easy, and like most things in life you have to put yourself out to be responsible or stand up for what you think is right.

Here's the rub. If I buy all my veg from farm guy (above) and his profits go up, will he concentrate of growing better veg and keeping the farm as a going concern? Or will he think of more things to sell me so that in a few years I'm shopping for fennel in a flipping garden centre?

Let's all be careful what we wish for.

Tesco et al have their place, we all need baked beans and tinned tomatoes and Orange Juice lets not be silly about this. I'm not an eco-warrior, I don't want to "Fight the man" but I'm happy to ignore him at parties.

A word of caution though. Be wary of Farmer's Markets. It strikes me that some are stalked by highly unscrupulous posers selling highly packaged rubbish to get you to part with your hard earned cash. "Oh this is lovely we got it from a Farmer's Market in Wolverhampton".

If you find yourself with a fridge full of artisan goats cheese and exotic preserves you'll never eat either side of Christmas you'll know where I'm coming from. Please, go to a Farmer's Markets with a shopping list the same way you would go to Sainsburys. See how much you come home with.

You're welcome.

Happier blogs will follow. I'm in a dark place right now but it's just a phase I'm going through.

Absence makes the heart grow flounder

January was a bit of a write off with all the wet and cold. Can't say I grew much of my own this month. I only put in a couple of short visits to the plot. Still I kept busy.

I still harvested my own. Leeks and spuds for roasting.



Baked my own.

I buy the flour, but that's not half way to making bread. I find that it's the most difficult thing in the world to get bread right.
Sometime I rely on Mr Hovis and sometimes I just rock! This was a particularly tasty granary.




I love my groovy 70s Kenwood Chef. I got it on E bay and it was nearly as expensive as a new one. This one is very nearly as old as me! I should have gone for the orange and black Chef for that real 70s feel but I have a blue kitchen.

and finally, I caught my own.

I fish the Thames when time and tide suits me. It's much cleaner than every one believes. That bass is 16 inches long and weighed a whisker over 2lb before I gutted it. I can't begin to tell you how good it tasted. It was practically still twitching when it hit the pan. Sorry. Too far? The Flounder was rubbish. I'll be throwing those back in a hurry.

January. Don't be sad don't be angry with me.

You'll be singing that for days. Go on treat yourself. Here is the link to "January" by the mighty Pilot. Actually they are not that mighty. They're quite shiny. The shiny pilot.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ZY3NgDP_cSc

Happy 2009 everyone. That's got to be the latest happy new year greeting you've had.

I've had a lovely January. It started very well getting drunk with my very dearest friends at a friend's house party on new years eve. Those of you with access to my face book pages can see the carnage that ensued. I'm sometimes very glad that I always write under a Nom Du Plume. I've loved seeing your facebook party photos too.

My blood type has change from O Negative to Rioja positive and I should probably not have driven most Sundays. I'll be very sad to draw a big wobbly line under what has been a brilliant January. I have to thank all my friends for their lovely warm and cosy hospitality. xx

Harry has been by far the busiest on the plot. Construction the "Crystal Palace" style green house is approaching completion. This will have it's own post in the coming weeks as it will be the centre of operations once the weather breaks.

We had some proper snow this week. It's been nuts!

Look what some wag has written on our container. "Slippery". Really? Genius. You could have written "freezing cold" on the padlock. That would have been helpful too!
The fresh manure is rotting down nicely. Yep that's a steaming pile for sure. It's also about the warmest place in Essex right now! Doesn't smell as bad as some parts of Essex either.

I see these foot prints in the snow from time to time. I know they belong to a cat but I like to imagine that very small animals fashion stilts from twigs and walk over the snow at night. Think about it. That's the shape that tiny animal stilts would make in the snow. I think I have cabin fever. I'm going outside. I may be sometime.

Somewhere a village is missing its idiot.

Compost is Nature's miracle. Our local council encourage composting and will provide a big black compost bin for about £15. As is the way with things, when something becomes ubiquitous, some witless fool tries to trivialise or present an anthropomorphic personification of the object, usually missing the point completely. This time the claim is that compost bins look a bit like Daleks.

It's a bit of a stretch so let me clear this up before it gets out of hand like the wheelie bins.

This is a Dalek.

It is bent on the destruction of the earth and Dr Who. They've been at it since the 50s.

This is a compost bin.
It provides an environment for the accelerated breakdown of organic matter into an odourless material resembling soil. It takes about a year. It is completely ambivalent towards Christopher Ecklestone, that camp yank or the Scottish bloke.

I should add that this is the remains of our first compost heap. The majority of the good stuff has been dug into the plot now.

Where do these people get their ideas? Do they qualify for a halfwit diploma if they say something really stupid once every couple of weeks. Is Boris Johnson their leader?

I hope that bubble stays blank for all our sakes.
Who wants to bet that I'll soon find some one selling compost bins with blue balls stuck to them and a head like a tank's gun turret that rotates in the wind. Sheesh! I think I'm ranting.

Oi !

Look at him. Just hanging out. Scratching.

Who Me?

Too slow tubby!

You don't know jack (Frost)

It getting chilly in the night time now and the first frosts will be here any day now. As a fisherman this means the start of the cod season in the South East. I've been scouring my fishing forums for news of cod from Essex as I know that the first frost will only be a few days behind them.

I've left the tomatoes until the last possible minute as the weather last week was excellent and I'm hoping to see some more red berries before it's time to bring down my tomato forest.


I've discovered a cracking tomato sauce recipe which I will be getting to grips with next week. Watch this space for cooking and preserving instructions.

The sweet corn jungle has been thinned and the remainder will soon be felled. I'm after a couple of sweetcorn relish recipes and I'll blanch and freeze the rest.

The sweet corn were a proper delight this year. I will miss the rustic pantry feel that they helped create in my fridge. I loved those carrot tops, beet leaves and sweetcorn all sticking out at jaunty angles. I wanted to get a glass fridge just to show them off.

pics to follow

I won't miss the dirt I have to clean out from the bottom of my fridge every week. My veg tastes far better, but blimey, Tesco's veg is much cleaner. I wonder if we can have a cleaning station at the allotment. Actually I might look into this. Now there's an insight into my stream of consciousness writing style.

No wait. Wait! I'm not finished.... D'Oh!

That's it. It's over. Time called on the last planting of the year. There are a few crops that can still be planted but nothing that you'll see this year.

It is that time of year. With one hand you are picking the fruits of your labour and with the other hand you are sweeping away the debris of a spent crop. Keates’ season of mist and mellow fruitfulness is upon us, to be quickly followed by the season of frosts and spiteful chilliness.

I left my gas burner at home today. I like to improvise.

Last weekend I spent all my time covering our bottom plot with wood chip around the fruit bushes and plastic sheeting over the main growing area.




I also shifted a lot of horse muck. I love the smell of horse manure in the morning! Actually I really don't. More later.

Crop rotation featuring drums and guitars. "Roots Manuover" if you will.

"Roots, Brassica and Other" these are the three sections by which the vegatable world is broken down in terms of growing.

Brassicas are cabbage type plants.(inc Cauliflower and Brocoli).



Roots are veg that grow underground (inc potato and carrots).


Others are anything that does not fit exactly into Roots or Brassica description.
Others would include Tomato, leek, onion, sweetcorn, squash, pea and lettuce.



Each section must to be rotated from year to year. You can't grow cabbage where cabbage grew the year before for fear of disease, the same goes for root veg. So in order to stop diseases and maintain soil balance we have to move around the three types of crop every year.

I have four sections to my allotment. What am I going to do with the foorth part? Roots Brassicas Other and.... Livestock? Sadly too many foxes (don't get me started). Roots, Brassicas Other and....fallow? That seems like a waste of land, besides in such a small area a bag of growmore organic fertilizer and some well directed horse muck will help the land recover better than a year left fallow.

So this year I'll be using the Michael Eavis appraoch he employs so well at Glastonbury. Roots, Brasica, other and rock festival.

The festival will probably just be me on a stool belting out classics on my acoustic guitar. If by classics your mean Love me tender, twikle twinkle little star and a painfully stilted version of Ode to Joy in C. Thanks to Jay (in yellow) for the Glasto photos.

I'd better go away and have a think about this.

School holidays in sunny Essex

First day of the school holidays and first break in of the year. Coincidence? I don't believe in them. Day one and they are already bored. Scheezh!

We learned that a padlock is only as strong as the thing is its screwed to, in this case 15 year old wood. Hmmm.

These feral kids need stopping. In these more genteel times children are protected by laws which mean that they can't be tortured or imprisoned against their will. (oh wait a minute, I think every one is protected by those laws) so we'll have to let the police deal with this one.

The kids climb over the fence to take a short cut through to the high street during the day. I guess they see all the sheds and think they must be full of valuable stuff. There is, but not things that are valuable outside of an allotment. There must be £60 worth of seeds in the shed. We'll have to get the anti climb paint out and paint the fence again. Hopefully that's all it will take and they won't pester us again.

Fortunately we did not lose anything important. It appears that they have only taken a gas burner which is inconvenient but it's replaceable. We should be grateful that they didn't use the thing to burn the place down.

I'm off to watch Commando (starring Arnold Swarchenegger) to practice making booby traps. Hahahaha!

Never red

We need flowers on the allotment. I'm not a flower person but I understand the basics of pollination so we grow flowers too. Being a Tottenham Hotspur fan I have made an effort not to grow red flowers. It's complicated, and If you don't know this is not really the place to explain it. Think... Yankees v Mets or Yorkshire v Lancashire or England v France.

Here are some pictures of nature in all it's splendour which also happen to be in Spurs colours.


Sun flowers. If I had a favourite flower it would be these. Of course I don't have a favourite flower because I'm a bloke.


They are kind of pretty though.

Borrage. It's edible, in the same way that hay is edible. This is the chap you need to attract bees. They go nuts for this stuff. This is a big hairy beast of a plant that grows like a weed and has huge sprays of these blue flowers. Bees are attracted to the borrage and then they spot your fruit trees and bushes and the bees pollinate the fruit trees too. When it's finished growing cut it up and put on your compost heap. Borrage is your buddy.


Yep. That's an ant. Click on the picture to see it in full size and stare in awe at the Panasonic Lumix DMC FX12. Sorry! Mother Nature, I meant Mother Nature.

Growing food you don't like

The gardeners among us may have noticed that the food you don't like very much seems to perform the best.

Take runner beans. Please take all the runner beans you want. They're over there with the French beans which you can also keep. Our runner beans are in full flower and growing fast enough to give Dwain Chambers a run for his win bonus.



Are these beans getting special treatment? No.
Are these beans taking vitamin supplements and cold and flu remedies? No.
Do these beans have Linford Christie as a trainer? No.

My Borlotti beans are in the same trench and on the same frame and they are a shadow of the French and runner varieties.




It's the same with my Italian black cabbage. Nothing. Stoically refusing to grow.
On Sunday I saw a round head cabbage slap a pigeon that tried to peck at it. The cabbage is in rude health.




So has the bubble burst on my quest to grow more "fancy" vegetables? Will I have to make a trip to Borough Market every time I want to make home-made minestrone soup? Am I doomed to grow spuds and strawberries and runner beans?

HECK NO!

Say yes to wafty Italian cabbages;
embrace the shiny pink Borlotti bean;
pour over the Asparagus; and
play Mariarchi band music to Tomatillos. (What?) Never mind.

This is a marathon, not a sprint.

Perhaps a watched pot really does not boil.

Good things come to those who wait, but you can have runner beans now.