Spring is here, and Stephen Morrisey is ringing in my ears

OK. I'm probably getting over excited but it has been a long, cold, bleak Winter and I'm very glad to have the sun on my back when I'm digging at the plot.


I'm less keen on the sun on my back when I'm on my way to work but until I can get my act together to become a professional sea fisherman, The Guardian's chief music critic, or vegetable and fruit consultant to the stars then I'll just have to quit moaning about that.

I'm my excitement, and to dull the boredom of long digging stints this weekend, I threw together some happy images of Spring in the beginnings of it's wiping the winter sleep from it's eyes, poking it's head out, reaching for the sky, fresh and zingy, blimey that sun is bright, blast I left my shades at home, Oh! First sun burn of the year.....glory.



I know we are likely to be due some gales, frosts and a rain storm or two still, but allow me my moment.

I suspect an infestation of infants is also immanent as I caught one in my Purple Sprouting Broccoli this week. There is no treatment for these, once you've got 'em you've got them for life. This one belongs to my brother.



As the great man said. Good times for a change. See the luck I've had could make a good man bad.

Morrissey in an Allotment blog? This is a dark place I find myself in.

Worth the wait.

So what was supposed to be the most exciting part of this veggie year turned out to be a bit of an after thought. Such is life, and I am reminded that life goes on every day despite everything.


So in rather short order here is the planting of the mighty Asparagus. I can't wait for the first crop. It will be in May 2011. I'm not kidding. This is a marathon not a sprint and the inclusion of the Asparagus on the bottom plot finally caps off the total transformation of the bottom plot to perennial plants. With some judicious mulching I'll hardly have to weed the bottom plot at all.

(Yeah right!)


I'm burying weapons of mass destruction in 4 ten feet long silos!



Once the trenches have been dug I part filled them with well rotted horse poop.





Then I dropped some soil back on top and hoed up the sides of the bottom of the trench.





Plant your Asparagus over the mound



and spread out the roots.


Cover with finely sieved soil. Now....................WAIT TWO YEARS!


The crops will start growing straight away.



Aawww look.

Don't bee fooled see that stone next to it.....



Tiny!



I need a manicure!


By the end of summer these tiny little shoots will grow into ferns about four feet high and about three feet across. I have to let them grow and die back this year and again next year and only at that stage can I start to crop them.

I've got 20 plants (10 early and 10 late cropping) so If you know me well and live local I'll almost definitely be dropping off Asparagus when I visit! But not any time soon.

The dark art of rhubarb forcing.

What the....?


I know. It looks kind of odd but you have to remember two things.

1. We have more of these barrels than you can shake a stick at.
See. I think they might be breeding. If you look to the back you can see that a few have split from the herd.

2. I looked for Rhubarb forcers on T'interweb and they cost a fortune. Most of them are made of terracotta, a very pretty product but notoriously feeble in cold wet winters.

You don't want to spend a fortune of this stuff, let's not lose sight of the fact that this is just rhubarb we are talking about.

Here is what is happening inside the bucket. Shortly after Christmas Harry dug up a dormant rhubard root and placed it the bottom of the bucket with some compost and horse doings. He put the lid on, wrapped it in fleece and dropped it in the greenhouse.


Whilst most Rhubard is just poking a head above it's top dressing of horse poop this time of year, Harry created a warm dark Spring in a bucket and our root went about growing. This one is 14 inches long. It has almost no top leaf and if the experts are to be trusted in a few weeks we'll have a crop of the tenderest sweetest rhubard known to man.



Seems like a lot of fuss, but honestly you need something to entertain you on the plot during the long dark teatime of the soul that is Winter.



See.

Rhubarb. Rhubarb. Rhubarb. Nope. That word has now lost all meaning!

Dig jà vu.

The feeling that you have dug this bit before.

Having already moved one lot of soil from this old compost heap the really nasty heap next door was tackled by Harry a couple of weeks ago. I missed all that fun as I was shamefully laid up (passed out on the lounge floor) with a legendary hangover following our friend's magnificent "bad taste" birthday party. I'll just say Absinthe and Jagermeister cocktails and leave it at that.

So all I had to do this weekend was shovel and barrow about half a tonne of dirt back onto the plot. I'm just a donkey really.



Huh! I'm missing the final picture. (pic to follow)

The earth here is rich but it's cold and damp and doesn't get sun at ground level because of the shed. So we'll be moving all our fancy raised beds to the land vacated by all this earth.
We've got four of these and we need another two. Then I'll transplant some comfrey underneath the beds to keep the weeds at bay. The comfrey will help me raise my organic credentials later in the year.

1st February 2009. Somewhere under this lot there is my plot.

3rd March 2009. Oh! Look at my lovely plot all nicely dug over.

Don't be fooled. Now it's cleared I have to hoe this every few of days or there will be a carpet of weeds ready to greet me.

Oh! We're in luck Double click on the pic above. I've managed to capture my Allotment Gurus. Harry, and the more camera shy Coryn. (pronounced like Corrine).

I might see if I can cook and eat some weeds this year. They're a lot less trouble than carrots and seem to have no natural predators. Do not try this at home. Most weeds are very dangerous which is why we don't see them in the Tesco chiller cabinet.

It's too early to call it spring but it's beginning to feel a little bit spring-like from time to time.

I've said too much!

Purple Sprouting Majestey

Purple sprouting broccoli. (PSB)
You can click on any picture in the blog to enlarge it to full screen size.

I don't think that this counts as the first crop of this season, it's the last crop from last season. We planted this stuff in June 2008 and it's taken it's sweet time to arrive. But when it arrives you have got to be prepared.

We've got about 15 plants some early and some late spouting broccoli. Once the centre shoot develops a large head about two inches across you pick it out. (See below) This encourages the plant to produce lots of smaller heads all over the crown of the plant. Little purple spring fireworks everywhere.


I have the beginnings of a PSB glut. How is that a bad thing?
We have to keep this netted or it escapes.
They turn green when they are cooked. Huh! Still at least you know when to remove them from the steamer.

A quick teaser. Greenhouse watch continues....
Yup. It's as greenhouse.

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.