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.

It's all go!

These are mine. Smashing aren't they.

So with the whole of the top plot now dug over it's planting time again.

Don't worry this in not an exhaustive list of every time I put something in the ground. Lots of pics and only the key stuff.

As the greenhouse was not quite finished in time for February then most of the plants have been potted and planted at Coryn & Harry's home green house. Their green house is heated and will protect the tiny seeds from the extreams of the English winter.
pics to follow


So whilst everyone else has had plots that are filled with sprouting this and that, ours has been quite barren and bare.

One 1/4 is full of potatoes. You can't see most of these as they have only just been planted. Some have just started to poke through though.

One plot had purple sprouting broccoli and spring cabbage on it and rhubarb at the top. This has now been dug over and some carrots planted at the bottom ( that Green haze baby carrot leaves)) and onions. Mainly onions we will squeeze in some squash here too.

The other side is completely bare. This is because these 1/4s are for brassicas (top) and Tomatoes and Sweetcorn (bottom) just going in now.

The strawberries are planted in buckets around the site and we also have a bed the size of a parking space full of the little blighters. They look pretty good and my camera work isn't too shabby either. (I treated myself to a nice new tripod which was not as extravagant as it sounds)

and the beans are in. Whoop de do. Beans everyone!

No pictures of beans. Ever!

Everything else is too small to photograph at this stage and frankly it gets a bit boring without pics.

The fruit is up and running.

the trees have kicked off on time.
Full speed ahead. The frosts have past and a long hot summer is predicted. Free at last from the tyranny of English weather we might just have a proper summer. Nice.

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.