The Best Days End with Bonfires

I was lucky enough to have the  help of my youngest son, Oscar, at the weekend,  as well as his lovely and hard-working girlfriend, Hazel. Well, it was Mothering Sunday after all, and a beautiful sunny one at that. Self isolation meant that I could only spend a short time with my own mum in her garden from a distance, so I was free to get a grip of that overgrown allotment.

The joy of a petrol lawnmower  

I thanked Tony Jones, my next door neighbour who sadly died last year, countless times today for the inheritance of his marvellous machine.  Oscar whizzed around the grassy paths and the whole place was instantly tidied.  The cuttings went on the beds to compost down and suppress weeds.

So much for no dig  

Hazel started off digging out some stubborn dock plants, and in the end managed to dig over a whole bed ready for sowing. Oscar then loosened the soil some more with the rotavator (he does love his noisy smelly power tools!)

I did battle with the brambles which edge every side of my plot. There was a time I used to try to dig out all the roots, but it was a massive effort and I never got them all out, so now I just get the buggers with secateurs as short as possible early on, and accept that I'll have to do it again next year.

Connie accompanied us all day.  She's turned into a fab allotment dog.  She used to mooch around, clearly bored, but now she accepts life on the plot, enjoys drinking from whatever has collected rain water, laying in shady spots, and joining us round the fire at the end of the day.

The ubiquitous Spring visitor  

Often a toad but this year a lovely leaping frog!  Replaced him in a damp shady spot to do his amphibious doings after he'd posed for some photos.

Then follows the burning of the brambles and any old wood knocking about the plot.   Where does all the wood come from?? Every year we burn it all and each year the bonfire seems to be bigger.

The best bit is when we pop open a can of cider as the daylight fades, and enjoy the heat and sit on makeshift seats in companiable satisfied exhaustion.

2020 No Dig. No Guilt. No Stress.

Hello!
Long time since I posted anything on this old blog.  But I'm still here, still growing some food, although it's all been a bit sporadic.
We've had ghastly gardening weather this year with 4 weekends on the trot of storms, the first of which, Ciara, ripped most of my shed roofing felt off.
Anyway, today was only the second day I've even visited the plot this year, so was really pleased and a bit surprised to find plenty of veg awaiting me. I harvested what I could, leaving a few more pickings for later, and started cutting down brambles and mulching the fruit bushes and herbs I found before the gentle drizzle turned into a miserable downpour and I stumbled home with my dripping produce.

Hooray!  My leeks are bigger than felt tip pens!  A few had bolted so I harvested most of them.

So, I had one picking in the summer of this curly leaf kale, when the leaves were big and lush, then the whole lot got savaged by caterpillars.  Now, 8 months later I've left it too late and it's gone to flower.  Actually, having sampled some of the leaves I found them to be tender and mild, so picked them anyway.  Tasting the flowers, I found they were not unlike broccoli, so harvested those too - why waste them - and now the flower tips are gone they may even produce more leaves - is that how it works?

A lush patch of parsley!  Excellent!

Great to see some of the fennel I planted last year has made it through the winter.

Lovely lovely purple sprouting broccoli.  Not sure of the variety I used last year, but the heads were bigger and it wasn't as prolific as previous years.  Probably my favourite winter crop though.  So delicious.

Nice surprise to find parsnips I'd missed in among the broccoli some not a bad size.

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 I covered this bed with cardboard in the autumn.  I'll start layering it up with home compost, seaweed, grass cuttings, whatever I can get my hands on.  Just need to cut the grassy paths first.

In line with my no dig method, I didn't weed out the grass around the fruit bushes, but instead broke down the dead remains of sunflowers and other dead vegetation from last year to smother the grass at the base of the plants.  

Again, used dead grass to smother the fresh grass at the base of this healthy-looking gooseberry plant I bought a few years ago from the Pound Shop!

A week ago I was once again thinking of giving up my plot (I know, I think it every year) .... it all feels so overwhelming at first - but in 2 and a half hours I fell back in love with it.  

After all - it's about producing lovely fresh food, and having feasted on home grown veg in March, I'm all inspired again!

The Covid-19 situation also means there will be more time for pottering in the garden, and I can frankly think of no better way of spending time in isolation than growing food.