Sinking twice now.

Today I came over all artistic and in touch with my feminine side and did some flower arranging. Being a large male lump I used a large container, lots of grit and uncut flowers.

This lovely old pantry sink used to be at my late mothers and is one of the gardening items that I removed before selling the place.
On Saturday I went to Ayletts Nursery outside St Albans, in previous years I have found that they stocked all the stuff I couldn't find elsewhere. This visit left me slightly disappointed as, although all their alpine plants were topped off with crushed rose granite, they did not stock it, so I had to make to with "Cumbrian Green" crushed stone grit. Looks OK though I think.
Every available surface had "Tete-a-tete" narcissi on it and yes, I did succumb and buy one £4.95 pot for my beloved, which on my return I potted up into one of our two nice glazed terrace pots and tidied and swept the terrace as well, before watching our 1st XV get rather stuffed by Barnes. Still nice afternoon, good company, good cold beer.......

Today was No 1 sons rugby training, followed by an hour of bar duty for me, then a shopping errand with my beloved.
Once free of all that I retrieved this sink from the allotment with assistance of son.

It contains Heather- Challenger, Heather - unamed from Wilko's X2, Heather - Ruby Slinger, Saxifrage- White Star, Arabis- Varigata and Campanula poscharskyana - "E H Frost".

Also brought back a huge "belfast" sink and started to sort it out, but have not finished it as I do not have enough plants to fill it, so it's not worth putting the grit layer on top yet. I'd saved some plants when emptying both sinks for transport the other year. This one is going at the front right (as viewed from outside) of the shed to help retain the platform the shed sits on.

Spoilt for choice?

So much so that I went to town! Working in north London I don't get to see much of my home town, so I went and had a bit of a wander, stopped at Costa Packet for a coffee, then went via the rest of the town centre to Wilkinsons, where I bought loads of seeds, two heathers, one rhubarb, three asparagus in one packet (only £2). one honeysuckle, a large net of Sturon onion sets and a large net of Desiree seed potatoes.
Went home via Homebase collecting four for price of three 20L screened topsoil, three postcrete, one readymixed dry cement and a 20L ericaceous compost.
Picked up my allotment key and dumped the topsoil at the plot, back home, changed, collected hound and taking the asparagus, went to the plot. Met Gilert and checked if he had switched the water off last year, he hadn't but we found the stopcock and I got the tool from my site agent shed and turned the water back on, three troughs had been half empty already.
Dug up and bonfire heaped the spare raspberry canes from the raised bed, dug it over, planted the three asparagus in a shallow V pattern, then topped off with a 20L bag of topsoil, three bags left to refresh the coldframe.
Departed for the back garden with two 18" paving slabs and Alan who wanted to have a look at my greenhouse, he has just got two growbag growhouses as a present and is looking forward to tomatoes.
My beloved arrived home shortly after I did and helped to move the two person swingseat up onto the grass terrace, where I set to and create four pads to sit it on, double paving blocks at the back with a straining eye set down between each pair, into the underlying 6" of postcrete. Single 18" paving slab for each front corner set on 4" postcrete and cement mix. After it had firmed up a bit the swingseat was carefully put in place.



Tidied up, then set five stepping stone slabs across the lawn from the path to the shed door, levered out the third of the redundant swing anchor blocks, homemade concrete with the bolt-on bar set in it and tipped my spoil into the hole.

Finished my gardening day with some re-potting and sowing in the greenhouse.














Re-potted what I had bought and sowed:

• Leek - Musselburgh
• Kale - Dwarf Green Curled
• Calabrese - Samson F1
• Celeriac
• Pea - round pod sugar-snap
• Purple Sprouting
• Broccoli - Red Arrow
• Brussels Sprout - Wellington F1
• Banana Shallots - home harvested seed from last year.
• Pepper - hot Cayenne
• Cucumber - Marketmore 76

the last two and some of the peas in the propagator, which is now switched on.Then found the hose connector was broken, so had to fix that before watering the trays and really finishing for the day.

Chugging along

Was busily working away today, looked up and a bloke in a raincoat and trilby hat, clutching a clipboard to his chest was wandering up the main path.
"Can I help you?" quoth I
"Oh, er, yes" mumbles he, now heading a bit more purposefully in my direction.
Now at first glance I'd though "Councillor come to inspect plot cultivation levels", this quickly passed through "Cllr X has had a damm bad haircut and gone on a diet" to "ahh you're the bloke I've noticed two evenings this week going rather furtively door to door in my road".
As he drew close I read the upside down writing on the clipboard, "Well known charity name".
"Not interested in any charities" said I before the pitch could start and then endured five vague minutes about growing veg, how do you get an allotment and surprise that it was so empty in the middle of the weekday afternoon.
My refreshment order had arrived in the carrybag of my beloved halfway through this and as he wandered off my beloved said "he knocked on the door earlier trying to get me to sign up to something for Well known charity name.".
So an attempted chugging on the plot!

Anyway enough of charity muggers, I've taken Thursday & Friday off this week to garden.
Got up some three hours later than usual for a weekday at 9am, oh the unfettered luxury, coffee and croissants with the local paper, off to the plot at 10:30.
Moved a paving slab and all my remaining bits of granite by wheelbarrow to the back garden, moved another slab, the stone and belfast sinks across the path to plot 17, all these will combine with granite grit, ericaceous compost and some plants later this year to go on the terrace.
Dug up the council provided twenty dogrose and fifty hawthorn, then went a planting. Plonked quite a few in stretches of unrelieved chainlink and concentrated most of the rest along the east fence where the District Council had murdered the previous planting with strimmers, strung a few dogroses round the corner between fence and ditch. Retrieved the clear plastic spiral tubes and wrapped them round the plants in my new hedge, got some string and tied most of them to the chainlink for purposes of verticality (come over all USA military there) and security. All this took a fair while.
Finished by digging the finally empty last corner of Plot 18, which is now completely dug, barring the permanent herb patch of course. It began to rain with four rows of spadework left, happily it was only light drizle that petered out.
Damp dog and owner then took a brisk one hour walk to stretch themselves, but only one took a hot bath afterwards, now I wonder which one?


Plot 17 will be mostly rotovated this year and it is currently much too sticky for that, so Hacken-Slash slumbers on in the shed at home.

Tomorrow, I think I am spoilt for choice in the back garden, which has lots of mess from workshop building on top of residual builders mess and "lets move stuff so its out of the way of the builders" type mess.
Possibly greenhouse stuff, or at least setting slabs to make the path into it mud free, could sort out four pads to sit the two person swingseat on, two with security hoops to tie it down to, now thats an idea.

Dig that treasure.

Amazing what you dig up sometimes.
Plot 18 has been dug by me several times and rotovated several times, but this came out today. Housebrick for size comparison purposes only, grass not included, warning this product may contain nuts if the squirrels have been around.....
The plot had a failed potato crop two years ago and was left fallow with additions of glyphosate for bindweed last year. What happened was that I did not dig since the spuds, so the ridges were still there and as I dug in one of the furrows the tip of the spade caught the bit top left in the picture.
I had to use a fence post and some bricks to lever this thing out, even after excavating over and around it.
"Never mind that stuff" said my furry supervisor, "just take me for a walk, NOW."
Today I dug from where she is sat to the bit nearest camera, where my undug row can be seen.
Just out of shot to the bottom left is my heeled in hedging from last year, the loose soil spread nearby is where the heeled in brambles were dug up from. The brambles have been distributed to strategic locations on the site fence, I love fruitful security.
Roughly where I stood to take the photo above, this thing had been resting since it was removed from my late mothers place before we sold the house.
Interesting history, it was once the parrafin store between the vinery and greenhouse-complex boilerhouse at an Edwardian gentlemans country estate
Makes a brilliant water tank, heavily galvanised, brass tap, just a shame the only inlet is front right.
So this is probably not its final resting place, best place is the other side of the two trap shed, but at least I can measure from this when I make a more robust base than breezeblock on bare soil. Possibly four short auger holes linked by a six inch deep plank edged trench and run some re-bar in three long U shapes between the holes to hold it all together once the concrete sets. Really do not want it to topple when full, anyone care to tell me the likely capacity in gallons? To aid estimators, at the front left corner the dark bit is two housebricks.

Down on the ground, up in the air.

Down on the ground I actually managed some allotmenteering this weekend, Saturday to be precise.
Its OK, you can pick yourselves off the floor and have a reviving cup of hot sweet tea.

I might manage some more as the year progresses, oh dear, now you've spilt your tea, I'm sure it will wash out though.

Went and dug the poor old Hayterette out, a quick brass brush of the sparkplug, a top up of the petrol tank and "One man and his dog went to mow some allotment paths.". Something so satisfying about mowing, not needing to think, a steady pace, the noise of the machine, turn, another strip done....
The first mow of the year is doubly satisfying, the fact that the grass has started to grow enough to need mowing is a harbinger of spring and the contrast as you turn at the end of that first strip and look back at what is now a scrubby mess with a neat strip, where minutes before it was just "grass, a little unmown" is striking, you pace and turn, pace and turn, then suddenly it's all neat.

That job done, I chanced my luck with what the more pc amongst us gardeners refer to as "A single person manually operated horticultural earth inverting implement.", I call it a spade and this week the clods did NOT stick to it, so I dug a decent chunk, stopping before my back protested.

Up in the air, I digress from gardening, at length, to describe, well, a damm good reason to support air ambulances.

Son's first game for his county U15 side saw us up early for a Sunday and off to Eastleigh in Hampshire. Leaving with the assumption that the M25 would be a pig, it was not, so we were early arrivals and even after killing an hour at a local coffee shop the host club still had it's Sunday training running.

Son went off with team mates and I mooched through onto the clubhouse balcony to see a "stoppage" on the furthest pitch. About ten minutes later this yellow bird arrived, fortunately the lad went by land after loosing his new "rugby skin" to NHS scissors. Mums all looking worried, smaller kids all excited about the chopper.

Now guess what happened later.

Yes, the big yellow bird liked us so much it came back and took one of our team away to Salisbury, precautionary after a neck injury with some temporary loss of feeling.

While waiting for land crews to arrive we managed to build up to three "stoppages", a dislocated shoulder after ten minutes in game one, a damaged knee and the neck knock in game two, three little anxious clusters dotted round the ground. They then decided the chopper was needed, after arriving on the clear and open far side of the ground it eventually did a very short hop across to our lad by the clubhouse, who by then resembling an orange chrysalis was slid in the back and off he went to Salisbury A&E followed on road by Mum & Dad.

The games restarted after nearly an hour and completed without further "stoppage", but just to bring the tally up another of our team managed to come out of the last phase of play with a suspected broken collarbone. The highest injury rate I have yet seen in a single day.

A bucket appeared on the bar for air ambulance donations.

This service really is something that the NHS should provide as a basic, instead of relying on donations, but it doesn't so support your local Air Ambulance.

Walkies not diggies.

Went to do some digging today, no chance.

Surface was fine, not sticky, but the clods would not come off the spade.

After struggling with two 12' rows I gave up and went for a four hour walk with the dog.

How can a dog still manage to mark everything that takes its fancy after nearly four hours without a drink?

Not given up.

2009, nothing started yet, beyond winter digging and cutting last years dead growth from the herbs and raspberries, with one nice hot bonfire of all the waste plus a couple of bust fence panels from home.

The site is a real frost pocket and our garden shares the location a few hundred yards along the shallow valley's south side.
Our back terrace and garden still have over an inch of frozen snow on it, but looking out of the french doors at the greenhouse down the bottom it is gleaming in the bright sunshine.

I am compensating for the poor gardening weather by building myself a workshop shed replacing the childrens playshed, which at 15 & 12 they have totally outgrown.

Catch that summer sun.

And those damm pesky summer mothy-midges that creep on and leave blood running down your arms and legs,

Plot 23 a gave up and I hacked down the 50% of its 5 rods that was covered with ; bramble, hawthorn, blackthorn, dogwood and stuff. Took three evening sessions from home till dusk.
Finally burnt the results on Monday night when there was buggerall wind.
Had let it by then, with the understanding a bonfire was pending, and the chap had been hard at work with the pickaxe on the bramble stumps and a couple of blackthorns, I did leave decent lengths of the trees for leverage.

Louise has given up after ten years, her formerly well tended plot had not been visibly touched this year and she is busy with other stuff. Sad to see her go, but hopeful one of the twelve on the waiting list will power through the weeds.

Two "laxish" plotholders started to get on with it , one with a prod and one without, and two haven't got on with it yet........

Me, well not a good year for crops, too much going on with the extension and lack of access to the garden due to it. I have four rows of spuds and have planted out ten squash, two cukes, some courgettes, a block of Pigletwilles banana shallots to seed, six (all that made it out of the seedtray!) sweetcorn and have sown leeks, pak-choi, kale and carrots in the coldframe, all up and sprouting.

The weedkiller has done a good job and I have spent the last three evenings digging on plot 18 from the herbs towards the site path and have managed about 4m x 10m.

Last weekend I netted my fruit bushes as the blackbirds were paying it too much attentions although it was only ripening.
Fruit picking has taken about an hour a day since Sunday when I first went plucking and got about 2lb of razzies and a carrier bag full to the brim of strawbs, plus a 1lb of redcurrants.
Today made a summer pudding with all three berries.
Everyone has so many strawbs they cannot give them to other plotholders.

Plot judging on the 2nd July, my plot is an embarrassment, but it will be a tidy embarrassment.

Spray and be dammed.

Went to the DIY sheds to get a hose and a small tool, came away with replacement chemical proof gloves, riggers leather gloves, both keenly priced, a special offer hose on a portable reel which was cheaper than the same hose, 5m longer and a magnificent White Jasmine.

Used some Roundup 3000 on weed infested Plot 18, some naughty Dandelions on 18 and the redundant strawberry plot on the fruit terrace, which was heavily colonised by Dandelions and other stuff. Found myself wishing the bindweed was doing better so I could kill it.

Took the dog for a walk and then tried a really agressive policy on the sulphur candle with the small tool, BLOWTORCH time, this made everything glow nicely, but the blue flame then seemed to go out, due to lots of fumes from what had burnt a-la blowtorch I declined the dogs order to investigate and will look again tomorrow.

Potted the Jasmine into the last og Mondays glazed pots, was too dark to disentabgle it from its cane tripod and attach it to the trellis panel edging the terrace, so will do that tomorrow with a large G-n-T.

Invade the strawbs!

Not a command, a complaint.

Weeded the front, path end, of plot 17, which is a 3'x4' fcut flower bed, a cold frame and inbetween strawberries, guess what the damm couch was doing?

Yup, two foot straight in from the path before sprouting.

Left that nice and tidy, and took the supervisor for a walk, throwing her ball en route.

Tried a more agressive policy with the Sulphur candle, half a box of matches instead of the useless paper wick. They burnt down to the sulphur and went out. GRRRRR.