Tag Archives: allotment

harvest

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All local produce. All free. None of it grown by me.

I feel this post should really be titled Confessions of a Failed Allotmenteer (if there is such a thing, perhaps it should be allotment keeper). The fact is our little experiment sharing my mother in law’s allotment has not been a huge success. That’s not to say that it’s been a massive failure either – we’ve grown potatoes and the various different types of garlic did well…

(not sure that digging in flip flops is really advisable, or barefoot, for that matter.)

And right now my Brussels Sprouts are fattening up nicely, or at least Sue says they are. But those three crops are the sum total of our efforts (there were some courgettes, but not that many, and the slugs made off with the runner beans). And they are probably a fair representation of our efforts too – or rather lack of effort. The fact is, the plot is just too far from home to be easily or conveniently worked into my day – which is why I am sharing Sue’s assessment of my Brussels sprouts with you rather than my own.

But of course I learned a huge amount. It was great to have a go at growing vegetables again, as having the room for decent sized vegetable beds is probably what I miss most about our old garden. Sue has written a fantastic book* on allotment gardening for Green Books, and I used to refer to it a lot back in London, and it was fun to have her on hand throughout the experiment, just a shame I wasn’t there often enough. The greatest irony is that all my free time last year was spent studying for my RHS level 2 certificate.

So, from the top: the raspberries** are from Sue’s fantastic plants, which produce vast quantities of delicious fruit year after year. The Borlotti beans, in their fabulously speckled pink and white pods, are also from Sue’s part of the allotment. The pears are from my sister’s tree – we had supper in her garden last week, with the regular rustle and whump of the pear tree lightening its load as the background music.

The plums were gathered on a local walk earlier in the holidays, and were destined for jam but were so perfectly ripe and delicious they only lasted a day in the bowl. Luckily some friends came to stay at the weekend bearing gifts of homemade plum jam, so we had a double harvest without any effort at all.

And at the bottom of the garden the hazel is scattering nuts and Sybil and I are competing for them – she snuffles about like a truffle hound and crunches them up. Once again the great “shall we, shan’t we” debate about the fate of the hazel falters as we remember how nice this nutty harvest is. I think another jar or two of homemade nutella might decide it.

* The first of what will, by the end of the week, be two, perhaps three, shameless plugs for members of my family. But, hey, what’s the point of a blog if you can’t do this sort of thing with impunity? 

**Look closely and you’ll see some Cheerios marooned on the edge of the table – nice. 

finished

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School is over for this year. And what a relief it is to have a six week break from my life as a human sheep dog: herding reluctant children up the hill to school each morning, and herding grumpy ones back down again at the end of the day.

Today, the first day of the holidays, still involved herding children though, but this time two dogs were doing all the leg work. My friend Nicky and I took our children and dogs geocaching. We ambled along at a leisurely pace in the light drizzle that characterises the British summer, whilst the children walked twice the distance, skittering back and forth between us and the dogs. Armed with an iPhone and accompanied by our team of enthusiastic helpers we began to feel the first stirrings of happy nerdiness. We felt that the purchase of many-pocketed anoraks might only be days away – ones with special places for keeping maps visible but dry.

By following various clues and coordinates we found a mosaic -

and a pet cemetery -

But no “camouflaged box the size of three 35mm film cases.” Three hours later the helpers started to mutiny. Cries of “mum this is getting quite boring now”, and “are we ever going home?” rang through the air. All thoughts of Gortex anoraks were quickly forgotten and our quest abandoned in favour of digging up treasure of another sort down at the allotment.

The joy of turning over a clod of earth to reveal a pale gold potato never diminishes; today it was enhanced by our earlier failure. The potato bed is empty now, though there are no doubt a few spuds lodging there still – the children may be energetic potato diggers, but they are not very systematic.

So school is finished, the potato bed is finished, and last night two nice knitting projects were finished as well, though both still need a little finishing, which is what I’ll do now.

Both hat and spotty bag are from Jane Brocket’s book The Gentle Art of Knitting, which has kept me happily occupied during recent revision avoidance, passport office loitering and other moments when the merry-go-round that is the end of term has slowed for a moment or two.

And just a final thought on geocaching: though our first geocache was an abject failure, it was good fun, totally free and kept everyone entertained for several hours. Nicky and I have vowed to do it again, but with a compass and a slightly better understanding of what the various bits of orienteering lingo actually mean.

a cat, a goose and a declaration

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I spotted this cat on a windowsill as we drove back from the allotment, its bright yellow eyes having caught my attention. It was a second or two before I noticed its companion.

Just round the corner from the cats, this local landmark, the two-headed goose, looked particularly peculiar and wonderful against Sunday’s clear blue sky.

And finally, though this may not be the best bit of graffiti on Stokes Croft (in fact I can assure you that it isn’t), I think you’ll agree that it has a certain charm. And it’s certainly one up on the usual so-and-so loves so-and-so 4ever.

P.S. The last episode of Botany: A Blooming History is on tonight, BBC 4, and the first two episodes are only available for another week on i-player. If you are remotely interested in plants do watch them. I was so touched by the idea that early botanists believed that plants ate soil in order to grow; stunned by the extraordinary names that plants were burdened with before Linnaeus streamlined the system; and this morning my first thought on waking was about tomatoes tasting sweeter when grown in a factory’s waste carbon dioxide. That all sounds rather nerdy, I know, but trust me, the series is brilliant and Timothy Walker’s enthusiasm will carry you along.

creative ways with revision

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Whilst I know knitting* could never count as RHS revision (even though I was knitting flowers and leaves), I did watch five episodes of Gardener’s World back-to-back on i-player at the same time. I then managed half an episode of Timothy Walker’s brilliant botany series, Botany: A Blooming History, happy in the knowledge that it was definitely revision. The i-player, however, didn’t agree and cut out. No amount of re-booting, plug agitating or swearing could get it to restart. I’ll try again tonight and see if I can get through episode two as well, which is all about photosynthesis. None of this is directly relevant to the exams I am sitting next week, but it’s botany and it’s fascinating, and better than going mad with frustration at my inability to concentrate on the finer details of planting plans for hanging baskets.

My alternative approach to my revision also included a wonderful afternoon down at the allotment. A sorry looking potato plant was accidentally lifted by a keen novice weeder (Joe) and treasure was found lurking in the soil below. In the end we decided to take out a second plant at the same end of the potato bed to make space for the runner beans. Although hidden in forests of weeds – my books have made me neglectful – the garlic is doing surprisingly well, and certainly looked better once it had come into focus again after a good half an hour’s weeding. The same was true of courgettes and sprouts. I sowed some beetroot seed, aware that I was not really doing any of this by the book, but rather in the way that I’ve done it in the past, which is by eye, and plenty of fudging.

And this sideways approach to revising continues this afternoon. Once I’ve drawn up a plan of planting times, latin names and rotations, I will head out to what must be the craziest garden centre in the world (to be written about soon), to buy some plants from the Hairy Pot company (ditto). I’ll also pick up an old tin bath that I spotted in a junk shop, and get to work on combing the plants and bath whilst memorising plant names.

* This tea cosy is from Jane Brocket’s “Gentle Art of Knitting”, the flowers and leaves are from an Usborne children’s knitting book, “How To Knit”.

wish list

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Along with avoiding New Year’s Eve, I’ve resolved to do away with resolutions. Instead, I will make a list of things I’ll aim to do this year and not get too hung up on whether or not I manage to tick them off. It will be positive rather than negative. I am a great list maker, so this suits me well. I am also, rather tragically, a great retrospective list maker too – if a list is failing to get smaller, I’ll add stuff that I have done (made a bed, bought some loo roll, nothing major) just to tick it off. Pathetic really.

So, the 2011 list. I have always had a bit of a blind spot when it comes to house plants. I love having flowers in the house, but beyond spring bulbs, and cut flowers through the summer, I never seem to get around to cultivating proper house plants – Spider plants, Begonias, Aspidistras and so on. Probably because I don’t really like them much, I find them a little bit triffid-like and creepy. But I do like the plant above, and below (not necessarily a house plant, but happy enough to be one), in fact I covet these particular plants, which grow on a friend’s mother’s window sill. I love the rosettes of glaucous leaves, and the peculiar flowers that look so much like sweets. This is on my list, I will grow one this year…

only I am not entirely sure what it is*. I assumed that it was some form of house leek (Sempervivum) but when I searched online I found that the flowers don’t really conform. Luckily, the RHS course starts again next week, and I am sure that someone at the Botanical gardens will be able to identify it for me. I will post details when I know.

Other items on the gardening section of my list include: taking out the hazel tree and finding a suitable replacement; drawing up a scale plan of the garden in order to plot the terracing, which I hope to have completed in time to start planting in April; remembering to find out about potato days, and actually getting to one; getting on track with my section of allotment. I will also write at least one post a week on the garden. I found out today that my blog has been accepted by Blotanical, a fantastic online community of garden bloggers. I am really, really pleased – especially as most of the last month’s posts have been entirely garden-free and I thought I might not make the grade.

Other things for my list include: make a quilt, learn to crochet, make at least one dress or skirt for myself, curtains for Matilda’s room and some cushions. I’d also like to have a go at screen printing and take a short photography course in order to get to grips with my very exciting new camera, a Lumix GF 1. The photos here were taken with the old camera, just after a terrible downpour and the whole thing steamed up – hence the soft focus glow.

I want to do more walking, and of course the arrival of Sybil in our household will mean that I will have no trouble at all in ticking that one off the list at the end of the year. Cue gratuitous shot of fluffy puppy…

Some of the things on the list fall into the slightly retrospective category in that they are things I would do this year anyway: make marmalade, make a simnel cake and so on. And knitting falls firmly into this category as this year I will certainly knit. So I think I’ll formalize my knitting plans by saying that I want to knit a jumper for each of the girls and also for Joe (the last is very dangerously close to being a retrospective addition in that I have only a sleeve to go, and Joe’s jumper will be complete). As well as a tea cosy, and more socks, I want to complete at least one Fair Isle or stranded colourwork project – maybe the tea cosy, or perhaps a hat inspired by simplicity and charm of this.

I want to read more – more Elizabeth Taylor especially. I have just finished The Soul of Kindness, which, like all her novels is wonderfully subtle and understated, and lives on in the mind long after reading. I should probably work out a list of books, but I prefer to not to plan ahead too much with my reading, I like to be guided by my mood at that moment. Besides, Joe has challenged me to read Master and Commander, so for the next week or so I will be on the high seas.

I think that’s it for the list, for now. Better start getting on with it.

* I do now, thanks to atomiclulu, who kindly identified it – Echeveria Glauca

harvest

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An abundance of things I have had no hand in growing… nuts from our hazelnut tree whose life, once again, hangs in the balance – more of which in a later post.

Nasturtium flowers from various plants which have grown happily in spite of my neglect – delicious, as well as beautiful, in salads.

And finally, a huge haul of delicious raspberries (with the odd blackberry for good measure) from my mother-in-law’s allotment. These will become jam.

My own harvests this year have been pretty sorry affairs – the slugs feasted on the courgettes – which went in too late and were not especially happy in the shade of the hazel. My cucumbers were great, but not exactly plentiful. Ditto my runner beans. I didn’t feed either of these plants and I think that feed is probably essential when growing vegetables in pots.

I have been offered a couple of beds on my mother-in-law’s allotment as an experiment and I shall use this space for beans, potatoes, leeks and beetroot. I’ll grow the cucumber on the terrace next summer, where it will be easier to reach so I will have no excuse not to feed it.