Pig Sty Avenue

That's wee Sparky in the photo, which I took whilst having a breather from tidying up the rediscovered path, and moving the pile of earth at the end of it. Soon afterwards, she cut her paw really quite badly, presumably on one of the plots innumerable shards of glass. Emergency visit to the vet. No stitches, but a couple of metal staples to keep the flap of her pad on. That was 10 days ago, though it feels much longer because a slightly disabled dog becomes incredibly tying, and none of us are getting as much exercise as we'd like. Cleo, too, cut her carpal pad a few weeks ago, though not entailing a visit to the vet. Long story short, I caught have my dogs getting injured like this, so they've been banished from the plot pending clearing of the glass. This project got a major boost this morning when I was able to delegate domestic & canine duties for a few hours. I remembered Dad using a large riddle when we had a big Edwardian back garden in Hampshire which ...

A bit early, but I'm looking at starting stratification of hedgerow plants now. They'll be ready for February, when, inshallah, I'll have a heated potting shed to sow them in, ready for planting out the following winter, (2017/18). There's 100 Pyracantha coccinea . I'm putting them in warm water today, and will put them in the fridge tomorrow for 3 months - maybe 4. The methodology is to use a fairly small amount of seedling compost, which seems to be 50% sand, in a plastic bag which is not-quite air tight. When they come out of the fridge in late January, I'll spread the seedling compost over a tray full of more of the same. I've also got Pinus sylvestra , which really ought to be stratified now, we got the seeds on a visit to Edinburgh Botanic Gardens in summer 2015. Don't know how many, and it doesn't say on the packet, but I'd estimate 100 or so. According to the packet, and to treeseedonline , the stratification is only 4 weeks. I won...

The northern 1/3 of the NW bed is still neeps - and the marigolds are thriving, still. The middle section is now garlic: I dug in 3 barrow-fulls of oomska, and then left it for a week or so. Then raked it all as level as possible, and planted 3 rows of carcassonne wight  to the north, and 3 rows of picardy wight to the south of them; (I'm being precise because, whilst I found enough plant markers, I couldn't write on them, being unable to find a pen or pencil: the conditions in the old shed mean I struggle to lay my hand to anything I need).  That was last week, so say 10th October. They were planted 10ins apart, in rows about 1ft apart. (One is advised to plant them 6ins apart, but that won't give quite enough room to get a hoe between them). The final, southerly, 1/3 of the NW bed, and the whole of the Midwest bed, I dug over a week or so ago. I then left it for a week, as 'tillage prompts germination', apparently , and it seems like a good idea to give the we...

Like most tenements, we have a "drying green" (never used to dry clothes, though) with a brick structure to contain the bins. Ours is covered with a 9in thick mat of ivy. There's lots of information about propagation online, the upshot being, it's incredibly easy to do.  There's so much of it growing at the drying green, I could easily chop away literally sack loads of it. There's so much, I wouldn't bother with rooting hormone or pots, just plant the cuttings a few ins apart in situ , round the boundary. A 10% strike rate would be fine. It's a most excellent plant for wildlife. Here's a pdf document about that . I'm worried that it might smother the other plants, especially the gorse, but that could be managed with keeping it cut back in the early years of the hedgerow. Its thuggishness is another attraction for me: it's the boundaries of the plot which are now most liable to the persistent weeds: nettles, ground elder and horsetails. I...

I got the rubble-infested heap of earth moved up to the old greenhouse area, now the temporary home for to-be-riddled excess earth. Then I got the rest of the Mid- and North West beds roughly dug over, and shoveled the spoil from the new drainage trench over. It's ready to have a load of horse manure dug into it, and then to have Hungarian rye sown on top of that.  Also yesterday, I got a lot of the individual bits of glass I could see, and put them in the new drainage ditch. I'm horrified at the thought of the dogs taking any more injury from it. I noticed that the worm population along the path edge of the West beds appeared to be significantly higher than anywhere else. There's a lot of heavy clay in the earth there, from digging the drainage system under the path, but also being near the path it was well drained - the phacelia did best in a yard-wide strip down the side of the path, so maybe it likes clay, more likely it liked the better drainage. I'm hoping that ...

Also , the garlic wants planting in the next week or so. As well as the Carcassonne wight hardneck, there's Picardy wight softneck.  That's in the North West bed, brassicas last year, (there are still neeps in it, doing very well, we should have 1 a week up until Xmas), and roots/alliums next year. I'll harvest the garlic in May, or thereabouts, and then riddle that bit of the bed before sowing carrots and/or parsnips. Which is how I'm going to proceed next year: riddle ground between crops in the summer, when it's dried somewhat. That's because I've learned that riddling with wet clay is bloomin' hard work, slow.  Mind, the West beds have soil from all over, including the yellow subsoil clay that came up from the pond and the drain beneath the path. And it's another job which I stupidly put off with my own no-dig can-do overnight delusions, (it's going to have to wait until the whole plot's riddled, years). The job I didn't do was dig...

The iPhone's not charging, so it's sitting on a coffee table until I get into the city centre and get it sorted out. Which means I've been developing a wonderful freedom all this week, from calls, updates, messages and most of all, the time. Been busy at the allotment, and I've noticed that I work longer when I don't have a clock to refer to: 3 or 4 hours as against the usual 2. Which means I've done a lot this week, but by last night, Friday, was utterly exhausted: taking the dogs around the block for their last walk at 11ish last night was quite a chore, just putting one foot in front of the other. Weeding, digging over, riddling soil, shovelling horse shit. I cleared the whole old greenhouse area, breaking up its 7in thick layer of compacted earth, and revealing the whole of the path beneath; there was an ash-filled break in the path at the East end, so I assume it was once heated from a stove of some sort there. Another heap of tbr (to be riddled) earth ...