Pig Sty Avenue

Above how one of my 2 trays of figs looked in November. Below, how the same tray looks now, after a winter on the windowsill. Heigh bloomin' ho is all I can say. Lots of casualties, and nothing has grown any bigger than it was 5 months ago. I read somewhere recently that you think you're going to give plants a head start by growing them on the windowsill over winter, but it doesn't work like that, and by jingo that's right so far as these figs go. So what I've learned is : a single dried fig produces many hundreds of viable seeds. They will germinate in a self-contained environment with a seed tray in a cat litter tray. Leave them in a glass of warm water over night, and then sow them in vermiculite only, on the surface, putting a sheet of cling film over the cat litter tray. This will mean water doesn't evaporate away, and you only need to check on them occasionally. Which is just as well because they take up to 5 months to germinate.  This part of t...

The arrival of the Hut tomorrow means the construction of the temporary tool store could be seen as a waste of time and effort, but I'd disagree. I managed to build it in 2 or 3 hours, so no great loss of time. And I'm regarding it as a rehearsal for the construction of the Hut and eventually the Shed. I won't demolish it either. I'm thinking it might work as an arbor-with-allotment-chic. I can train ivy and brambles around the outside and over the top, maybe other plants too. Inside and to the front, which don't get a lot of light, I could grown ferns . Apart from the fact that they are usually grown in shade, I know almost nothing about them, so there's a whole new thing . Couple of plastic chairs in there, it'll be a nice spot to sit and watch whatever's going on in No.1 bed, surrounded by ferns, enclosed by brambles and ivy, at peace with nature. Cool. I can put bird attractors in No.1 bed, maybe angelica or teasel. NB [10th May 2017] It occ...

It's a law of nature: if you work on an allotment without any kind of hut or shed for long enough, someone will eventually say, "Do you want a shed?" I got an email from The Secretary last night, got put in touch with the man whose hut it is, and we've arranged transfer of the hut for Wednesday morning. He's even sorting out the van hire, and going halfs with the cost thereof because he has other stuff he wants moving. The bottom line of all of this is, I get a hut with one careful owner for £25, tomorrow. I'll have to reassemble it myself, but I'll want to give it a bloody good going over with wood preserver before that - I've actually got a tin of it at the plot, it was going cheap in Tesco, ages ago. I'm planning to locate it in the SE corner, near the gate, near where the old shed was. Doesn't get much sun there, especially in winter, so it will stay cool enough to store spuds and neeps there. I might line the inside with bubble wrap...

Going... ...going... ...gone! It's remarkable - to me, anyway, - to see a slight depression in the ground where once stood something resembling an island fortress, complete with several levels of ramparts, both wooden and brick. The low walls of the defunct greenhouse held what had become a raised bed, the earth inside infested with rubble and glass. Slowly, slowly, I breached the outer ramparts, cleared the inside and riddled-out the contents, and this weekend I've demolished the wall, and cleared what was once the greenhouse's central path. Bloody hard work, which I finished this afternoon. What made it hard was the fact that it had been well built: 3 courses of bricks for the walls on concrete and hard core, a real pro job that would have sufficed as a house wall. And the path was also laid properly on concrete and hardcore. I got out as much of the heavy stuff as I could, you can see it in the foreground of the photo. The rest will have to wait until thi...

Where the pile of sticks used to be, there's now a structure to keep the tools and me out of the rain. I used bits and pieces I'd salvaged from the old shed, (2 doors for the back, corrugated tin for one side, and a sheet of soft, malleable tin for the roof), together with the two pallets I'd got from the disused railway's embankment. The rain should run off into the grey plastic barrel there. The 50 gallon oil drum is performing the office of an occasional table. Managed to put it together in 2-3 hours, and I'm extremely proud of it. Mind you, it won't do too well in a storm, but let's hope we don't get one before the shed-proper is built. I remember summer 2015, hacking my way through the 6ft tall nettles and thistles which made a jungle of this SW corner, finding one of the wheelbarrows quite hidden here, and it felt as if I'd reached the source of the Nile. And now it's the home of a wee kind of settlement.

I blogged about raising the two old, rediscovered paths a week or so ago . The reason for that was to finally get the levels right. You can see in the photo there's a drop running right to left. The whole plot slopes down from South to North, so on that side from the gate to the pond. I was for keeping those paths out of respect for whoever laid them, sometime between 1917 and the 1970s or 80s. But the fact is, the plot has naturally raised its level over the decades by both incidental, (during its abandoned weed filled fallow years), and intended introduction of organic matter, and the paths are too low. If I've got to lift them brick-by-brick, fill their foundations, and then re-lay them... Well, do I really need to keep them? It's not as if they're great paths, though they do have a certain old allotment charm. They're very uneven, making it difficult to keep them clean. And if I do away with them, here's the thing, there'll be one big bed running f...

Looking from the gate to the SW corner, which still had its pile of sticks when I took this a few days ago. As far as the central path, there's a path made of some crumbly kind of concrete. Not being one to look a gift path in the mouth, I was inclined to keep it, but no, it's got to go. The boundary here is double pallet height, about 8ft. Long story short, I do not enjoy cordial relations with the users of the plot on the other side of the boundary. They've been piling up heavy metal trestles against the pallet fence, and whilst it still seems solid, in no imminent danger of collapse, it's leaning inwards to my plot. It would also be an easy task to climb over this fence, its height notwithstanding, there being plenty of hand and foot holds on upright pallets. I'm pretty sure that's the route taken on at least one of the occasions the plot's been burgled I've put some scraps of barbed wire along the top for now. But the answer is: brambles. I ...

When I took on the plot, there were already several brambles growing. They were quite out of control: mostly growing around the boundary, and giving fruit, but I regarded them as more of a nuisance than anything else. A few of them I dug up completely and consigned to bonfire piles. As the allotment's edges began to be tamed I started to merely cut them back, relocating some of them. This year, they can come into their own. I've made a blunder with the gorse. I was over-keen to get it into the ground. The dogs, when they were still permitted at the allotment, would run around the fringes of the plot where the gorse was planted, and a lot of them got uprooted. Over winter, grass has been growing on those that remained, and I'm going to have to do a lot of weeding. It's preying on my mind, every day makes the weeds worse, but and old injury to my knee cartilage has flared up, which makes getting down to the plants' level for a good weeding problematical, so I...

This is how the SW corner has looked for more than a year now, a refuge for frogs, but also perhaps for rats. But, below is how it looked this afternoon: And the pile of twigs and branches has now been broken and sawed up into small lengths, which will do nicely as kindling and fuel for the future stove in the future potting shed. Whilst sawing away I gave myself a glimpse into the late winter, 2018, when I can go to the plot with the dogs, light the stove and leave it burning slowly overnight to keep any seedlings from perishing whilst I'm snugly sleeping back at home. It's a very comforting thought. Things I learned from this wee job: ash stays very springy, and is difficult to snap with your hands so that even 1/2in twigs need the saw Auricularia auricula-judae will grow on dead Ribes negrum wood that has been piled up next to a living Sambucus nigra stump. (See photo below).  I have placed a twig with several jelly-ears growing on it, (plus severa...

On the left is the pond on Thursday, around midday. Almost immediately after taking the photo, the heavens opened. It rained most of the rest of Thursday, and quite a bit on Friday, too. The right hand photo is how it looked at 3pm or thereabouts this afternoon, Saturday. That's generally how it goes 1-2 days of steady rain, and it's full. 2 weeks of no rain whatsoever, and it's down to the mud. Mind, we're in the west of Scotland, and drought is a rare thing. Usually, when full, it goes down to a few inches of water and the 3 smaller ponds are visible. Which is all good. Fluctuating ponds are said to be better for wildlife . Well, it's not quite "all good". The fact that it fills with vegetation when at a low level, which begins to die-off when it fills again with water, means there's a lot of nitrogen, and therefore algae. The problem with algae, apparently , is that soaks up the oxygen. But that shouldn't be too much of a problem as it ge...

Here's the reason I've turned my attention from the riddling to the chopping of sticks. That "structure" on the left of this photo is the temporary tool store. When I demolished and burned the old shed, I used some of the materials I salvaged therefrom to build this on top of a rediscovered path, the idea being to keep the tools out of the rain, more or less, until the shed's built. But now I'm clearing the SW corner to build another "structure" to keep the tools out of the rain, (and me out of the rain, come to that, when showers strike). What I've learned is, building a 7ft horizontal shelter with access at both ends was not the best idea vis-a-vis storing tools. They all lie on top of each other, get tangled, and removing them involves much undignified crouching and swearing. So the new structure will be vertical, 7ft high by about 5ft wide and 3ft deep. Enough for the tools and me, standing. So long as it doesn't let in the rain, i...

Compare these two with how they looked in September . The one on the left grew rhizomatously, and as you can see is showing signs of greening up for spring. I took this photo a few days ago, and had another look this evening. To the right of these two, on the southern end of the middle pond, there are 4 or 5 new plants, just breaking the surface of the water, which look as if they are new rhizomatously produced T. latifolia. I know it might sound a bit odd to welcome a plant which is said to be invasive, and is shaping up to be so. But there's nothing growing in the pond which is all that interesting, apart from these. (I did want to grow water mint, but... I have either mislaid the seed packet, or actually sown them in the pond, and forgotten about it). There's a dock which survives despite being under water most of the time; various grasses and mosses. Whatever happens, I'm not going to be proactive with the pond for this year at least. Too much else to do, so let...

It reminds me of that scene in Blue Velvet, where the avuncular police officer said, "Yes, that's a human ear all right." It and two others were growing on a branch from the blackcurrant bushes. Apparently, it grows usually on elder, and as it happens there are elders in that SW corner.

I took this photo a few days ago, and it's gotten smaller since. I'm snapping, clipping and sawing its contents into lengths about 7ins long, to use as kindling and fuel for the stove in the shed, when I get it. 4 barrows full so far. I'm putting the cut wood in a pile between the most recent manure heap, (I barrowed in another 2+ tons of it on Saturday), and the heap of riddled soil, hoping that the heaps exchange all manner of invertebrate life.

Photos from the ends of the path. Oh blimey, doesn't half show up the weeds at the N boundary, eh? Need to get the hoe busy in the next week, no later. Looking North 5th March 2017 Looking North : Here, to the right, is No.5 bed. You can see it wants a lot of work to get it clean, which is in hand. To the left is No.1 bed. Just out of sight is a heap of 2 tons approx of oomska, (you can just see it covered with a salmon colored plastic sheet in the top right hand of the other photo.)  There's also the edge of the heap of riddled earth; it's almost as big as the oomska heap, so 2 tons or so of that. To the right of the upended wheelbarrow, that's my temporary tool store, designed to keep things out of the rain until the shed gets built. But here's what I've learned: storing tools horizontally is just plain daft - one needs to crouch down to get at them, and as they're all lying on top of one another, difficult to extract. Also, I need to be ...

I seem to have gotten lost in the ivory tower, can't find my way back to the Applied Linguistics department, (which is fine, as it goes), and have stumbled into the outer fringes of soil science and horticulture. I could do with a BSc in botany or bio-chemistry, but I've left that a bit late in life, so I'm going to have to catch up as best as I can, extra mural, Jude the Obscure. A 2nd hand copy of Fitzpatrick arrived in the post today, and I've started reading that. Also today, I looked into the question buzzing around in my head since I saw an episode of Gardeners' World last year, about plantain fostering mycorrhiza. I managed to get in touch with @zephaniahlindo from Gardeners' World and he gave me the Francis et al reference. That was interesting. Long story short, Plantago lanceolata and Festuca ovina can help link mycorrhiza to other plants, thereby increasing said other plants uptake of (P)hosphorus and (N)itrogen. F ovina is sheep's fescue, a ...

I won't have chickens for years. But as mentioned here , the plan is to have a movable chicken house and run, and incorporate it into the crop rotation, moving it either in autumn or spring. This will mean the chickens get rid of harmful invertebrates like wire worms, but the bed gets 4 out of 5 years to recover the beneficial ones which the chickens have eaten. It also means chicken pests don't get a chance to build up. Finally, chickens produce loads of manure. But meanwhile, when I don't have an actual chicken run, chicken house, or indeed chickens, I'm still going to have a putative chicken bed in the rotation, where I can grow anything I want in keeping with the rotation. Insect attractions, mostly.

Today's a fine, spring-like day, but a bad back is keeping me away from the plot. I'd best take some time off and not provoke it - I need a strong and supple back this year. Been planning the cover crop regime. The idea is to follow the crop rotation already half begun: vetch where the peas and beans would be (no.5 bed); mustard for brassicas (no.4 bed), more vetch or maybe alfalfa in the putative chicken bed (no.2 bed this year); yet another legume to follow the brassicas in what would be this year's roots and onions, where I'm only growing 6 rows of garlic, (no.3 bed); something neutral, such as phacelia or buckwheat, where the tatties would be, (no.1 bed). The usual advice on buckwheat is to cut it down when the stems are still soft , and on no account to let it go to seed because it will produce "unwanted volunteers" next year. But here's the plan. It's going in no.1 bed. That's second on the schedule for riddling, and with a bit of luck...

To the left, an area one spit deep, and about 4x2.5ft. To the right, the amount of heavy rubble I got from it. To the right-hand edge, the end of the big riddle. This took me 2 hours, which if that continues to be my work rate will mean... I'll finish it in 125 days of work, (an allotment working "day" being 2-3 hours). To get that figure, I'm estimating the area I've dug as 1M², and each bed as 7.5x3.5M² - say 25M² each, and there are 5 beds. So (VERY roughly), 125M² of beds to riddle. When the worst of the glass is gone (that is, everywhere adjoining the old greenhouse has been riddled), it will be safe for dogs. So I can incorporate dog-walking into allotmenting, and be there every day Longer than 125 days, really, because this in the photo took 2 hours or so just for the big riddle, and it wants medium riddling, too. Now, I did some work with medium riddle this week: a shovelful of earth (which has already been through the big riddle), onto the grid ove...