Pig Sty Avenue

A lot of last weekend was spent working this 5th bed. The methodology: rake the surface, getting glass, stones, bits of wood and a certain amount of earth into heaps. Riddle the heaps through the medium riddle into the barrow. Riddle that by hand to get out the gravel, (there's a LOT of gravel in it). If you look closely, you can see 5 heaps all waiting to be riddled. This is the second going over with the riddle. When I've done those 5 heaps, I'll rake it all over again. It's surprising how much gets missed. When I'm fairly sure there's no more glass and other debris on the surface, I'll dig it all over and repeat the raking and riddling. And then probably dig it all over again, and again repeat the riddling and raking. When I've got a reasonable tilth, spread on 2-3ins of oomska, then the riddled topsoil, and then sow with a green manure, probably the clover seed I've found a bagful of. Probably winter field beans on in September, and more o...

To test out my theory that the French bot appearing to give me page views is attracted to 2 word post headings only.

Riddling worked fine with what was in effect a heap of earth, but the same procedures just couldn't cut it in the bed. The earth was far more claggy, for one thing. And some areas very compacted. After an hour or so of experimentation with the big and medium riddles, I gave it up in favour of a regime of rake, dig, rake, dig, etc. Weather, work and domesticity permitting, I can get this done in a few weeks. It's looking better already.

Yesterday I started lifting both the rediscovered path and the comfrey, both of which mark the boundary between bed 4 and 5. The comfrey then goes to the central path edge, where it should look spectacular when it grows to over a metre, and flowers. I suspect it's Symphytum officinale (rather than one of the Bocking F1s ) because it was growing randomly at the old Pig Sty Avenue, by a common path. Just the sort of place a plant would grow from a stray seed. I think regular garden comfrey is fine for composting and fertiliser, but wants watching because it's a persistent bugger, and I don't want to be invaded by even a beneficial plant. So it'll need cut down before it has a chance to set seed. It's not all good, comfrey. It has anti-fungal qualities , which is of course a mixed blessing. It might have some effect on the chocolate spot which is infecting the winter field beans I'm growing as a crop this year, (the comfrey is growing right along the edge of...

I'd imagined an absurd scenario : a French horticultural college, the English lessons, (I don't think they'd bother, but stay with me), used this blog as materials. We teachers do that sort of thing, and it made a kind of sense, it's horticultural and it's written by an English teacher so it's reasonably well punctuated, at least. Balderdash, of course. Google analytics show that it's actually mostly viewed, as you'd expect, from the UK and USA. Hardly anyone in France even gives a shit about it. It's all some kind of click-bait. A bot, nominally based in France, keeps pinging the blog with apparent page views. The idea, apparently, is for the curious blogger to wonder where the traffic is coming from, and click on the source; (I'm glad to say I'd worked it out before I did that. But I have noticed this. The posts which gets 1000s of hits from the bot all have 2 or 1 word headings. Botanical names in headings are the bots particular favou...

...the absence of a project plan notwithstanding, the biggest drag on allotmenting is all the glass, which means the dogs can't go there. This means I have to walk the dogs, bring them home, and only then can I go to work on the allotment. This is doubly aggravating because their daily long walk takes us to Alexandra Park, the East gate of which is 2 minutes from the plot. If the dogs could come to the allotment with me, then I could walk up of a morning or evening with them, do my 2 hours of work, whatever it be, and then walk home again. Dogs exercised, me exercised, another couple of hours further forward at plot. It's no.5 bed, now much extended with the greenhouse foundation gone, where most of the glass is. Obviously, most of it came from the old greenhouse. And part of that area was used as a midden, so any glass that the Predecessor was unable to ignore, would have been gathered up there. It hit me last night over a glass of wine, as we were watching telly. Never...

A few years ago, working in language assessment, (writing tests of English, really) I started to do project plans. Well, everyone I worked with seemed to be doing them. On a spreadsheet, tasks down the columns, time to get to each stage along the rows. Utter bullshit. Like the small raised beds I see most of my allotment neighbours have. Everything in its place. No room for improvisation or good fortune. I have to keep reminding myself of this now that the Spring is well and truly under way, and the tasks proliferate. Only the floor of the shed is treated. Only maybe 20% of the pile of rubble has been reduced by the 7lb hammer to small bits for the shed-base. The hedgerow: my wee gorse plants - put in the ground too soon - are getting choked by weeds. And I haven't riddled the glass out of... anywhere, lately. One thing I have managed to do: the old greenhouse area is no more. first I excavated it, then knocked out the old wall, then cleared the rubble and its old path, and ...

I arrived today to find two mallards nosing around the plot, quite the thing Photography often reveals things unintended by the photographer. Here, for example, I was charmed to see these two ducks wandering around the plot. But the photo shows just how much there is still to do: it's a building site with its rubble, materials stacked temporarily; and the emblem of work-in-progress, the tarpaulin in the background. Anyhow, despite the building site look, I'm really going to make an effort to get on with the actual gardening this summer. And yes, that is indeed possible. See, I've had this mental image of a shed, an idealised shed, lots of light for seedlings, a workbench. And a couple of hurricane lamps. I imagined being there at night, listening to jazz broadcast on short wave from a foreign city. Which would be nice, but the thing I'm wanting to do is grow vegetables. So, the building site in the photo - that's where the mythical shed was to go. But bugg...

The only good thing about having a rotten cold for a few days is the time it gives one to think and plan ahead. Though, actually, I've spent a lot of thinking time for several months now about how the plot will look when I've got the glass riddled out, with a potting shed and poly-tunnel to bring seedlings away. The picture is a representation of the sort of scheme I have in mind for the beds. I imagine this is how No.4 bed will look next year, with brassicas, and ignoring the fact that it should be more irregular in the bottom right corner, where the cherry trees are. Along the bottom, the hedgerow, next to which in pink is the skinny brick path. At the top the purple line represents where comfrey is growing along the central path edge. The bright green areas at the two ends of the bed will be perennial edibles and/or herbs. In the middle will be something edible or otherwise useful and architectural: teasel, sunflowers, angelica, globe and jerusalem artichokes... Th...

This wee beauty is growing on a reed bed on the big pond at Alexandra Park. A definite candidate for next year when I get to work on the pond.

The story was, the man wanted rid of the old shed because he wanted a new one. He could have taken it to the Council dump, of course, but like most decent people nowadays he preferred to recycle it. His dad showed up with a power drill, which was just as well because there were a lot of screws in the roof, (adding to my belief that nails and bolts are the thing, screws just cause you problems down the road). Getting it disassembled was the hardest part. Well, the most tedious part, really, because taking screws out of the roof, and unbolting the side panels, was a one-person job. Then came the heavy labour of moving the pieces, the floor being the heaviest. We started work at just after 11am, and it was stacked up in my plot by 2.15pm. It rained heavily for part of that time. I was keen to get back to the plot Thursday to get it all painted with cuprinol.  But the cold that had been threatening all week kicked in and just getting out of bed has been an effort these last four da...