Pig Sty Avenue

Also yesterday, I got that area of hedgerow hoed, running North and then East from the ash tree up and along to the central path. As I hoed away, cutting off ground elder, grasses, and clover, uprooting a comfrey volunteer and some small docks by hand, it occurred that it's going to be several years before the hedgerow shades out most of its competitors. That's a lot of weeding. The boundary is 70m long.  April to October, 5m a day means it would all be done every fortnight, which would be enough to stop it running away with weeds, as it did this Summer. That's in addition to hoeing all the beds. But, keep at it and it gets easier, mostly because hoeing 30mins to an hour every day for six months gives you forearms like Popeye. This from Cornell is good on hoeing , as it is on weed management generally. All of which I'm taking careful note of: next year, I manage the weeds rather than they manage me.

Hardneck garlic arrived just now. Long time since I've grown garlic, so I've done a bit of googling. This was helpful . Garlic doesn't like waterlogging, either, apparently, so let's hope the new drainage, right by next year's onion and roots rotation bed, does the business. I was going to dig in 2 barrowfulls of oomska, but I think I'll dig in 2 more, now. This area - well, every area of the plot - wants riddling, but I'll wait now until the garlic's harvested late Spring, and riddle it all when it's less claggy, and then sow carrots or parsnips. Carcassone, we're told, has been occupied since the neolithic, and was the site of an important Roman fort, so maybe legionaries planted the first garlic there. I like the virtues of hoeing being extolled on that quickcrop link . S/he's right there. But that's another post...

Weather forecast notwithstanding I took the dogs to the plot yesterday and between showers dug a spade-wide trench down part of the Western boundary, and then across the NW bed to the central path where it should flow down into the pond. I had the pleasing sight of it actually working, the trench filling with water, which followed me as I dug in the direction of the pond. Gorse, apparently, doesn't like wet, boggy ground. It's planned to be the staple plant of the hedgerow at the central area of the Western boundary, so the drainage needs to work well if it's going to thrive. It might be that along this section of the hedgerow, I'll need to plant pyracantha . I've bought 100 seeds, but have a feeling in my bones that it's going to become the mainstay, and I'll likely want more.

Thanks to Therese for pointing out the historical possibilities with Google Earth. There's a 1945 image, which is so unclear as to be meaningless. Apart from that, the earliest is this one from 2002. The chief interest is that the double plot next door, to the West, was paved over even then. I suspect this is what has led to the waterlogging - all the water falling onto that area running down into my plot. It also suggests that nothing much changed between 2002 and 2015. The fruit bushes to the East were taking up a lot of room, but the beds were being cultivated in the northern 2/3 of the plot. The absurd old shed is there, and there's something else in the midden area.

BBC, from: http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/2635167 If I was in Jeremy Corbyn's shoes, I'd be a bit ticked off today, having to make a speech whilst, in Islington, the weather's not bad, and he could have had a couple of hours at his allotment. No such luck here. Glasgow's right on the edge of that big lump of rain that's over the NW of Scotland, so it's been stop-started raining all day since about 10am; no allotment today. Nor for the rest of the week, it looks like. Bah. But that's it, we're bound by the weather, it's allotmenteering, not stamp collecting. The knock on effect of this rain is that, even when we get a break in the rain, the earth at the old greenhouse foundation is too wet to riddle.  Which means the supply of gravel and small stones to the new shed foundation's hardcore layer has stopped. Also, I've got to take my eyes off the new shed for a bit, I suspect, and get back to trench digging, where the rubble path's g...

2 barrow-fulls of oomska, ready to dig in to the NW bed for the garlic. Whilst I was down that way, I weeded the two rows of neeps, planted about a month apart. The first row is looking very good indeed: most of them bigger than the 'largish apple' suggested here . What I've noticed about our neeps is, they're significantly easier to peel and to chop than supermarket ones, which have skin a centimetre thick, and need a very heavy duty, sharp carving knife to get through them. Homegrown are more like potatoes to deal with.

After I moved some of the skinny brick path from the West to the East bed yesterday, I dug a wee hole where the brick path had been. And this is how it looked this afternoon. So my concern was justified: thanks to the phacelia for tipping me off that all was still not well in the Mid and North West beds. And this is very early autumn, mind, it's only going to get worse in the weeks ahead. So here's the plan: Along the course of the skinny paths separating the hedge area from the beds, and dividing the Mid and North West beds, I'll dig a ditch about 1ft deep, and fill it with rubble. That will still serve as a path, of course, and should guide the excess water down to the main rubble drain under the central path, and thence into the pond.